25 يوليو 2025 Joshua Ashley Klayman  -  Jeffrey Cohen  -  Ieuan Jolly  -  Shruti Chopra  -  Caitlin Potratz Metcalf  - Toby Irenshtain Artificial intelligence - Fintech - Technology

White House’s AI Action Plan: Winning the Race in a Patchwork Regulatory Era

On July 23, 2025, the White House published Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan (the AI Action Plan), a comprehensive effort aimed to solidify United States leadership in artificial intelligence. The AI Action Plan acknowledges the U.S.’ uniquely complex—and, at times, conflicting—regulatory landscape, including the patchwork of state-level laws that impact innovation, compliance, and policy predictability. The AI Action Plan calls for national leadership and seeks a unified, pro-innovation regulatory approach, with an understanding that states will continue to develop their own laws. Businesses should prepare for both the opportunities and the compliance challenges that will arise as the AI Action Plan is implemented.

The Federal Vision: Ambition and Structure

The AI Action Plan describes three strategic pillars, as well as corresponding U.S. federal commitments:

Accelerating Innovation

The AI Action Plan seeks to dramatically increase U.S. AI research, development and adoption via targeted investments and coordinated public-private initiatives. Key provisions include:

  • Establishing new federal funding programs for foundational AI research and tax incentives.
  • Promoting sandbox environments and industry-led pilot projects for safe, real-world experimentation.
  • Streamlining regulatory processes that impede AI deployment, including actively soliciting private sector input on burdensome rules to remove “red tape.”
  • Updating procurement policies to foster rapid adoption of cutting-edge, trustworthy AI in federal operations.
  • Promoting open source and open weight models for public use to facilitate global standards in AI.
  • Upskilling the workforce to accelerate the adoption of AI in key sectors, including manufacturing, healthcare and scientific research.

Building American AI Infrastructure

The AI Action Plan makes clear that physical and digital infrastructure are critical for AI success. By streamlining environmental and regulatory processes, the AI Action Plan aims to expedite AI and energy infrastructure, while promoting cost-saving measures. Major actions include:

  • Fast-tracking modernization and permitting for data centers and semiconductor fabrication plants.
  • Launching new national workforce initiatives targeting high-demand skills (such as electricians and HVAC technicians) essential to AI deployment, as well as prioritizing “AI and STEM-for-all” education initiatives from K–12 to postgraduate programs.
  • Enhancing secure access to high-quality data, providing open and interoperable datasets, and investing in robust, trusted cloud and compute infrastructure.
  • Opening Federal lands for AI infrastructure, power generation, and grid expansion.
  • Forming the AI Information Sharing and Analysis Center under the Department of Homeland Security to sharing AI-related intelligence across U.S. critical infrastructure sectors.

The White House issued related Executive Orders (“E.O.”) on the same day to promote these initiatives, including “Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure” and “Promoting the Export of the American AI Technology Stack” (“AI Exports E.O.”). Notably, the AI Exports E.O. requires the implementation of an American AI Exports Program within 90 days by October 21, 2025.

Leading in International Diplomacy and Security

Recognizing the inevitability of global competition and risks, this pillar focuses on:

  • Establishing and championing international norms and standards for safe AI that respects rights.
  • Supporting the export to U.S. allies of the full AI technology stack, which includes hardware, models, software, applications, and standards as well as U.S. designed semiconductor chips.
  • Strengthening partnerships with “like-minded” countries for secure AI exports, shared R&D and informational exchanges.
  • Building cooperative frameworks with a goal of fighting hostile AI use, mitigating technology leaks and securing critical supply chains.
  • Formalizing commitments to protect free expression and nonpartisan performance in high-impact AI models, specifically in tools that the U.S. federal government procures.
  • Promoting a rules-based international order that aims to prioritize transparency, safety, and freedom in AI’s development and deployment.
  • Ensuring the US leads in semiconductor innovation and research, while strengthening export controls and enforcement to prevent adversaries from exploiting these technologies in ways that threaten national security.

