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Trump set to sign AI cybersecurity directive as soon as Thursday

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in front of the American flag to the press as he departs the White House on May 12, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images/TNS)
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in front of the American flag to the press as he departs the White House on May 12, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images/TNS) TNS

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump is poised to issue an executive order as soon as Thursday aimed at bolstering artificial intelligence cybersecurity and has asked tech industry leaders to join for the event, according to people familiar with the matter.

The order that Trump is expected to sign would revamp existing cybersecurity information-sharing programs to include AI companies while stopping short of mandatory federal approval of cutting-edge models, Bloomberg News has reported.

Instead, it would call for voluntary government testing of frontier AI systems to find and patch weaknesses across federal, state and local networks, as well as critical U.S. infrastructure, without requiring extensive new oversight.

Invitations have been been sent to a range of technology industry executives for a signing event Thursday at the White House, the people said, though it's unclear who will take part.

Spokespeople for the White House had no immediate comment on Wednesday evening. Spokespeople for top AI developers OpenAI and Anthropic PBC didn't immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

The directive is set to be signed about a month after Anthropic revealed that its breakthrough Mythos model was extraordinarily adept at finding network vulnerabilities and could pose a major cybersecurity risk. The company has limited Mythos access for now to a handful of large tech and Wall Street companies, amid broader global alarm about the new threats it could pose to critical systems.

Trump administration officials have been pushing to make Mythos more widely available to federal agencies to test their networks for security flaws, and the National Security Agency has already been using it. White House officials recently rejected Anthropic's plans to distribute Mythos to several dozen additional companies and organizations, citing security concerns.

The US already runs a voluntary program to evaluate AI systems before their release, and the Commerce Department recently announced an expansion of that initiative. Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Microsoft Corp. and xAI Inc. have agreed to give the government access to their models to assess the systems' capabilities and help improve security. OpenAI and Anthropic were already part of the program, led by the department's Center for AI Standards and Innovation.

In addition to sharing its models with the Commerce Department for national security testing, OpenAI's Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane confirmed the company is partnering with the White House and Trump administration on a deployment strategy for GPT-5.5-Cyber, which is designed to bolster cyber defense efforts.

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