The White House’s plan to vet potentially dangerous AI is cloaked in secrecy

Well, well. The Trump administration has spent months whispering with tech industry leaders and has finalized its framework this week for testing new AI models for safety and cybersecurity risks. And the punchline? The White House does not plan to release the policy publicly, and will share testing criteria only with a select few tech companies. So the rules of the safety exam are known only to the examinees in the front row. This follows the framework's earlier trick of excluding open-weight models from federal security review, so at least the secrecy is consistent.

Naturally, the official line is all about safety and cybersecurity. But 'select few tech companies' means the criteria become a trade secret, a VIP pass and a competitive weapon in one. Smaller AI labs won't know what the government considers dangerous until their model is already out in the wild; the lucky few get advance notice of the questions — coaching, not testing. Months of talks, a finalized framework, and the most transparent thing about it is the headline saying it's cloaked in secrecy.

One does wonder what 'safety' means when the safeguards themselves are classified. Catching dangerous AI before it escapes is admirable, in a fire-door-after-the-horse-has-bolted sort of way, but keeping the fire drill a secret from everyone except the horse isn't robust. There is an internal logic, though: public criteria might reveal that they don't apply to the open-weight models everyone can download, or that they give incumbents a head start. Better to hide behind a velvet rope and hope nobody asks for the fire safety certificate. At least the Guardian is shining a torch on the dark corner where the policy is hiding; one suspects it will need a bigger one.