The mirage of AI deregulation

One of the most interventionist approaches to technology governance in the United States in a generation has cloaked itself in the language of deregulation. In early December 2025, President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to announce a forthcoming “One Rule” executive order on artificial intelligence (AI). Trump warned that US leadership in AI would be “DESTROYED IN ITS INFANCY” by the meddling of “50 States, many of them bad actors, involved in RULES and the APPROVAL PROCESS.” But beneath the bluster was a consequential policy move: the federal preemption of state authority to govern AI, framed as the removal of bureaucratic obstacles from the path for American technological dominance.

This social media post and the executive order that soon followed crystallized the prevailing narrative about the administration’s approach to AI governance: that it is fundamentally deregulatory. This narrative is misleading. Not in its particulars—the Trump administration has indeed rescinded Biden-era AI safety and innovation policies and pressured allies to reduce what it calls “innovation-killing regulations”—but in its core framing. To describe this AI policy as “deregulatory” is...