Trump says he’s postponing signing an executive order on AI out of concern it would hurt AI industry

President Donald Trump speaks during an event about loosening a federal refrigerant rule, in the Oval Office at the White House, Thursday, May 21, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

2026-05-21T16:34:48Z

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump called off a Thursday signing ceremony for a new order on artificial intelligence because he worried it could dull America’s edge on AI technology.

Trump said he was postponing the signing because he didn’t like what he saw in the order’s text. He announced the change hours before the event was scheduled to take place in the Oval Office.

“We’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that lead,” Trump told reporters at an unrelated Oval Office event.

Push for some kind of government action to vet the most powerful AI systems follows growing concern within the banking industry and other institutions about the leaps in AI’s abilities to find cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the world’s software. Trump administration officials have repeatedly talked of the cyber capabilities of the new Mythos model from Anthropic, which the AI company has not made widely public.

COLLIN BINKLEY Binkley covers the White House and education policy for The Associated Press. He is based in Washington and joined the AP in 2015. twitter mailto

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