President Donald Trump delayed signing an executive order in May 2026 that would have required government security reviews of AI models before their public release, citing dissatisfaction with the order’s language.
“I didn’t like certain aspects of it,” Trump told the White House press pool. “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 leading.” He added that the order’s language “could have been a blocker.”
According to several reports, an unofficial reason for the delay was that not enough tech CEOs were able to travel to Washington, D.C. on short notice for the signing.
The proposed executive order would have tasked the Office of the National Cyber Director and other agencies with building a process to evaluate AI models for security risks prior to launch. A key point of contention, per CNN, was a requirement that AI companies share advanced models with the government between 14 and 90 days before their release.
The order was drafted partly in response to concerns surrounding Anthropic’s Mythos and OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 Cyber — two AI models reported to be capable of quickly identifying and exploiting security vulnerabilities.
The delay leaves the pre-release government review process in limbo. Without a formal framework in place, AI models with potential cybersecurity implications may continue to reach the public without mandatory federal evaluation — a concern that prompted the order’s drafting in the first place.
Source: TechCrunch