President Trump’s new executive order on artificial intelligence reflects an old American instinct: don’t stifle the next great technology before it has a chance to grow. We’ve been here before. In the 1990s, Washington – under President Bill Clinton – largely resisted heavy state or local regulation of the early Internet. That decision helped America dominate the digital age while the rest of the world caught up.
Trump is clearly drawing on that playbook.
His order counters a growing maze of state-level AI regulations that threaten to slow innovation just as the global AI race is heating up. That’s important because this is not a friendly competition. Communist China is racing full speed to dominate artificial intelligence, pouring state money into AI systems directly linked to surveillance, censorship and military power. Beijing doesn’t have fifty states arguing over rules. It has one plan – and it executes it.
TRUMP SAYS HE WILL SIGN A ‘ONE LINE’ EXECUTIVE ORDER TO FEDERALIZE AI REGULATION
On that front, Trump is right: America cannot afford to regulate itself into second place.
But speed alone will not save us.
As I warn in my 2025 book “AI for the future of humanityArtificial intelligence isn’t just redoing the internet. AI not only connects people, it evaluates them. It decides who gets a loan, who gets hired, who gets flagged, who gets silenced and, increasingly, who gets targeted on the battlefield. It scales power faster than any technology in history, and when it goes wrong, it goes wrong at machine speed.
TRUMP SAYS EVERY AI INSTALLATION BUILT IN THE US WILL BE SELF-POWERED WITH THEIR OWN ELECTRICITY
We already know how this story could end. The Internet grew rapidly – ​​and only later did Americans realize the costs: lost privacy, online manipulation, monopolies, digital surveillance and non-stop disinformation. Washington waited too long to act, and now we are stuck trying to put guardrails on systems that are already embedded in everyday life.
AI compresses that danger into years, not decades.
Trump’s executive order aptly points out the danger of a patchwork of state-by-state regulations. But there’s a downside that Americans should be just as concerned about. An executive order can block the states, but it does not automatically protect the people. If state authority is chilled and Congress fails to act, we will not get ‘smart regulation’. We’re going to have a regulatory vacuum.
MIKE DAVIS: CONGRESS MUST STOP BIG TECH’S AI AMNESTY SCAM BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE
And in that vacuum, ordinary Americans lose.
Children are exposed to predatory AI systems. Workers are displaced without warning or retraining. Deepfakes flood elections and financial scams explode. Algorithms are quietly making life-changing decisions, and no one can explain – or dispute – how they are made.
China understands exactly what it is doing. AI has already merged there with state surveillance, social credit scoring and military planning. US intelligence officials have warned that the AI ​​race is existential. If America loses, we will not only lose technology jobs, we will also lose strategic freedom.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS ADVICE
But winning doesn’t mean copying the Chinese model or unleashing AI without rules.
The real challenge lies in proving that a free society can lead in AI without surrendering human judgment, freedom and dignity to machines. That requires national leadership – not fifty state regulations, but also not blind faith in technology.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Trump is right to demand speed and unity. Now Washington must deliver substance: clear federal guardrails that protect innovation while defending citizens.
If we repeat the mistakes of the Internet age – act quickly and think later – we could win the race and still lose the country we are trying to defend.
CLICK HERE TO ROBERT MAGINNIS
