Trump’s AI order gives Washington a look at frontier models, but not much leverage

The most powerful AI models are now treated, at least in Washington, as potential national-security events. Before companies release them to the public, the government wants a chance to see what they can do: whether they can discover software vulnerabilities, assist cyberattacks, or otherwise introduce risks that federal officials may not fully understand until the models are already in use. President Trump’s new executive order, signed Tuesday, is meant to give the government that chance. But the final version leaves AI companies with considerable control over the process. It asks them to voluntarily submit advanced models for government review 30 days before public release, and it does not make release conditional on what agencies find.