The Trump administration is divided over policy on artificial intelligence and China

According to Wired, US policymaking on artificial intelligence is split among numerous agencies and advisers who cannot agree on a unified approach to China. According to Wired, one senior White House official described it as a dispute with ten sides rather than two. Without central coordination among agencies, the article says, the resulting policy will therefore be determined mainly by who has the most influence with President Donald Trump.

Key players include Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose department is responsible for export controls through the Bureau of Industry and Security. According to people familiar with the situation, Lutnick is considering incentives for leading US labs to release their own open-weight models as a counterweight to China, but he also downplayed the capabilities of the Kimi K3 model from Moonshot AI on X, saying it lags behind leading US models in key tests. His team previously introduced export controls against Anthropic. Arvind Raman became the new head of CAISI (Center for AI Standards and Innovation) at the Department of Commerce after his predecessor Chris Fall abruptly resigned following weeks of talks with Anthropic about strengthening safeguards against bypassing safety restrictions (jailbreak) in the Fable 5 model.

National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross takes a harder line on Chinese AI labs and helped draft the Trump order of 2 June, which established a framework for assessing the most capable models; according to the article, he focuses particularly on restricting the practice of distillation, in which Chinese labs train their models on outputs from leading US models. By contrast, former AI adviser David Sacks, who retained direct access to the president even after leaving his formal role in March, advocates a more laissez-faire approach and, according to the article, secured the easing of regulatory provisions in the June order; on X, he described concerns about the Kimi model as exaggerated ("Kimi Panic"), saying that leading US models remain ahead.

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles assesses policy proposals from all sides, and according to the article, her decision is ultimately decisive. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has taken the toughest stance on China – on X, he called the practice of distillation "intellectual property theft" and threatened Chinese labs with sanctions or inclusion on the Entity List trade list. According to a person familiar with his position, Bessent also argues that the US, Europe, Japan and other Western allies must accelerate the development of their own open-weight models, or they will lose the AI race to China; at the executive level, Deputy Secretary Luke Pettit implements his agenda. Wired also names other players in the article, but their roles are not described in the available portion of the text. Details can be found in the source article.