The AI Moratorium Cometh (Kind Of)
Quick thoughts on the "One Rulebook" Executive Order
Over on Truth Social, the President opines:
There must be only One Rulebook if we are going to continue to lead in AI. We are beating ALL COUNTRIES at this point in the race, but that won’t last long if we are going to have 50 States, many of them bad actors, involved in RULES and the APPROVAL PROCESS. THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT ABOUT THIS! AI WILL BE DESTROYED IN ITS INFANCY! I will be doing a ONE RULE Executive Order this week. You can’t expect a company to get 50 Approvals every time they want to do something. THAT WILL NEVER WORK!
POTUS is right to call for “One Rulebook” if the US federal government wants to avoid the mountain of state laws that could doom American innovation in AI. But an executive order like the “Eliminating State Law Obstruction of National AI Policy” [“Eliminating SLOP”?] EO from last November would likely add to the regulatory fog without offering a map to get out.
The President has little constitutional authority to halt state legislators. This is a feature, not a bug, of our federal system. So, the most this EO likely can do is direct the executive branch’s prosecutorial powers and the dispersal of federal funding.
These strategies will get substantial legal pushback. While the EO will aim to raise the cost of state AI lawmaking, it can only deter rather than stop bad laws. Paradoxically, ambiguity on the EO’s legal outcomes will add to the uncertainty.
Moreover, an EO like this will easily be jettisoned by the time we get to the next Inauguration Day three years hence. That already happened when Trump 2.0 commenced back in January, and the Biden admin had its own version of this. So it goes.
Congress already rejected AI moratorium language twice this year. This happened with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act this summer and then in the National Defense Authorization Act last week. Without strong White House leadership to form a filibuster-proof legislative coalition, future moratorium attempts will keep getting stuck in the mud.
Congress has just one year to do this before the midterms potentially upset the balance. Lawmakers from both parties are sending a strong signal that without solid, preemptive action from Congress, the EO will not get us through regulatory Mordor.