The United States is in a race to achieve global dominance in artificial intelligence. Whoever has the largest AI ecosystem will set the global standards and reap broad economic and security benefits. Under President Trump, our Nation will win, ushering in a new Golden Age of innovation, human flourishing, and technological achievement for the American people. America’s AI Action Plan has three policy pillars – Accelerating Innovation, Building AI Infrastructure, and Leading International Diplomacy and Security. (AI.Gov)
Human like to race. Racing is one of the more complicated semiotic manifestations of human social relations. It suggests many of the key elements of the way in which humans conceive of their cognitive spaces within the world in which they find themselves. It denotes space, time, place, and the forms of engagement with other humans. One can race against itself; one can race against time; one can race against a competitor; ne can race for a befit or reward or to avoid a negative impact or punishment. One races from one's demons; perhaps one races as well towards one's objectives, understood as functions of time, place and space envisioned for the purpose of the race and placed along a pathway that the race reveals. But races need not go anywhere but in a circle--leaving place and space constant, but time dynamic--one here races against time toward whatever it is that is at the end of a temporal journey around oneself. It evolved from the in its
Romance language forms from the vulgar Latin "
carraria" (a route or pathway) and
"carrus,"
the cart that travels along routes. In the Spanish it refers to
virtually any route that is understood and defined--from a race, to a
career path, to the path along which animals are herded, to bus or train
routes, to the undertaking of a profession, to certain sorts of ordering
by placing things, objects or ideas in a line.
A race or racing is a profoundly comprehensive cognitive cage, one in or through which reality is not merely ordered but set in motion. And that motion setting is itself ordered in ways that distinguishes between proper racing and other actions. Its
etymology suggests something linear and temporal, a narrative, defining a space within which it travels from one place to another that is physical, virtual, textual or performative. It older meanings were built around watercourses--streams, for example--that created pathways within which things, people or other things could run. But not just streams--hippodromes, NASCAR, obstacle courses, courses of study against which a student must race against text, time and performance within a well defined pathways the markers of which suggest the consequences of the run. All of these imply or suggest speed. These carry over to the Latin--suggesting both a "race" (as in a competition) and a "career" (as in a professional path); both narrative objects that suggest the course of journey, competition, or course of cognitive construction through action. To race, then, suggests not merely an action, but also the structuring of the place, space, time and expectations within which it is possible to conceive of a race, and to follow a course from one place to another. To those ends, perhaps, the critical part of a race is not just the movement, but rather it is the construction of the pathways and structures within which it is possible to organize, understand, assess and participate in a race. In effect, to engage in a race is to order a world in which it is possible to race in ways that a human collective invested in racing have all embraced. By the time one gets to the actual movement that constitutes the running, the most important part of the race has already been run--the construction of the race routes and the rules for its running.
It is only in this sense that one can truly appreciate the current effort of the Trump Administration to produce and distribute its "Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan" (July 2025).
The Plan identifies over 90 Federal policy actions across three pillars – Accelerating Innovation, Building American AI Infrastructure, and Leading in International Diplomacy and Security – that the Trump Administration will take in the coming weeks and months. Key policies in the AI Action Plan include:
Exporting American AI: The Commerce and State Departments will partner with industry to deliver secure, full-stack AI export packages – including hardware, models, software, applications, and standards – to America’s friends and allies around the world.
Promoting Rapid Buildout of Data Centers: Expediting and modernizing permits for data centers and semiconductor fabs, as well as creating new national initiatives to increase high-demand occupations like electricians and HVAC technicians.
Enabling Innovation and Adoption: Removing onerous Federal regulations that hinder AI development and deployment, and seek private sector input on rules to remove.
Upholding Free Speech in Frontier Models: Updating Federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias. (White House Unveils America’s AI Action Plan 23 July 2025)
And the
AI Action Plan also comes with its
own web site within the umbrella of the White House site, a site that is meant to be as modern and forward looking as the hoped for success of the initiative.
The
AI Action Plan is divided into three Pillars. Pillar 1 (Accelerating Innovation) focuses on technology innovation through markets. Thus, the regulatory architecture of the present system offers a rich target (see, e.g.,
Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure). However, in the style of the beginning of the 2nd quarter of the 21st century, markets must be managed by and through the benign hand of the State--even under an ideology which is grounded in the power of individual autonomy and iterative risk based transactions that together evolves direction. Markets, then, even those driven by iterative aggregated individual (legal and natural person) activity must be guided. That is the essence of the race--the State must construct the routes on which the race is to be undertaken. It is, in this sense, that the actual race, run by market actors, assumes a consequential, rather than the generative, place in the scheme of "the" (or really "any")
AI Action Plan. The critical element of any race is the construction of the space in which it is to be undertaken, the development and acceptable of the markers that identify points of progress and that suggest the direction of the course, and the shape of the course itself (linear toward a goal, circular perhaps spiraling up or outward, or merely circular generating wealth and self sustainability through the constant motion of the racers) (see eg
here). In this case one constructs the race course out of American values, the role of American labor, the outward projection of race progress markers, the development of rich data warehousing with value, and the utility of all of this effort for national commercial and security objectives (see, e.g.,
Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Prevents Woke AI in the Federal Government;). The race course is itself part of a broader race, one in which States and other collectives vie for supremacy (as that concept is itself developed and assessed in accordance with the values and tastes of the times).
Pillar 2 (AI Infrastructures) focuses on the development of the physical and virtual structures of the race course itself. Just as there is a sub-race built around innovation, so there is another around infrastructure. In this case that involves both physical and virtual infrastructure that is now to be given priority over competing national obsessions--climate action, ecological impacts, human rights and the like. Not that these priorities are abandoned, rather they are now all factors to be balanced against a national priority factor focused on the development of infrastructure that supports the innovation race. On the physical side one focuses on data centers and hardware manufacture. One focuses on grids, and on the production of a labor force whose work can be purchased and consumed (see eg
here;
Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Accelerates Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure). One focuses on security, on connectivity, and on capacity. These are first internally structured and then structured for projection abroad.
