Warren, Blumenthal Push White House on AI Industry Influence on Trump Policies

“[T]he Trump Administration is accommodating the interests of Big Tech CEOs rather than addressing the safety and security risks posed by increasingly sophisticated AI systems.” “At a moment that calls for independent, transparent, and enforceable safeguards, the American people have been left with an entirely voluntary, industry-designed oversight process.” Text of Letter (PDF) Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) pushed the Trump administration on the involvement and influence of the artificial intelligence (AI) industry in watering down the administration’s AI regulatory framework. “The Administration must stop putting industry profits over the interests of the American people,” wrote the senators. The letter was addressed to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Scott Bessent; the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Howard Lutnick; President Trump’s Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles; the National Cyber Director, Sean Cairncross; the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Michael Kratsios; and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought. “We are concerned that the Trump Administration is accommodating the interests of Big Tech CEOs rather than addressing the safety and security risks posed by increasingly sophisticated AI systems,” wrote the senators. Despite growing concern that the AI industry is developing and deploying AI systems capable of enabling sophisticated cyberattacks against our financial institutions and critical infrastructure, the Trump administration has repeatedly succumbed to pressure from industry and declined to put real safeguards in place. Notably, after the Office of the National Cyber Director prepared a draft framework that would have required frontier AI systems to undergo mandatory safety screening prior to release,  executives from Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI reportedly “responded negatively” to the proposal. In the wake of this industry opposition, the Trump Administration reportedly changed the mandatory framework to a voluntary one that applied to a more limited set of advanced models. Similarly, the administration reportedly shortened the duration of its voluntary evaluation process after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and xAI CEO Elon Musk shared concerns with President Trump. On top of all of this, the details of this voluntary process remain hidden from the public. “At a moment that calls for independent, transparent, and enforceable safeguards, the American people have been left with an entirely voluntary, industry-designed oversight process, in which the implementation guidelines, safety tests, and decision criteria are hidden from the public,” continued the senators . Just last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly played a “central role in shaping” the White House Accord on Super Intelligence, a one-page, voluntary commitment to increased safety controls signed by executives at the leading frontier AI companies that President Trump described as “morally binding.” In response to this chain of events, Senators Warren and Blumenthal are pushing the White House for information on any communications between these companies and the Trump administration regarding the White House’s AI policy, as well as pushing for additional transparency around the details of the administration’s voluntary model evaluation process. “Given the risks that increasingly capable frontier models pose to our national security and Americans’ public safety, the American people deserve strong guardrails set by their democratically elected officials, not a toothless framework shaped in secret by a handful of executives at self-interested trillion-dollar companies.” ###