Selected Transcripts from the AI Action Plan Summit & AI Honors Gala
President Trump (At 22:28 of Wining the AI Race, Part 5): “If you are operating under 50 different sets of [AI] state laws, the most restrictive state of all will be the one that rules. So you could have a state run by a crazy governer a governor that hates you, a governer that’s not smart, or maybe a governor that’s very smart but that decides that he doesn't like the industry and he can put you out of business because you're going to have to go to that lowest common denominator. We need one common sense federal standard that supersedes all states, supersedes everybody so you don't end up in litigation with 43 states at one time. You got to go litigation free. That's the only way. And we also have to watch Europe, Asia, and all foreign countries so that they don't make rules and regulations that likewise make it impossible for you to do business and where you'd have to make everything in AI cater to them because again, you'd have to cater to the toughest country or to the toughest state. You can't do that because it would ruin it. I just terminated all of the, as an example, California car emissions rules, which were a disaster. A disaster cost them million. It cost them just billions of dollars as an industry, but thousands of dollars per car. The emission rule standard because they were making the production of an automobile almost impossible and at a tremendously higher cost, much more expensive than it should cost for very little gain for actually in my opinion negative gain. The automobile was worse under this administration. Our innovation will be unmatched and our capabilities will be unrivaled. And with the help of many of the people in this room, America's ultimate triumph will be absolutely unstoppable. We will be unstoppable as a nation. Again, we're way ahead and we want to stay that way. We can't let individual smaller units stop it because that's the only thing that can stop it and can really mess it up. As with any such breakthrough, this technology brings the potential for bad as well as for good, for peril as well as for progress. But the daunting power of AI is the really it's uh not going to be a reason for retreat from this new frontier."
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (At 47:16 of Winning the AI Race, Part 4): “What we’re wresting with and this is what we’re really discussing literally the intellectual wrestle we’re going through now is the idea that we are comfortable with allies buying significant number of chips and having a large cluster provided that cluster is operated by a trusted American operator and the cloud is a trusted American operator so that we know that giant cluster is surrounded by us. Right. As you go down from there, that’s where we go, okay, if they want a smaller cluster, would you expand the number of people who are trusted, right? And the answer would probably be yes, right? And then when you go down from there, to a smaller and smaller cluster, right? How do you deal with that? So I think cluster size is a way of thinking rather than saying… you know, because I went to Poland … and the prime minister of Poland chases me down and says what did I do to America to be tier three and I was like I thought you were part of Europe… you know, like I didn’t understand what could possibly be the issue so I think the answer is ally or not, cluster size and who controls it or not… I think once you sort of wrestle with those ideas and anyone who has ideas along those lines and you want to come and talk to us about it because this is really the thinking right now and we’re sort of debating that right now.”
VP JD Vance (13:35 of Winning the AI Race, Part 2): “…on creating a NATO alternative outside of Europe but where countries that were aligned with the United States built on the same technology stack there was a shared sort of you know shared access to technology shared access to certain weaponry and so forth and he was like we really want to be part of team America but there isn't even an existing infrastructure that would allow us to be team America And I had never thought about it in that way. I haven't even talked to the president yet about it. But it's interesting that world leaders are coming and saying this is how we're thinking about the future. And and the technology piece of it is a very critical angle because as you guys probably appreciate, I assume the audience appreciates is that you know sometimes when you build with with Chinese firms or Chinese technology, it seems like a pretty good deal, right?”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (At 2:05 of 2025 AI Honors, June 3rd 2025): “… [vs Biden’s Diffusion Rule,] the model that America has now under the Trump administration is an embrace your allies model with respect to AI so let our great allies participate with us in the AI industrial revolution let them buy our chips let them invest in data centers and here's the model the data center has to be operated by an approved operator now obviously those approved operators there'll be all the large U.S. hyperscalers of course but other companies can apply and they can be operators as well on a smaller scale if they wish but only operated by great American companies the cloud associated with those data centers also has to be operated by American companies so we can control and not train adversaries models right because we all know especially in this room that Deep Seek and their peers were not trained for $5 million okay that was just you know a funny silly comment but in fact what they did is they found other players in other countries to redirect our assets or let them use those other assets and we don't want that to continue right the the fact is that our adversaries are substantially behind us and we expect to keep them substantially behind us but we want to bring our allies onto our side we want to be less restrictive and more embracing so that the AI industrial revolution can live and breathe successfully across our allies framework let them all come and be part of our side of the equation have no room left for the other side of the equation and that's our idea and that's the model we're going with so it's a complete rethink of the AI confusion oh sorry diffusion rule and instead it will be an embracing model that's much more interesting other things that we're working on…"