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WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump unveiled an aggressive, low-regulation strategy on Wednesday to boost big tech’s race to stay ahead of China on artificial intelligence and cement US dominance in the fast-expanding field.
Trump’s 25-page “America’s AI Action Plan” outlines three aims: accelerating innovation, building infrastructure, and leading internationally on AI.
The administration frames AI advancement as critical to maintaining economic and military supremacy. Environmental consequences are sidelined in the planning document.
“America is the country that started the AI race, and as president of the United States, I’m here today to declare that America is going to win it,” Trump told an AI event in Washington.
“Winning this competition will be a test of our capacities unlike anything since the dawn of the space age,” he said, before signing several executive orders to give components of the strategy additional legal weight.
In its collection of more than 90 government proposals, Trump’s plan calls for sweeping deregulation, with the administration promising to “remove red tape and onerous regulation” that could hinder private sector AI development.
In his wide-ranging speech, Trump insisted that “winning the AI race will demand a new spirit of patriotism and national loyalty in Silicon Valley and beyond.”
Trump complained that for too long “many of our largest tech companies have reaped the blessings of American freedom while building their factories in China, hiring workers in India and slashing profits in Ireland.”
The plan also asked federal agencies to find ways to legally stop US states from implementing their own AI regulations and threatened to rescind federal aid to states that did so.
“We have to have a single federal standard, not 50 different states, regulating this industry of the future,” Trump said.
The American Civil Liberties Union warned this would thwart “initiatives to uphold civil rights and shield communities from biased AI systems in areas like employment, education, health care, and policing.”
The Trump action plan also calls for AI systems to be “free from ideological bias” and designed to pursue objective truth rather than what the administration calls “social engineering agendas,” such as diversity and inclusion.
This criterion would apply to AI companies wanting to do business with the US government.
Trump also called for AI development to be broadly immune from copyright claims — currently the subject of legal battles — saying it was a “common sense” approach.
“You can’t be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book, or anything else that you’ve read or studied, you’re supposed to pay for,” he said.
A major focus in the plan involves building AI infrastructure, including streamlined permitting for data centers and energy facilities that would overlook environmental concerns to build as swiftly as possible.
The administration, which rejects international science showing a growing climate crisis, proposes creating new environmental review exemptions for data center construction and expanding access to federal lands for AI infrastructure development.
Trump also called for the swift construction of coal and nuclear plants to help provide the energy needed to power the data centers.
The strategy also calls for efforts to “counter Chinese influence in international governance bodies” and strengthen export controls on advanced AI computing technology.
At the same time, the strategy calls on the government to champion US technology in conquering overseas markets, a priority that was spelled out in an executive order.
These plans will help “ensure America sets the technological gold standard worldwide, and that the world continues to run on American technology,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.
Critics of the plan said the policies were a gift to US tech giants that were scaling back their goals for zero carbon emissions in order to meet the acute computing needs for AI.
“Trump’s plan reads like a twisted Gilded Age playbook that rewards the rich while punishing everyday Americans and the environment,” said Jean Su of the Center for Biological Diversity

THE HAGUE: The world’s highest court Wednesday declared that states are obliged under international law to tackle climate change and warned that failing to do so could open the door to reparations.
In a historic statement, the International Court of Justice said climate change was an “urgent and existential threat” and countries had a legal duty to prevent harm from their planet-warming pollution.
Countries breaching their climate obligations were committing a “wrongful act,” the court said in its advisory opinion, which is not legally binding but carries political and legal weight.
“The legal consequences resulting from the commission of an internationally wrongful act may include... full reparations to injured states in the form of restitution, compensation and satisfaction,” said ICJ President Yuji Iwasawa on behalf of the 15-judge panel.
This would be on a case-by-case basis where a “sufficient direct and certain causal nexus” had been shown “between the wrongful act and the injury,” the court added.
Campaigners and countries on the climate frontlines hailed a milestone moment in the fight for accountability from big polluters most responsible for global warming.
“This is a victory for our planet, for climate justice and for the power of young people to make a difference,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Ralph Regenvanu, the climate change minister for Vanuatu, the Pacific island nation that spearheaded the case at The Hague, was jubilant.
Speaking to AFP outside the court, Regenvanu said it was “a very strong opinion at the end” and better than hoped.
“We can use these arguments when we talk with our partners, some of the high-emitting states. We can say you have a legal obligation to help us,” he said.
“This helps us in our arguments. It’s going to give us a lot more leverage... in all negotiations.”

This was the biggest case in ICJ history, and seen as the most consequential in a recent string of landmark climate moves.
The United Nations had tasked the 15 judges at the ICJ, a UN court in The Hague that adjudicates disputes between nations, to answer two fundamental questions.
First: what must states do under international law to protect the environment from greenhouse gas emissions for the future?
Second: what are the consequences for states whose emissions have caused environmental harm, especially to vulnerable low-lying island states?
In a detailed summary of the opinion, Iwasawa said the climate “must be protected for present and future generations.”
The adverse effect of a warming planet “may significantly impair the enjoyment of certain human rights, including the right to life,” he added.
Legal and climate experts said the opinion, while not legally binding, could have far-reaching consequences for national courts, legislation and public debate.
“The court’s clear and detailed articulation of state obligations will be a catalyst for accelerated climate action and unprecedented accountability,” David Boyd, a former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, told AFP.
Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said the ruling bound all nations by international law to prevent harm from emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases.
The court was “pointing the direction for the entire world and making clear that every nation is legally obliged to solve the climate crisis,” he told AFP.

 ‘Perfect ending’
Courts have become a key battleground for climate action as frustration has grown over sluggish progress toward curbing planet-warming pollution from fossil fuels.
The Paris Agreement, struck through the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has rallied a global response to the crisis, but not at the speed necessary to protect the world from dangerous overheating.
The journey to The Hague began six years ago with students from the climate-imperilled Pacific region fed up with the lack of accountability for the damage afflicting their homelands.
“Young Pacific Islanders initiated this call for humanity to the world. And the world must respond,” said UN chief Guterres, praising Vanuatu’s leadership.
The fight pitted major wealthy economies against the smaller, less developed states which are most at the mercy of a warming planet.
More than 100 nations and groups made submissions, many from the Pacific who gave impassioned appeals in colorful traditional dress.
“It’s such a perfect ending to a campaign that started in a classroom,” said Vishal Prasad, director of the student-led campaign that kicked off the case.
“We have now a very, very strong tool to hold power accountable, and we must do that now. The ICJ has given everything possible,” he told AFP.
The United States, which has embraced a fossil fuel agenda under President Donald Trump, had a muted response to the ruling.
A US State Department spokesperson said it “will be reviewing the Court’s advisory opinion in the coming days and weeks.”
French Ecological Transition Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher hailed the advisory opinion as a “victory for the most vulnerable states, a victory for France and a victory for the climate.”
John Kerry, the former US special envoy for climate change, said “it should not take the stamp of international law to motivate countries to do what is already profoundly in their economic interests.”
“We shouldn’t need another reason to act and accelerate action,” he told AFP.