US federal government launches action plan to ‘win AI race’
The US federal government has published its artificial intelligence action plan, building on an executive order signed by president Donald Trump in January to drive AI innovation across the country.
Entitled ‘Winning the AI Race’, the action plan sets out more than 90 federal policy actions across three pillars: accelerating innovation, building American AI infrastructure, and leading international AI diplomacy and security.
The White House said the plan would usher in what it called “a new golden age of human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security for the American people”.
“Just like we won the space race, it is imperative that the United States and its allies win this race,” it said.
Michael Kratsios, director of the US Office of Science and Technology Policy, said the goal was to “cement US dominance in artificial intelligence” and “turbocharge [agencies’] innovation capacity” to build “cutting-edge infrastructure, and lead globally”.
Read more: AI strategies across the Five Eyes nations
Among the recommended policy actions outlined in the plan is the principle of exporting American-made AI. To drive this, the country’s commerce and state departments will be expected to partner with industry “to deliver secure… hardware, models, software, applications, and standards” to American allies.
To enable AI innovation and adoption, the plan emphasised the need to remove federal regulations that “hinder AI development and deployment”, and stressed that the government should “only contract with frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias”.
Marco Rubio, secretary of state and acting national security advisor said the “clear-cut” policy goals “set expectations for the federal government to ensure America sets the technological gold standard worldwide, and that the world continues to run on American technology”.
Trump’s executive order, signed at the start of the year and entitled ‘Removing barriers to American leadership in artificial intelligence’, revoked “certain existing AI policies and directives” that it claimed acted as barriers to innovation. The order stated that removing these policies and directives would clear the way for the country to “act decisively to retain global leadership in artificial intelligence”.
Read more: President Trump signs fresh AI directive after revoking Biden order
Going for growth
In April, US federal agencies received two memos from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) setting out guidelines for how to use and procure AI in government.
The first established guardrails against inappropriate use of AI, while the second replaced former president Joe Biden’s guidance on AI procurement, though retained his administration’s defence of a competitive AI marketplace.
Agencies were urged to observe three priorities – innovation, governance and public trust – when ramping up their use of the technology.
These three priorities align with an executive order signed towards the end of Trump’s first term in 2020, which stated that US policy on AI was to “improve government operations and services in a manner that fosters public trust… build[s] confidence in AI [and] protects our nation’s values”.
At the AI Action Summit in Paris in February this year, both the US and UK governments refused to sign a non-binding international declaration on open, inclusive and sustainable approaches to AI. The contents of the declaration included the promotion of AI accessibility, transparency, safety and sustainability of AI systems, as well as positive outcomes for the labour market and international coordination on AI governance.
At the summit, US vice president JD Vance said that excessive regulation of AI could “kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off” and urged countries to push for “pro-growth AI policies”.
In a statement in the latest action plan, Trump said that AI had the potential to “reshape the global balance of power, spark entirely new industries, and revolutionise the way we live and work”.
“As our global competitors race to exploit these technologies, it is a national security imperative for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance,” he said.
Government Service Delivery – the new name for GovernmentDX – will bring together global digital government leaders to explore how governments can use tech-driven innovation to deliver high-quality public services. The event will be held at Walter E Washington Convention Center, Washington DC on October 29 – 30, 2025. Find out more and register your interest here
About Jack Aldane
Jack is a British journalist, cartoonist and podcaster. He graduated from Heythrop College London in 2009 with a BA in philosophy, before living and working in China for three years as a freelance reporter. After training in financial journalism at City University from 2013 to 2014, Jack worked at Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters before moving into editing magazines on global trade and development finance. Shortly after editing opinion writing for UnHerd, he joined the independent think tank ResPublica, where he led a media campaign to change the health and safety requirements around asbestos in UK public buildings. As host and producer of The Booking Club podcast – a conversation series featuring prominent authors and commentators at their favourite restaurants – Jack continues to engage today’s most distinguished thinkers on the biggest problems pertaining to ideology and power in the 21st century. He joined Global Government Forum as its Senior Staff Writer and Community Co-ordinator in 2021.
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