On June 2, 2026, Pre­si­dent Trump signed the Exe­cu­ti­ve Order 14409 („Pro­mo­ting Advan­ced Arti­fi­ci­al Intel­li­gence Inno­va­ti­on and Secu­ri­ty„”) was issued. EO 14409 fol­lows on from the repeal of the ear­lier EO 14110 from Pre­si­dent Biden.

You can tell right from the intro­duc­tion what kind of thing the EO is:

The United Sta­tes con­ti­nues to lead the world in arti­fi­ci­al intel­li­gence (AI) becau­se of the tre­men­dous talent and inno­va­ti­on in our AI indu­stry, and becau­se we refu­se to stif­le this inno­va­ti­on with over­ly bur­den­so­me regu­la­ti­on. My Admi­ni­stra­ti­on has spur­red tre­men­dous tech­no­lo­gi­cal growth and eco­no­mic investment […]

The fact that the govern­ment does not want to slow down the deve­lo­p­ment of AI systems is, of cour­se, not mere­ly a mat­ter of eco­no­mic pro­mo­ti­on, but is also in the government’s own inte­rest — the EO is pri­ma­ri­ly inten­ded to ensu­re pri­vi­le­ged access to the most powerful models, at least in the inte­rest of natio­nal secu­ri­ty as well.

To this end, the EO calls for mea­su­res in the area of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, at high alti­tu­des, but abo­ve all for clo­ser inte­gra­ti­on of the deve­lo­p­ment of par­ti­cu­lar­ly high-per­for­mance models with govern­ment invol­vement. The means to achie­ve this is vol­un­t­a­ry coope­ra­ti­on, alt­hough “vol­un­t­a­ry” should pro­ba­b­ly be view­ed on a spectrum:

  • Vol­un­t­a­ry Frame­work: Govern­ment offi­ci­als and deve­lo­pers are to work tog­e­ther to deve­lop a vol­un­t­a­ry frame­work for clas­si­fy­ing AI models.
  • Cover­ed Fron­tier Model“: A bench­mar­king pro­cess within this frame­work is inten­ded to eva­lua­te the capa­bi­li­ties of AI models in the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty domain and estab­lish a thres­hold abo­ve which a model is con­side­red a „Cover­ed Fron­tier Model.“ Howe­ver, the cri­te­ria are „clas­si­fi­ed,“ mea­ning they are not publicly available.
  • Ear­ly access: Deve­lo­pers can grant the admi­ni­stra­ti­on pri­vi­le­ged access to Cover­ed Fron­tier Models up to 30 days befo­re the model is shared with other „tru­sted partners.“.
  • Tru­sted Part­ners: The admi­ni­stra­ti­on and deve­lo­pers will joint­ly deter­mi­ne the „tru­sted part­ners“ who are to be gran­ted ear­ly access to the models.

The EO lea­ves open the que­sti­on of what incen­ti­ves will be offe­red for such cooperation.