New frontier of AI forces Trump's heavy hand

President Trump set out on his first day in office to free artificial intelligence from government constraints.

• 15 months later, his own White House is preparing to become a gatekeeper for the most powerful new models on Earth.

Why it matters: AI has crossed a threshold that no administration — not even one ideologically committed to staying out of its way — can afford to ignore.

• It's a sea change in both Silicon Valley and Washington, accelerated by a new class of models that can hunt down cybersecurity flaws with extraordinary speed and precision.
• Anthropic's Mythos, withheld from public use due to safety concerns, was the first model to trigger panic. But with OpenAI's GPT-5.5 now matching its capabilities and Chinese labs racing to catch up, it won't be the last.

The intrigue: It was only two months ago that the Pentagon declared Anthropic a "supply chain risk" and effectively blacklisted the company.

• Now the White House is developing guidance that would allow agencies to get around that designation and onboard new Anthropic models, Axios's Maria Curi and Ashley Gold scooped last week.

Driving the news: That's just the first step. The White House is weighing an executive order that would give the federal government a formal role in vetting all new AI models before they hit the market, the New York Times reports.

• The order would create a working group of tech executives and U.S. officials to design the oversight process, with options that include a formal government review.
• White House officials briefed executives from Anthropic, Google and OpenAI on early plans last week.
• Some officials are pushing for a system that would give the government first access to new AI models, but would not block their release, according to the Times.

In parallel, the White House's cyber office is developing an AI security framework that would require the Pentagon to safety-test AI models before they're deployed by federal, state and local governments, Axios' Sam Sabin and Ashley Gold report.

• A White House official said that any policy announcement "will come directly from the president" and that discussion about "potential executive orders is speculation."

Behind the scenes: Sources at top AI companies tell Axios they're cooperating with the White House's new effort.

• The Trump administration recognizes the fast-growing capabilities of the models, and the labs recognize the need to partner with the government to avoid more draconian steps.
• The White House push, which includes the West Wing and the National Security Council, could result in an agreement within weeks at most, according to sources involved in the conversations.
• The leading labs want to work with the government to help get the cyber defensive tools into the hands of cyber defenders more quickly, the sources say.

The big picture: The Trump administration spent its first year systematically dismantling every meaningful AI safety effort the Biden administration had built.

• On Day 1, Trump rescinded President Biden's AI executive order, which had asked developers to perform safety evaluations and report on models with potential military applications.
• Weeks later, Vice President JD Vance told the AI Action Summit in Paris that the future would be won "by building" — not "by hand-wringing about safety."

The bottom line: The White House still sees beating China in the AI race as an existential priority, and views regulation with deep skepticism.

• But breakneck advances in the AI landscape have forced even the administration's most committed deregulators to concede there are exceptions.