A Big AI Week in Washington as Musk Looks Set to Become a Trillionaire

Good morning!

It was a busy week in Washington. On Tuesday, in a surprising move, the Trump administration released a previously shelved executive order mandating several actions to integrate AI into national security infrastructure and establish a framework for “voluntary” federal oversight of advanced AI. The order closely resembled a draft executive order that President Donald Trumpappeared ready to sign in late May, going so far as to invite top AI executives to the Oval Office for a signing ceremony, before abruptly pulling it.

Tuesday's order was released with little fanfare, as was Friday’s release of the President’s National Security Memorandum focused on “Artificial Intelligence in the National Security Enterprise.” The memorandum lays out an agenda to “accelerate the development and use of AI for national security applications” and rapidly integrate the most advanced AI models into the country’s military and intelligence services. It also officially rescinds the Biden-era memorandum on the subject.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Reps. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) released a nearly 300-page draft AI bill that would establish a federal framework for AI governance, including a proposed moratorium on certain state laws regulating AI model development. (The proposal comes on the heels of Illinois lawmakers’ recent passage of Senate Bill 315, a landmark measure requiring AI companies to publish and annually update plans that address severe or catastrophic risks posed by their models and to undergo independent third-party safety audits.)

There were also two hearings in Congress we followed.

• The House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection hosted a hearing titled, “The AI Security Landscape: How Frontier Models, Agentic AI, and AI Coding Tools Are Reshaping Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Resilience.” Witnesses included Google’s Sandra Joyce, the Frontier Model Forum’s Chris Meserole, Corridor Security’s Jack Cable, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Dr. Matthew Guariglia.
• The House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade hosted a hearing to consider H.R. 8413, the SECURE Data Act. Witnesses included Womble Bond Dickinson partner Tyler R. Bridegan, Business Software Alliance managing director Kate Goodloe, Kentucky Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Ashli Watts, and EPIC deputy director and policy director Caitriona Fitzgerald.

We promise additional analysis of these items in the coming week, and we welcome contributor perspectives on all of these developments.

In the coming week, you will be reading a lot of headlines about the impending SpaceX IPO, which appears set to turn founder Elon Musk into a trillionaire. Ahead of that singular moment, I spoke to Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff, authors of Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed. The book considers its subject as a specimen of the current geopolitical moment, promising an “examination of Elon Musk as a symptom and avatar of our postliberal age.” Listen to our conversation here.

There is much, much more on the site this week:

A big week for EU tech sovereignty

• Last week, Brussels set out an ambitious cross-sector plan to reduce Europe's dependence on foreign technology, spanning cloud services, semiconductors and AI, while pairing new regulatory tools with investment and industrial policy to expand domestic capacity, reports Tech Policy Press senior editor Ramsha Jahangir.
• In its proposals, Brussels is walking a fine line between economic nationalism — now espoused by the world's two economic superpowers — and the bloc's traditional position of embracing free trade and market competition, writes Tech Policy Press contributing editor Mark Scott.
• Under the banner of "simplification" and "reducing administrative burdens," the EU is dismantling the rights-based digital framework it spent a decade constructing — mistaking a retreat from accountabilityfor a leap toward innovation, argues Tech Policy Press contributing editor Amber Sinha. “Mimicking the permissive, market-first paradigms of Silicon Valley or Washington will not magically conjure a European technological hegemony,” he writes.
• The Commission's Open Source Strategy is Europe's most significant step to date in utilizing open source to achieve a sovereign and resilient digital future, write Nicholas Gates, Aimilia Givropoulou, and Jaakko Karhu of OpenForum Europe, outlining opportunities for making the strategy as impactful as possible.
• While Europe still thinks in markets, the world thinks in ecosystems. To understand the challenge for European tech, we must look at the gravitational pulls shaping the global landscape, write Frederike Kaltheuner and Leevi Saari as part of a new series with AI Now Institute.

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This event is part of the Digital Governance for Democratic Renewal webinar series, hosted by Tech Policy Press, Columbia World Projects, and the Centre for Digital Governance at the Hertie School. The series brings together leading voices in technology, policy, and academia to explore how we can redesign digital infrastructures to serve democracy rather than erode it.

