Josh Hawley Sees AI as a Binary Choice for the GOP

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on artificial intelligence on Tuesday, asking the leading AI companies to voluntarily allow the government to review their new models for potential cyber or national security threats 30 days before a public release.

It’s unclear how significant the review will be. A voluntary executive action is a far cry from hard regulation, but in keeping with the administration’s broadly light-touch regulatory approach to the transformative technology.

Hours after the executive order was signed, senior administration officials and staffers gathered for an event just down the street from the White House, where Republican Sen. Josh Hawley delivered a searing critique of AI’s current trajectory and called on his party to take action against the technology’s potential to disrupt the American labor market. Missouri’s senior senator drew a line in the sand, placing himself on the side of the worker against AI companies and their political allies, right and left. He was careful not to criticize the president, but the remarks amounted to an implicit indictment of Vice President J.D. Vance’s positioning on AI and his relationships with Silicon Valley investors. 

Hawley’s audience was roughly 500 people who filed into the National Building Museum in D.C. for a black-tie gala hosted by American Compass, a populist, new right think tank with deep ties to Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The crowd featured a mix of foreign dignitaries; lobbyists; young staffers from policy groups and Hill offices; and a cross-section of new right writers and opinion-makers, such as Sohrab Ahmari and Gladden Pappin. Also on hand were administration officials—including Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson, FTC Commissioner Mark Meador, and Council of Economic Advisers acting Chair Pierre Yared—and senior Vance and Rubio staff members.