In one of his first acts after taking office last week, President Donald Trump rescinded Executive Order (14110), which called for greater controls on artificial intelligence. The Executive Order specified federal policies governing the procurement and use of AI and called for the development of a watermarking system for AI-generation content.
The new administration claims the order established “unnecessarily burdensome requirements for companies developing and deploying AI that would stifle private sector innovation and threaten American technological leadership.” The new executive order now calls for all U.S. government departments and agencies to revise or rescind the politics, directives, regulations, orders, and other actions that had been taken during the previous administration.
It also called for the U.S. to continue as the leader in AI development.
Reactions From the Cybersecurity World
The news that the executive order on AI was being rescinded still surprised many cybersecurity professionals.
“The looming question in my mind is that they could be addressing redundancies the politicians perceived in the government or overlaps in mission with other entities,” Lawrence Pingree, vice president of cybersecurity provider Dispersive, told ClearanceJobs, adding, “At least the way the news broke, it for sure shocked some cybersecurity professionals.”
The concerns now are the negative repercussions that the government sector could face.
“This will delay or eliminate any proactive role for the U.S. government in guiding AI technology,” warned Willy Lecichter, CMO of security provider AppSoc.
“While you can argue that the private sector should drive this, the government has a legitimate role in issues around privacy and security,” Leichter told ClearanceJobs. “Gutting expertise and funding from federal agencies will inevitably put critical infrastructure, cyber security, and individual privacy at risk.”
White House Still Committed to AI
Even as President Trump rescinded the order, his meeting with the CEOs of the companies heading up the StarGate program to promote AI development reaffirmed the new administration’s commitment to the technology.
“Dismissing the executive committees is ordinary during a change of presidential administration and overreacting to the CSRB (Cyber Safety Review Board) simply because it focused on China is unproductive. China isn’t going to change its behavior because of CSRB’s operating status,” suggested Evan Dornbush, entrepreneur and former NSA cybersecurity expert.
He told ClearanceJobs that critical infrastructure providers are still responsible for owning and operating their environments.
“Information sharing to aid with monitoring, detection, and remediation is still happening,” Dornbush added. “It’s too early to know if CSRB will be reconstituted, with different players, or swept away in overall shifts in resource allocation prioritization. But remember, CSRB was not involved directly in remediation or international diplomacy. Its function is/was to analyze the attacks and assess the effectiveness of the victims’ response actions. That data still exists and can continue to be studied, if so desired.
It should also be noted that much of the work to study AI’s impact on cybersecurity risks, as well as on education, workplaces, and public benefits has been completed. There are still issues that will need to be resolved.
“What is this administration and/or the private sector going to do to make it more expensive for threat actors, to provide a disincentive for such operations to continue,” Dornbush pondered.
That is an important question to ask as the White House acknowledged it was caught off guard by the release of China’s AI app DeepSeek, which performed well in tests against AI models from Meta and OpenAI, while it was reported to be developed at a much lower cost.
