Written by: Haim Ravia, Dotan Hammer
President Trump signed Executive Order 14409, “Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security,” directing coordinated action across federal departments and agencies to modernize and harden government and private-sector information systems against external threats while continuing to promote AI innovation. The order states that it does not create any mandatory governmental licensing, preclearance, or permitting requirement for the development, publication, release, or distribution of new AI models, including frontier models.
Upgrading American systems. Within 30 days, the Committee on National Security Systems is to prioritize the cyber defense of National Security Systems and the Secretary of War is to harden Department of War information systems. The Department of Homeland Security, through CISA, is to issue Binding Operational Directives to expedite the cyber defense of civilian federal systems, expand AI-enabled defensive tools, and facilitate access to cybersecurity tools—including, where appropriate, covered frontier models—for agencies, state and local authorities, and operators of critical infrastructure such as rural hospitals, community banks, and local utilities. The Treasury is to form an AI cybersecurity clearinghouse to coordinate vulnerability scanning, validation, and the distribution of patches, and OMB is to identify federal grant funding for AI vulnerability detection.
Secure frontier model deployment. Within 60 days, the Treasury, the NSA, and CISA, in consultation with others, are to develop a classified benchmarking process to assess the cyber capabilities of AI models and set the threshold for designating a “covered frontier model,” and to design a voluntary framework under which developers could seek a federal designation, provide the government with access to covered frontier models for up to 30 days before release (subject to confidentiality, cybersecurity, insider-risk, and intellectual-property protections), and collaborate in selecting trusted partners for early access.
Protection against criminal actors. The Attorney General is directed to prioritize enforcement of federal computer-fraud, identity-fraud, and wire-fraud statutes against anyone who uses AI to illegally access or damage a computer without authorisation, or who uses AI in the course of such access to further another crime, including the use of AI agents to unlawfully access data later used for a criminal purpose.
Click here to read the Executive Order.
