Tech billionaires convinced Trump to back off an AI executive order. But much of MAGA favors AI regulation

The tech bros struck back.

That’s the best way to describe what happened yesterday when President Donald Trump suddenly decided to indefinitely postpone signing an Executive Order on AI, even as technology company executives he had invited to be present at the White House for the signing were traveling to Washington for the ceremony.

“I didn’t like certain aspects of it,” Trump explained to reporters at the White House on Thursday morning. “I think it gets in the way of—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.”

The order would have created a system in which AI companies could voluntarily submit their most advanced models to key national security agencies for testing and vetting up to 90 days prior to releasing them. Officials from multiple government departments and agencies had spent weeks negotiating over the executive order’s language, and leading AI companies had been briefed on its content. At least two of those companies, Anthropic and OpenAI, had indicated they were in favor of the voluntary vetting system.

David Sacks, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg led last-minute push

The executive order was under consideration following the debut of Anthropic’s Mythos model, which possesses unprecedented cyber capabilities. The AI company has voluntarily limited Mythos’ release out of concern that those capabilities, if widely sha...