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Developing technology policy is an incredibly complex task that normally takes decades. Looking at the CHIPS Act, for instance, the idea of bolstering the United States’ production capabilities in semiconductors was proposed in the 1980s, gained political momentum in 2020, was enacted by Congress in 2022, and will take several decades to implement. During his first week, President Donald Trump did not bring any technology policies to fruition. By issuing a flurry of presidential actions that will affect technology policy, however, he showed that the administration is eager to make significant changes soon.
As part of his effort to transform the federal government, President Trump issued an executive order (EO) formally establishing the president’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). While DOGE was focused initially on cutting government programs and reducing headcount, this EO marked a pivot, charging DOGE with “modernizing Federal technology and software” to increase efficiency and productivity. Further, by folding the U.S. Digital Service into DOGE, the EO ensures that DOGE will have a group of full-time, paid technical staff to execute this mission. Such a pivot is laudable, as there were questions about whether DOGE would have the expertise to decide which federal government operations should be cut, and many federal agencies remain laggards in the adoption of innovative technologies. Whether DOGE achieves its new mission, however, will depend on key decisions that the administration did not announce. For instance, while the EO established DOGE as one of the offices within the White House, it did not specify DOGE’s role in the interagency process—the mechanism, which is normally driven by the National Security Council, that usually determines whether a president’s policy initiatives succeed or die on the vine.
The biggest headlines were captured by President Trump’s rescission of Biden’s AI EO and his adoption of an EO on Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence. These actions marked a shift away from having the federal government examine the details of AI companies’ models, with one possible exception: The federal government could still involve itself if President Trump is serious about the EO’s reference to ensuring that such systems “are free from ideological bias and social agendas.” The statement about rooting out ideological bias was not a one-off comment—President Trump’s new charter of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology contained a similar refrain.
Ensuring that these new policies around removing ideological bias do not hold back the U.S. tech sector will require an ongoing dialogue between the administration and the tech industry. Many tech companies had already acted to comply with the administration’s policy before it was announced by changing their policies on content moderation, such as Meta’s announcement on removing fact-checkers (who were alleged to be ideologically biased) in favor of community notes. Nonetheless, these companies cannot neglect to shape the content of their algorithms, as the public wants to use tech products that meet certain standards, such as having a minimal standard of civility. In doing so, tech companies will fear inadvertently incurring penalties as they rapidly engineer and curate new products. In this regard, the administration will need to navigate inherent tensions between ensuring that the United States outcompetes its rivals in key technologies and its stated commitment to removing ideological bias from tech.
President Trump also revoked the Biden administration’s digital assets EO, and he issued a separate EO on bolstering the United States’ position in digital financial technology. As expected, this EO marked a shift away from digital assets policies driven by concerns about fraud and money laundering, and toward an active federal government role in supporting the digital asset economy. This EO prohibited agencies from supporting central bank digital currencies (which former President Biden had also backed away from) in the context of risks that such currencies may pose. Beyond that decision, instead of adopting policies, the EO establishes the Working Group on Digital Asset Markets to make recommendations on regulating digital assets and “evaluating the creation of a strategic national digital assets stockpile.” This working group will be led by the White House AI and crypto czar—who is currently David Sacks—and is composed of key White House advisors and cabinet secretaries. These actions will remove digital assets from the normal interagency process (which is driven by the National Security Council) and will thereby strengthen the hand of Sacks—and, perhaps, the digital assets industry—in shaping policy. For the administration to adopt an approach that not only promotes U.S. competitiveness in digital assets but also takes targeted measures to guard against the risks these assets pose, Sacks will need to work closely with government officials and outside stakeholders who have examined such risks.
While President Trump’s rescission of the AI and digital asset’s EOs (among others) was notable, equal attention should also be paid to the EOs that were not part of his “initial rescissions”—most notably, President Biden’s cybersecurity EOs. In the wake of Salt Typhoon, the U.S. Department of the Treasury hack, and other recent cyber incidents, this inaction was evidence that the administration does not want the United States’ adversaries to have new opportunities to undermine the United States in cyberspace. At the same time, it remains to be seen which cyber policies from the former administration that President Trump will retain and which ones he will jettison. In this regard, cyber policies that help to protect critical infrastructure sectors, which have bipartisan support, may have the greatest staying power. If, as is likely, this administration takes such an approach, the key question will be which sectors of the U.S. economy (e.g., financial markets and telecom) it concludes are sufficiently critical such that they should be subject to such requirements.
Finally, President Trump delayed enforcement of the federal ban on TikTok for 75 days. Assuming this move survives legal challenge, it will be essential for the administration to find a solution that roots out any potential for the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) influence over TikTok’s operations and the risks—such as spying and injection of malicious software—that are inherent in such influence. While reports suggest that solutions are being considered that would enable the current Chinese owner, ByteDance, to retain a significant minority stake (or even a near-majority stake) in the company, such an approach would leave the PRC with the ability to influence a company that could spy on, and harm, roughly 170 million users in the United States.
The new administration has formalized several tech policy priorities, such as modernizing the federal government’s information technology and bolstering the United States’ position in digital assets. It has bought itself time before making significant decisions on protecting U.S. networks and guarding against improper foreign influence. In the coming weeks, President Trump will continue balancing his goals of ensuring that the United States leads in tech and that its networks are secure with other priorities, such as rapidly changing the scale and scope of government and removing ideological bias from the tech sector.
Matt Pearl is the director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