Collectively, the AI Action Plan details over 90 policy commitments, each tied to clear agency responsibilities and near-term milestones. The White House’s strategy reportedly was based on feedback from over 10,000 public comments, including a variety of industry, advocacy, academic and governmental perspectives.

State-Level Realities: Evolving Complexity in the Patchwork

Despite its ambitious federal vision, the AI Action Plan does not preempt state authority. Congress recently rejected a 10-year moratorium on new state AI regulations, and states continue to legislate concerning AI-related topics. For example, states, such as Colorado, Illinois, Texas and Utah, as well as New York City, have developed their own AI governance regimes targeting specific risks and opportunities. Certain states have focused on biometric data and privacy, AI employment audits, algorithmic accountability, and more. 

Implications for States with Onerous AI Laws

For states with AI laws viewed as especially burdensome (e.g., requiring comprehensive disclosures and impact assessments or far-reaching operational restrictions), the AI Action Plan has powerful implications:

  • Intensified Scrutiny and Pressure to Harmonize: The streamlined federal roadmap and forthcoming standards highlight the risks of regulatory fragmentation. States that diverge too far may face pressure—from industry, consumers and policymakers—to recalibrate and align with federal guidance, including to remain competitive.
  • Potential for Economic Disadvantage: Tech capital and talent may migrate away from states perceived as inhospitable to responsible innovation, in favor of jurisdictions offering both strong protections and efficient compliance.
  • Dual (or More!) Compliance Burdens: National or multi-state enterprises must navigate emerging federal frameworks while still adhering to stringent local mandates, heightening legal risk and compliance complexity.
  • Opportunities for Incentives Over Preemption: The Trump Administration’s preferred approach (like the Biden Administration before it) appears to prioritize using incentives—such as federal grant eligibility or procurement preferences, as opposed to direct preemption – to encourage states toward harmonization and national alignment.

Moreover, states seen as implementing “burdensome” AI regulations may see their federal funding impacted to the extent that state regulations could interfere with the Federal Communications Commission’s authority.

Practical Next Steps for Businesses

Businesses facing uncertainty in this changing regulatory landscape should enhance their AI governance and compliance while considering new opportunities and potential compliance hurdles:

  1. Analyze your business’ approach to AI governance to align with the AI Action Plan’s best practices (e.g., privacy, trust and safety, objectivity, cybersecurity, bias and discrimination), and if applicable, focus on areas, including processing of sensitive data, advanced computing and/or semiconductors. For federal government contractors, AI systems/tools must be objective and free from bias in connection with a third E.O. released on July 23, 2025 entitled “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government.”
  2. Review and update existing services agreements and SOWs, particularly for businesses contracting with the Federal Government to ensure subcontractors, partners, and vendors are aligned on compliance with the AI Action Plan.
  3. Monitor developments with security and export controls under the forthcoming American AI Exports Program that are expected to impact AI hardware, models, software and related sensitive technologies.
  4. Ensure compliance with existing and forthcoming AI technology and semiconductor export regulations by implementing appropriate intellectual property (IP) licensing, export controls, and technology safeguards, and by entering into clearly defined licensing agreements while protecting underlying IP value.
  5. Consider engaging with new Federal AI Initiatives, from regulatory sandboxes and Centers of Excellence, to exploring participation in potential federal funding programs for AI research, infrastructure, and workforce development.
Toward a New Equilibrium: Innovation, Compliance and Competition

For U.S. AI regulation, this is a moment of both challenge and opportunity. The evolving U.S. AI regulatory landscape—shaped by over 700 state-level AI bills in the past year—demands that legal professionals and business executives monitor developments continuously and engage strategically at every level. The policy debate ahead is likely to focus on the line between necessary public protections and excessive regulatory drag.

If the goals of the AI Action Plan are realized, the United States could set a flexible, harmonized regulatory standard—one that fosters robust innovation and meaningful safeguards, that could benefit stakeholders in the U.S. and, potentially, serve as a model for global AI governance.

For more information on Tech and AI, check out our Tech Legal Outlook 2025 – Mid-Year Update. 

You may also be interested in our prior updates related to AI: