Tug of War – Independence and Innovation v. Interference and Infrastructure

President Trump has decided that American AI should run free as a mountain goat, unencumbered by the petty paperwork of permits and preclearance. His executive order says the government will not require such formalities for model development or distribution, which is marvellous news for anyone who ever wanted to deploy a frontier model without telling anyone. Meanwhile, a proposed bill would establish direct federal regulation of frontier AI models and create the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, or CAISI, because nothing says "we've got this" like an acronym that sounds like a Welsh cheese.

One can almost hear the two halves of the federal government playing tug-of-war with a rope that is, of course, on fire. On one end, the executive branch insists that preclearance is a dirty word, ceding all responsibility to the market. On the other, the legislative branch proposes to wrap frontier models in a warm blanket of federal oversight, complete with a shiny new centre to standardise innovation. The result is a legal landscape where AI developers can do whatever they like, provided a future law that they have no incentive to support is never passed. It's the regulatory equivalent of a schizophrenic referee awarding a foul to both teams simultaneously.

The truly British thing to do is raise a glass to the "tug of war" framing and observe that, in this game, the only losers are the ones who wanted a coherent policy. The executive order's laissez-faire approach means no preclearance, no permits, and no meaningful oversight of anything until it goes wrong. The bill, even if passed, would only create a body whose acronym sounds less like a regulator and more like a bistro in Lyon. The chances of a robust, harmonised federal AI regime emerging from this mess are roughly equal to the odds of a firework display being cancelled because a local council asked for a risk assessment. So carry on, pioneers — the government has conclusively decided to neither help nor hinder, and that's compromise you can set your watch to.