Why Trump’s executive order is a giveaway to tech billionaires, not a win for innovation
You’ve probably noticed that I’ve been pretty bullish on AI. I use it for research, as an editor, and for all of the incredible images that people heap praise on me for (just kidding!). But I do think the technology is genuinely useful, and I’m not someone who reflexively panics about things.
However, with that being said, what Trump announced yesterday is a genuinely bad deal for everyone except the companies that wrote it.
The president confirmed he’ll sign an executive order this week to create “ONE RULE” for artificial intelligence that would block states from regulating the technology. “You can’t expect a company to get 50 Approvals every time they want to do something,” he posted on Truth Social. The draft order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to create an “AI Litigation Task Force” whose job is to sue states over their AI laws. States that don’t fall in line would lose federal broadband funding.
Here’s what makes this particularly galling. This isn’t some Trump idea. It’s a copy-paste from tech industry lobbyists, most aggressively from Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI, who’ve been pushing this exact framework for months. They submitted it to the White House AI Action Plan. They funded a $100 million super PAC called Leading the Future to back candidates who oppose AI regulation. They got exactly what they asked for, word for word, dressed up as executive policy.
The whole premise is a scam. Tech companies claim they need federal preemption because a “patchwork” of 50 state laws would cripple innovation and let China win the AI race. What they actually want is to replace those 50 sets of laws with zero regulation, because the federal government has passed nothing. There is no federal AI framework. There are no consumer protections at the national level. The executive order would eliminate state safeguards and replace them with a promise that Congress might do something eventually.
Meanwhile, those state laws actually protect people.
Colorado passed the first comprehensive AI anti-discrimination law, requiring companies to protect consumers from algorithmic bias in hiring, housing, and healthcare.
California is cracking down on AI companion chatbots that encourage self-harm in children. Texas banned AI systems designed to produce deepfake child pornography. Tennessee protects musicians from having their voices cloned without consent.
Thirty-eight states have criminalized AI-generated child sexual abuse material.
These are the “burdensome” regulations the tech industry wants eliminated. Laws against deepfake child porn. Laws preventing AI from discriminating against job applicants. Laws that say chatbots can’t groom teenagers.
The legal argument is also garbage. A president cannot preempt state laws through executive order. Full stop. That’s Congress’s job. The Supreme Court has been explicit about this, most recently in Murphy v. NCAA, holding that the federal government cannot prohibit states from legislating in a particular area. An executive order can direct federal agencies to take certain actions, but it cannot override state statutes. The order will face immediate legal challenges and will almost certainly lose.
Congress already rejected this approach. In July, the Senate voted 99 to 1 to strip a 10-year AI moratorium from Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” That’s not a typo. Ninety-nine senators, including Republicans like Marsha Blackburn and Maria Cantwell working together, said no. Ted Cruz, who championed the moratorium, couldn’t even get his own colleagues to support it. The only senator who voted to keep it may have done so by mistake, voting after 4 a.m. during an all-night session.
Dur….
Ron DeSantis, not exactly a progressive warrior, called the effort “federal government overreach” and proposed his own Florida AI Bill of Rights. “Stripping states of jurisdiction to regulate AI is a subsidy to Big Tech,” he said. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of all people, posted that “Federalism must be preserved.” These aren’t Democrats carrying water for regulation. These are Republicans who recognize that eliminating state authority to protect citizens from corporate harm is a bad idea regardless of who benefits.
The AI bubble I’ve been warning about may also be about to pop. Investors are dumping Nvidia stock. An MIT report found that 95 percent of generative AI pilot programs aren’t generating returns for companies. OpenAI executives recently floated the idea that the government should “guarantee” their AI infrastructure investments, which everyone understood as a request for a bailout. So the timing of this executive order, conveniently shield the industry from accountability right before the hype cycle collapses, is probably not a coincidence.
I want AI to succeed. I think it has enormous potential. But potential is not a blank check. These companies are asking to be exempt from laws that prevent them from hurting children, discriminating against workers, and manipulating vulnerable people. They’re doing it by pretending that basic consumer protections are somehow anti-innovation. And they’ve convinced the president to do their dirty work through an executive action that’s constitutionally questionable at best.
Being pro-technology and pro-accountability are not mutually exclusive positions. The tech industry has just spent years convincing people otherwise.
SOURCES:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/08/tech/trump-eo-blocking-ai-state-laws
https://www.axios.com/2025/11/19/trump-ai-state-laws-executive-order
https://time.com/7299044/senators-reject-10-year-ban-on-state-level-ai-regulation-in-blow-to-big-tech/
Senate Votes 99-1 To Remove AI Moratorium From Budget in Major Blow to Big Tech and Sen. Cruz
https://floridaphoenix.com/2025/12/04/age-of-darkness-and-deceit-desantis-proposes-ai-bill-of-rights-in-crack-down/
https://www.crowell.com/en/insights/client-alerts/draft-executive-order-seeks-to-short-circuit-ai-state-regulation
‘ONE RULE’: Trump says he’ll sign an executive order blocking state AI laws despite bipartisan pushback
https://www.obsolete.pub/p/inside-techs-risky-gamble-to-kill