White House Mulls Executive Order for Pre-Release AI Safety Review

The White House is evaluating an executive order requiring frontier AI models to undergo a safety review before public release, likened by Kevin Hassett to the FDA’s drug-approval process. Anthropic’s Mythos model can locate decades-old software and infrastructure vulnerabilities and was limited to a few financial and tech firms after the company warned broader distribution could accelerate cyber-attack capabilities. The dual-use risk has spurred the administration to consider tighter oversight.

The Hill

Officials such as NEC Director Kevin Hassett and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles are involved. The Department of Commerce’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) and NIST are coordinating the effort. CAISI has voluntary testing agreements with Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Microsoft and xAI, completing about 40 evaluations. It employs about 30 staff and has a $30 million budget.

Federal News Network

Proponents say testing could block malicious exploitation; critics warn it could delay market entry and hinder competitiveness.

Hassett said the administration is “scrambling an all-of-government effort” to coordinate testing before models reach the wild. Wiles posted that the government is “not in the business of picking winners and losers.” The White House says there is no shifting messaging and that policy announcements will come directly from President Donald Trump.

Politico

Daniel Castro warned that pre-market approval “could be withheld” and become “a huge issue for any company.”

Politico

Sources differ on whether testing would be mandatory or voluntary; legal authority and timeline remain unclear.

Bloomberg

• “We’re studying possibly an executive order to give a clear road map to everybody about how this is going to go and how future AI that also potentially create vulnerabilities should go through a process so that they’re released in the wild after they’ve been proven safe, just like an FDA drug,” — Kevin Hassett, National Economic Council Director

Federal News Network

• “The White House will continue to lead an America First effort that empowers America’s great innovators, not bureaucracy, to drive safe deployment of powerful technologies while keeping America safe,” — Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff

Politico

• “If [approval is] something that can be withheld before going to market, that’s a huge issue for any company,” — Daniel Castro, President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

Politico

• “The Mythos moment is really a cyber moment; how is the U.S. government going to deal with cyber, how do we operationalize fixing things that need to be fixed? Because these models are coming one way or the other,” — Emil Michael, Defense Undersecretary

Politico

The administration aims to finalize the order in weeks, with CAISI expanding its portfolio and Congress considering funding.

Federal News Network