Voters Overwhelmingly Support White House Draft Executive Order to Protect Americans From Cyber Threats

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The majority of Americans across both political parties would support President Donald Trump taking executive action to vet new artificial intelligence models for safety, a new poll from Institute for Family Studies and YouGov shows. 

The new poll of 1,000 American voters, obtained by The Daily Signal, shows that 82% of American voters want the White House to vet AI systems for safety. Only 4% oppose such a measure, with 14% being neutral on the issue. 

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an AI safety executive order after he gets back from Beijing, sources familiar with the matter tell The Daily Signal. The president is currently in China with multiple U.S. tech leaders, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

While the New York Times reported that the draft order would require pre-deployment vetting for all frontier AI models, sources told The Daily Signal that vetting would apply to AI companies seeking government contracts. However, a move to making vetting optional for potential contractors is also under consideration, sources familiar with the matter said.

Companies would be encouraged to share frontier models before release so the tools can be evaluated, and the United States can prepare better against potential cyberattacks.

The substance of the order is still in flux and subject to change, sources said, as many administration officials have different visions for the future of AI regulation. 

The poll, performed Thursday, May 7, found that 90% of Trump voters support pre-deployment vetting of AI models, compared with only 3% who oppose it. 

Similarly, 79% of Kamala Harris voters support this measure, while only 5% oppose it. 

The measure is popular across all age groups; at least 79% of every group said they support safety evaluations. 

Additionally, 88% of voters want AI systems to be evaluated for national security, while another 87% support vetting for the wellbeing of children and families. 

The role of vetting would likely fall to the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, the Commerce Department’s safety-centered artificial intelligence arm launched under the Biden administration.

The agency originally tapped Collin Burns, a former researcher at Anthropic and OpenAI, to lead it, before moving in a different direction and appointing Dr. Chris Fall, who served in the first Trump administration as the director of the Office of Science at the Department of Energy.

On May 5, Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and xAI agreed to work with the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, but the Commerce Department has since deleted the details from its webpage.