Trump's AI Policy Brain Trust: Who Shapes US AI Regulation
Original: This Is Donald Trump’s AI Brain Trust
Why This Matters
Understanding who controls US AI regulation is critical as China-US competition over frontier AI models intensifies.
As China's open-weight AI models grow more powerful, the Trump administration relies on a small, fragmented group of officials across multiple agencies to shape AI policy. With little interagency coordination, a senior White House official tells WIRED: 'It's not an argument with two sides, it's an argument with ten sides.'
WIRED has mapped the key power brokers inside the Trump administration shaping US AI policy amid escalating competition with China. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who oversees export controls through the Bureau of Industry and Security, has emerged as a central figure. He has explored incentives for US labs to develop open-weight models to counter China and recently downplayed the capabilities of Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 model via X. Lutnick imposed export controls on Anthropic but is seen as more moderate than others. His top deputy, Arvind Raman, now serves as acting director of CAISI after predecessor Chris Fall abruptly resigned following disputes over safeguards for Anthropic's Fable 5 model. CAISI staff spent weeks negotiating new jailbreak safeguards with Anthropic before the model was brought back online. National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross takes a harder line on Chinese AI, helped draft Trump's June 2 executive order establishing a framework to assess powerful AI models, and is empowered to develop national security-focused AI policy—despite lacking prior tech or AI experience.