President Donald Trump postponed the signing of an executive order (EO) on artificial intelligence (AI) safety on May 21, 2026, hours before a scheduled Oval Office ceremony, following last-minute lobbying from a small group of technology executives. <cite index="7-7,7-8">Trump canceled the signing of an executive order on AI safety scheduled for Thursday after phone calls from Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and former AI advisor David Sacks tipped the scales, according to multiple reports.</cite>
What the Order Would Have Done
The draft was narrower than earlier reporting suggested. <cite index="2-3,2-4,2-5,2-6,2-7">The order itself was not a sweeping regulatory framework. It would have established a voluntary mechanism for AI developers to engage with federal agencies and submit advanced models for security review up to 90 days before their public release. No licensing regime. No mandatory hold periods. Voluntary.</cite>
<cite index="7-16">AI companies would submit their frontier models to federal agencies up to 90 days before release so the government could test for dangerous capabilities and find weaknesses before hackers or foreign actors exploit them.</cite> <cite index="7-17">The draft explicitly ruled out mandatory government licensing or pre-approval.</cite>
The Lobbying Effort
<cite index="6-2">The Trump administration's plans for an executive order regulating artificial intelligence were put on hold this week after some of the tech industry's biggest players, including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and venture capitalist David Sacks, persuaded the White House to call it off, according to people familiar with the matter.</cite> <cite index="6-3">The push from industry was successful because Musk and others were able to appeal to the accelerationist crowd, including officials at the National Economic Council.</cite>
<cite index="3-8,3-9">According to Politico, Sacks told Trump that he feared the voluntary vetting would act as a de facto licensing regime, slowing down AI companies' releases of new AI models. He also worried that a future administration might easily turn the voluntary procedure into a mandatory one.</cite>
Sacks, despite leaving his White House post in late March, retained influence over the policy process. <cite index="7-19">Sacks had been briefed on the draft by science advisor Michael Kratsios, staff secretary Will Scharf, and National Economic Council officials.</cite>
Trump's Stated Rationale
<cite index="8-6,8-7,8-8">"I didn't like certain aspects of it. I postponed it," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. "I think it gets in the way of — you know, we're leading China, we're leading everybody, and I didn't want to do anything to get in the way of that lead."</cite>
Axios reported the procedural backdrop more bluntly. <cite index="8-2,8-3">The main reason the signing was delayed was that Trump "just hates regulation," one source familiar said, adding that Sacks also "hated it." "The whole thing was unnecessary" and "just something doomers wanted," the source added.</cite>
Context: The Mythos Trigger
The order had been drafted in response to a specific capability development. <cite index="3-2,3-3">The executive order was under consideration following the debut of Anthropic's Mythos model, which possesses unprecedented cyber capabilities. The AI company has voluntarily limited Mythos' release out of concern that those capabilities, if widely shared, could help hackers to launch devastating cyber attacks against critical infrastructure.</cite>
<cite index="3-23,3-24">The Trump administration is, for the moment, continuing to exercise a kind of ad hoc licensing process for just that one AI model, Anthropic's Mythos. Anthropic has shared the model with the U.S. government and, under what Anthropic calls Project Glasswing, with a select handful of U.S. technology companies and financial institutions who make software that underpins much of the internet and other critical infrastructure.</cite>
Divergent Industry Positions
Not all frontier labs opposed the framework. <cite index="6-5,6-6">OpenAI supported the executive order, according to a person familiar with the matter. Meanwhile, OpenAI is making a push to enact regulations at the state level — and the White House has given the company a green light to pursue that strategy.</cite>
<cite index="7-6">The order will now be reworked.</cite>