White House’s ‘lack Of Organization’ Has Ai Lobbyists Fretting

The Trump administration’s shifting stance on regulating artificial intelligence is fueling fresh uncertainty for the tech industry.

Seven lobbyists and policy advisers told POLITICO they’ve struggled to get specifics on a possible executive order that could impose tough vetting rules on new AI models, a major question that has gotten mixed messages from the White House in recent days.

“There is no clarity,” said one senior tech lobbyist, who like others in this piece was granted anonymity to describe sensitive and fast-changing discussions. The person contended that “different factions within the White House have different views about what should happen.”

The lobbyist said the administration’s “lack of organization is both increasing anxiety across the AI policy ecosystem and also impeding the development of effective policy, because they're not really getting the right folks in the room to have these conversations. I think that has left people scrambling to try to figure out exactly what the White House is doing.”

A White House official said discussion about potential executive orders is “speculation,” and that any policy announcement will come directly from the president.

The administration’s recent messages to industry have complicated expectations that President Donald Trump would take a hands-off approach to overseeing AI.

That assumption took a hit this spring with the emergence of Mythos, a new AI model developed by Anthropic with the potential to supercharge cybersecurity risks. Top Trump officials, including chief of staff Susie Wiles and National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross, moved quickly to address the potential threat — and soon began discussing a slate of possible actions, including an executive order that would require companies to get a green light from the government before releasing new AI models.

Senior administration officials moved Thursday to reassure industry leaders that no final decision had been made on requiring government review before AI companies could deploy new models. That word came one day after Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, had said the administration was considering measures akin to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval process for prescription drugs.

After nearly a day of Hassett’s words stirring up anxiety within the tech sector, Wiles tweeted that the administration was pushing a strategy that “empowers America’s great innovators, not bureaucracy.”

A second lobbyist said Wiles’ tweet “did provide a degree of comfort.” But the person also said that it “remains unclear right now, from where I sit, what the White House is hoping to accomplish.”

The tech lobby, for its part, has been broadly consistent in what it’s telling the Trump administration.

Three lobbyists told POLITICO they are fine with the government examining new AI models. But they said any vetting regime should be voluntary and run by the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, an office of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Most of the major U.S. AI labs — including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, xAI and Microsoft — have already agreed to such scrutiny of their models, with several announcing new partnerships earlier this week.

“We have always called for [CAISI] as the first step, and for there to be more formal regulations only if that doesn't get us as far as we need to go,” said the second lobbyist.

The lack of a clear message from the administration has led to confusion and uncertainty in the industry, said Daniel Castro, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank funded by companies including Anthropic, Microsoft and Meta.

“Ideally,” Castro said Friday, the administration would “allow people to take the time to understand what proposals are out there and provide feedback on it before starting to float some of these ideas.”

One AI policy adviser said people in the industry are concerned that the administration’s potential approach to AI “has now changed in very short order.”

“I have clients saying they went through the whole Pentagon AI procurement process, but even with that there still wasn’t much real, concrete guidance,” the adviser said. “There’s a lot of hurry up … slow down.”

Another lobbyist said the White House needed to figure out “real questions” over its approach to reining in AI models, including whether a proposed executive order would be legally sound, exactly what it would apply to, and if it would create a mandatory or voluntary framework.

Meanwhile, Democrats expressed new concern that the administration still hasn’t taken steps to help state and local governments protect themselves from cyberattacks enabled by advanced AI tools such as Mythos.

“As the Trump administration scrambles to coordinate the federal government’s response to this new era of frontier AI-enabled hacking, I am concerned by the lack of an effective plan to coordinate with state, local, tribal, and territorial governments,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin that was made public Friday.

A policy adviser familiar with the industry’s engagement with the administration told POLITICO that companies have become exasperated that they keep hearing different things about the timing of the potential executive order and how close it is to being finished.

That adviser also said that companies have reached out to Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Cairncross to voice their opinions on the prospect of a pre-approval process and other matters related to the executive order.

Lobbyists and AI advisers said there seems to be genuine disagreement over an AI vetting regime and whether it should require companies to get pre-clearance approval from the White House. The first lobbyist said the competing camps may not reconcile until Trump makes a “final determination.”

“I think the different factions are waiting for him,” the lobbyist said.

Even if the White House ultimately decides to reject mandatory vetting of AI models, lobbyists increasingly believe such a regime could emerge at some point in the future — particularly when more advanced models emerge or if Democrats, who are generally more supportive of AI rules, take control of the government. To prepare for that possibility, some companies are weighing whether to participate in voluntary testing, according to the AI policy adviser.

“You cannot avoid technological and political change,” the first lobbyist said. “So I suspect even if this effort ends in voluntary CAISI review, the conversation is not going to be done.”

Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.