Administration Unveils AI Action Plan and Data-Center Executive Orders

On July 23, 2025, the Trump administration released its AI Action Plan alongside three executive orders covering data-center permitting, exports of U.S. AI technology, and a directive against "woke" AI in federal procurement. The plan outlined roughly 90 federal policy positions organized around accelerating innovation, building AI infrastructure and expanding U.S. influence abroad.

The data-center order directed agencies to fast-track permitting, expand use of environmental-review exclusions, and make federal land available for large AI infrastructure projects, explicitly favoring speed over the standard environmental-impact process. It also revoked a Biden-era order on AI infrastructure leadership.

Taken together, the plan and orders represented a decisive shift away from the safety- and equity-focused approach of the prior administration toward a framework emphasizing industrial scale, energy buildout and global competition with China, with accountability and bias-mitigation mechanisms recast as obstacles rather than safeguards.