Pillar 3 (International AI Diplomacy and Security) then focuses on the outward projection of inward development (see, e.g.,
Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Promotes the Export of American AI Technologies). In this sub-race the course is built to very closely resemble that built by the Chinese in the construction of their Belt & Road Initiative. These hub and spoke models permit outward projections from a central core along lines and routes that are integrated into and help support the core objectives of the center (see, eg.,
Promoting The Export of the American AI Technology Stack). That shapes the course--not as a circle or a line, but as a routed platform drawn around a center with flexible sub-routines within its shape. That suggests the limits of the core--the hub and spokes themselves (in this case the U.S. and its allies and partners, the essence of America First, like that of Belt & Road) with additional projections in a more controlled way beyond the physical limits of that "wheel." Thus the model is one of projection outward and security--distribution and control, use and policing.
The Three Pillars together constitute the race course within which the United States now proposes to run in an A.I. race. The running, of course, will be undertaken for the most part by the private sector. But the State, in addition to its managerial and oversight roles, will also be a contributor, as well as a consumer, and enforcer. What is the A.I. race which Americans are now being invited to lead? It is one that aligns direct innovation by the private sector, with a structural mangerialism by the State, and the instrumentalization of aspects of innovation for the protection and projection of high quality production abroad in a way that ties foreign and domestic markets through tech. These aspects of the AI Action Plan are then realized (at least in text) in a number of complementary actions and announcements made by the Trump Administration best considered together: (1) Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government; (2) Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Promotes the Export of American AI Technologies; (3) Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Accelerates Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure; (4) Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Prevents Woke AI in the Federal Government; (5) Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure; and (6) Promoting The Export of the American AI Technology Stack.
It is a race as much for control of the ideologies and presentation (technical specifications), as it is for the production of national wealth for individuals. That was clearly understood by many important people quoted by the Trump administration highlighting the support the Action Plan has generated among the people who count: Wide Acclaim for President Trump’s Visionary AI Action Plan. Indeed, it is not clear that, in contemporary times, it is possible to separate the two at the level of apex States. The course is designed, in this way to project not just innovation (hard and virtual goods from which money can be made) but also the premises, expectations, and norms that those hard and soft goods naturalize in the tech and especially the A.I. environment. And with that comes control--not just through the (self) control of normative hard structuring of innovation pathways) but also through the more mundane control through security measures. That is precisely, as well the Chinese and the European pathways--and also that emerging in the African and Latin American communities.
Beyond that is the detail--all important, and the focus of analysis of the AI Action Plan focus on its detail (e.g., here ). They are already in the race; those must, as a condition of analysis, accept at least the general parameters around which the "race" is conceived and its course constructed. That is critically important, of courser, at least a a national micro level. But that misses the essential object of the AI Action Plan itself--to develop and control the course, expectations, and running of the race on its own terms, by its own rules, and toward its own "finish line" as against deeply powerful alternative "race courses" being put forward by competitor groups, especially those with their hubs in Brussels and Beijing.
The Europeans are attempting to build a raceway that is focused on its normative rights project. It is a system grounded in the reduction or mitigation of risk, and ultimately the management of that risk through systems of regulatory supervision. The structures, and its innovation, serve the State and its core normative vision expressed in policy. The object is not the innovation but the risk based benefits that comport to the values and needs of the normative framework of the State. That is the essence, for example of the
EU's AI Act, which provides a legal structure for the EU's digital strategy:
The digital transformation is one of the EU's priorities. The European Parliament is helping to shape the policies that will strengthen Europe's capacities in new digital technologies, open new opportunities for businesses and consumers, support the EU's green transition and help it to reach climate neutrality by 2050, support people's digital skills and training for workers, and help digitalise public services, while ensuring the respect of basic rights and values. (here)
AI and innovation, then, is an instrument that, like other collective activities, must be aligned with social normative values and overseen by the State through system of supervision to which operaitonal capacity is delegated to individuals. During the Biden Administration, the U.S: position was closer to that emerging in Europe than it is to that now emerging in the United States. (See, e.g., Key takeaways from the Biden administration executive order on AI; "with the goal of promoting the “safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of artificial intelligence”;" see also discussion and links in "Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence" Text and Brief Reflections).
While the Europeans build innovation raceways tied to normative policy and managed through systems of public risk based regulatory supervision, the Chinese build a raceway that is meant to serve as an enhancement of a course already well established--the Socialist Path toward the eventual establishment of a Communist society. Innovation, in that sense is an aspect of socialist modernization. And socialist modernization is undertaken through programs of innovation and high quality production. High quality production in turn is a function of innovation. And all of this is judged as a function of its utility for meeting the challenge of the general contradiction in a contemporary stage of historical development, and as an instrument of collective movement along that Socialist Path. At the core of this enterprise are the vanguard elements of society, organized as a Communist Party, and vested with the responsibility for guiding the masses along the Socialist Path through political leadership and within the framework of the administrative apparatus through which policy and leadership can be translated into action.
It in especially in this context that one can understand the race between the three great powers in its more comprehensive senses. These are races against time, against oneself, toward something. These are races for the construction of the courses on which the races are to be held and the form and rules of and for those races. These are, in their most ancient sense--narratives of power and control moving from the structural to the phenomenological--that is from the development of a common conceptual universe of innovation and object to the actual running of the races by those expected to participate as "runners". One is racing here to construct a world and its ordering.
The table of contents of the AI Action Plan follows. Supporting
