Artificial Intelligencer-White House pushes for first big federal AI law this year

By Jeffrey Dastin

March 25 (Reuters) - (Artificial Intelligencer is published every Wednesday. Think your friend or colleague should know about us? Forward this newsletter to them. They can also subscribe here or email me to share any thoughts.)

The drone strikes walloped buildings in the UAE and Bahrain in short order.

Setting infrastructure on fire and taking facilities offline, strikes in the Iran war this month pushed the front lines far beyond typical military targets, like command centers and missile launch sites.

They hit data centers.

In a display of artificial intelligence’s growing role in the economy and the battlefield, drones disrupted Amazon’s AMZN.O Middle East data centers as recently as Monday. Software that pools data so AI can find a target, known as Maven Smart System, has become core to U.S. military operations. Debates about fully autonomous weapons have upended contract negotiations.

At the Hill & Valley Forum’s Washington summit on Tuesday, these topics took center stage. David Sacks, the White House AI and crypto czar, said high-tech exports to Gulf states had not diverted chips to China but had spread U.S. systems globally – and put a target on allies’ backs.

“If UAE’s data centers were serving China, I don’t think they would be getting bombed right now by Iran,” he said.

Read more about the summit below.

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TRUMP’S AI BILL

The Trump administration wants to accomplish a legislative feat that no White House before it has pulled off.

It wants to pass the federal government’s first comprehensive AI bill.

At the Hill & Valley Forum, which featured JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Anduril co-founder Trae Stephens, White House officials made the pitch.

Science adviser Michael Kratsios said the administration was targeting a law with bipartisan appeal based on a blueprint the White House released last week. Among the goals, a bill would protect kids who interact with AI, spare citizens from data-center-related rate hikes, and preempt competing state regulations.

“We want to create an environment where innovators have certainty about the way that they can develop their products, and it’s something that only Congress can provide,” Kratsios said.

Technology companies have long railed against the growing patchwork of state regulations, even as proponents argue that states must defend their constituents when Congress does not act. The Senate struck down an attempted moratorium on state AI laws in a 99-1 vote last year.

The most ambitious goal may be the timeline to get a bill for President Donald Trump to sign into law.

Kratsios said, “We’re optimistic that we can try to get something done this year.” Trump’s Republican Party has control of both houses of Congress at least through the 2026 midterm elections.

Kratsios and Sacks will also co-chair the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, with initial members including Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Oracle Executive Chair Larry Ellison, the White House said on Wednesday.

Some critics have called last week’s framework thin on details.

For instance, little in the three-page bulleted plan addresses national security concerns, or how to manage increasingly powerful AI. By comparison, Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee circulated the draft Trump America AI Act at nearly 300 pages.

Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia said in a statement Friday, “The framework is worse than silent on AI-powered mis- and disinformation.”

Others embraced the blueprint as a good starting point ahead of lengthy negotiations. It was a welcome contrast to the administration’s starker attempts to regulate AI in contract talks, such as between the Pentagon and Anthropic,said Dean Ball, who helped write the administration’s AI Action Plan last year.

With or without a full plan, the Trump administration may have little choice but to push ahead.

Populist leaders have clashed with the Silicon Valley right for sway in the Republican Party. Steve Bannon, for instance, has warned that AI could eviscerate American jobs, and U.S. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri has spotlighted children’s suicides related to the use of AI chatbots.

Anduril’s Stephens issued his own warning about why the government isn’t doing its job to advance innovation in his speech at the forum.

“Populism, special interests, anti-tech sentiment, and tribalism all conspire to make it virtually impossible to do anything of consequence,” he said.

As one Washington insider previously told me, the tech-backed White House may need to set the AI agenda before its opponents do.

CHART OF THE WEEK:

The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has snarled oil and fertilizer shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. It is also disrupting helium from Qatar, which produced around a third of the world's supply of the gas in 2025. Already, a South Korean lawmaker has warned of the downstream effects, stretching to the silicon that powers artificial intelligence. Helium helps manage heat during semiconductor production, which means the chip industry is a key sector affected by the availability of the gas.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

((jeffrey.dastin@thomsonreuters.com))