America''s New AI Strategy Summarized as Deregulation, Technology Export, and Ideological Neutrality
On July 23, 2025, the White House officially released "America's AI Action Plan: Winning the AI Race" — a 28-page policy roadmap with approximately 90 detailed policy recommendations centered on three axes: accelerating innovation, strengthening digital infrastructure, and securing international AI diplomacy leadership. The plan is less a technology promotion policy than a political declaration of which values will underpin international cooperation and norm-setting in the global AI order competition. Three core elements: (1) Deregulation — federal AI pre-licensing minimized; state governments adopting overly strict AI regulations risk reduced federal technology infrastructure investment; public sector prioritizes adopting private-sector AI technologies as-is without special standards; contrasts sharply with EU's AI Act risk-based pre-classification approach; (2) AI diplomacy — US to actively participate in international standardization bodies while asserting market-based principles; bilateral "AI governance dialogue" mechanisms to be established with allied nations; export controls positioned as strategic tools to prevent adversary AI capabilities; (3) Ideological neutrality — federal AI systems must be "ideologically neutral" without embedding specific political viewpoints; prohibition on government-funded AI promoting specific social or political agendas. Broader context: as US and China pursue divergent AI governance models (market-led vs. state-guided), the 90+ policy recommendations effectively set the terms of engagement for the emerging global AI governance order — influencing which standards become dominant internationally as US-aligned countries adopt similar frameworks.