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US tech policy amidst democratic decline

• In detention centers, in the streets, and on social media, the Trump administration is waging an aggressive campaign against those exposing its worst abuses, writes Jenna Ruddock, advocacy director at Free Press. Tech companies have complied with the crackdown on community ICE watching efforts.
• Catch up on what happened in US tech policy in May with a roundup from Freedman Consulting’s Rachel Lau and Shirley Frame and Tech Policy Press's Ben Lennett, including the push to integrate AI into the Pentagon, new Congressional bills on AI and privacy, and legal developments on online safety.
• Cole Donovan, director of policy and advocacy at the Stand Up for Science Foundation and former Assistant Director for International Science and Technology and Assistant Director for Research Security and Infrastructure in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), argues the next US administration can't just rebuild science and technology policy on 2021's blueprint. Trump 2.0 will leave agencies in collapse, he says. Recovery hinges on mastering interagency process, not just listing fixes. People and processes drive policy.
• Trump's new AI executive order establishes a "voluntary" framework for federal oversight of frontier AI models. Tech Policy Press managing editor Ben Lennett takes a close look at what's in it and what's next for the policy discussion.
• Under the second Trump administration, the language of sovereignty has become more explicit in American tech policy, writes Konstantinos Komaitis, resident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Democracy and Tech Initiative. The shift reflects a willingness to treat digital infrastructure, AI, and data governance as instruments of geopolitical leverage and national power. “Digital infrastructure is becoming embedded within alliance structures, industrial policy, export control regimes, and national security strategies,” he writes.

AI governance

• When AI goes to war, who holds the kill switch? Nishtha Gupta, a public affairs and political risk professional, argues middle powers are building their most sensitive military functions on foreign chips, models, and cloud infrastructure they can't defend — renting their futures from landlords who answer to someone else.
• Global debates on AI tend to cast Africa as a landscape of opportunity and risk — but rarely as a site of normative authority, writes Dr. Leah Junck, head of research at the Global Center on AI Governance. That should change, she says. “If tech justice is to become more than a rhetorical commitment, it must be treated as a living and contested process—one that requires close attention to who participates (including in African Union–level processes) and whose absence has long become inconspicuous,” she writes.
• When the people selling AI keep calling it a "revolution," be suspicious. Historically, revolutions were led by people — not inflicted on them. Vassilis Galanos, lecturer in digital work at the University of Stirling’s Business School, and We and AI’s Tania Duarte and Bruna Martins on why "AI revolution" is rhetoric, not democracy.
• States are rolling out generative AI tools to thousands of public employees, but governance and transparency standards often lag behind deployment, writes Javaid Iqbal Sofi, public policy researcher at Virginia Tech. He discusses the sharply different approaches in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Colorado, and California.
• If AI systems derive value from news, the organizations that invest in reporting, fact-finding, and accountability journalism must have leverage in determining the terms of that relationship. The UK CMA's binding conduct requirement on Google is a first step toward that, writes Courtney C. Radsch, director of the Center for Journalism and Liberty.
• For another episode of the Tech Policy Press podcast, I spoke to Mozilla CTO Raffi Krikorian about his "owners not renters" thesis: that the central AI question isn't open vs. closed, but whether we own AI or lease it from a handful of companies with their own incentives. Plus: his experience with Mythos.
• AI-powered cyberattacks will hit the organizations least prepared to defend themselves — schools, nonprofits, utilities, local governments — writes Ann Cleaveland, executive director of the UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity. The answer isn't just better tools. It's scaling trusted, human-centered support before these cyber threats arrive.

Data centers and infrastructure

• The DIGS Lab at the University of Virginia reviewed more than 700 federal, state, and local policies related to data centers. Project lead Dr. Lauren E. Bridges writes that while the era of unchecked growth fueled by tax breaks is waning, the new regulatory regime is fragmented, reactive, and heavily contested. “The data reveals a nation in transition,” she writes.
• May roundup on tech litigation from Tech Justice Law's Madeline Batt. This month covers environmental law cases in Minnesota and Memphis that are challenging data center development, along with other legal developments in the US.
• Ashley Northington, principal and chief strategy officer at DENOR Strategic Advisors, and Dr. Fallon Wilson, executive director and co-founder of the #BlackTechFutures Research Institute, ask: Will historically Black colleges and universities be positioned merely as hosts for the AI infrastructure of the future, or will they help define the terms under which that future is built?

Final words

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I wish you the best for the week ahead!

-Justin