President Trump was ready to sign an executive order creating a safety vetting system for advanced AI models. Then the tech industry pushed back. He scrapped it. And now both sides are furious. The executive order, which had been in development for months, would have required companies developing cutting-edge AI systems to submit safety test results to a federal oversight board before deployment.

Supporters called it common sense — a basic check to ensure AI systems aren't dangerous before they're released to millions of users. Opponents called it government overreach that would kill innovation and hand China the AI lead.

For a while, it looked like Trump would sign it anyway. Then the calls started.

The Tech Pushback

According to reports, senior executives from major AI companies — including some of Trump's most prominent Silicon Valley supporters — personally lobbied the White House to kill the order. Their argument: the safety testing requirements were too vague, the oversight board would be captured by anti-innovation bureaucrats, and the US would lose its competitive edge against China.

Within days, the executive order was dead. Trump announced he was "pausing" the plan to "reassess the approach." Critics translated that as: he caved.

The backlash was immediate. AI safety advocates called it a betrayal. Editorial boards slammed the decision. Even some Republican senators expressed disappointment, arguing that basic safety checks shouldn't be controversial.

The Pope Connection

The timing couldn't have been worse for Trump. Just days after scrapping the order, Pope Leo XIV released Magnifica Humanitas — a 42,000-word encyclical calling for exactly the kind of regulation Trump just abandoned.

The contrast was stark: the leader of the Catholic Church, representing 1.4 billion people, saying AI needs strong government oversight while the world's most powerful democracy walked away from it.

What Actually Happened to the Order?

The proposed executive order would have created a "Frontier AI Safety Board" — an interagency body responsible for reviewing advanced AI models before deployment. Companies that refused to submit to testing could face restrictions on government contracts and federal funding.

The AI industry's main objection was that the standards were unclear. "How do you define 'safe' for a technology that's evolving weekly?" one lobbyist argued. They also worried that the board would slow down releases, giving Chinese competitors time to catch up.

Trump, whose relationship with tech billionaires has been a defining feature of his political career, ultimately sided with the industry. The order was shelved. No new date for reconsideration has been announced.

Why This Matters

The US is the world's leader in AI development. What it does — or doesn't do — about AI safety sets the global standard. When the US government declines to regulate, other countries face pressure to go easy too, lest they lose the AI race.

But the AI industry is at a crossroads. Public trust is declining. Scandals are mounting. And now the world's most prominent moral authority just called for the exact thing the industry lobbied against.

The question isn't whether AI will be regulated. It's whether regulation will happen proactively — while there's still time to shape it — or reactively, after a disaster forces everyone's hand. Trump's decision to scrap the order pushes the US firmly into the second category.