America’s AI Bet: Why Industry Must Build for Trust, Not Just Speed

No Guardrails? No Excuse. Build for Trust Anyway.

America’s AI Action Plan, alongside three companion executive orders, signals more than a policy shift; it redefines how America governs AI and who it expects to lead. Washington has moved from a safety-first posture to an innovation-first mandate. That shift creates significant opportunity, but also sharpens the risks.

In effect, the government has handed the keys to industry. If companies rise to the occasion, they can drive a wave of trustworthy innovation, workforce resilience, and global competitiveness. If not, we risk building AI systems that are fast, but fragile.

This is no longer a question of whether the private sector can lead on trust—it’s whether it will. And without coordinated incentives or clear guardrails, speed may eclipse stewardship.

The costs of inaction are mounting:

• Trust initiatives that fragment rather than unify
  

• A hollowing out of workforce resilience and training
  

• A declining U.S. edge in AI interoperability and influence abroad

From Guardrails to Growth Mandate

The AI Action Plan doesn’t just loosen oversight—it redefines the government’s role. No longer a steward of public interest, it now acts as an infrastructure catalyst and industry accelerator.

The 2023 Executive Order emphasized proactive safeguards: safety testing, algorithmic accountability, civil rights protections. The 2025 approach pivots toward scale, speed, and private-sector initiative.

This new governance model rests on three pillars:

• Infrastructure-first innovation: Investment in data centers, broadband, and compute without enforceable labor, safety, or environmental standards.

• Voluntary guardrails: Agencies are conveners, not enforcers. Risk frameworks are nonbinding.

• Reframed risk: Concerns once prioritized—algorithmic bias, disinformation, environmental impact—are now reframed as barriers to innovation rather than systemic risks.

This is not deregulation. It is delegation without accountability. And it creates a strategic contradiction: while the Action Plan emphasizes national security, it sidelines the very risks—disinformation, brittle infrastructure, fractured trust—that adversaries already exploit.

Bad actors don’t just target code. They exploit weak social contracts, workforce instability, and digital fragility. Innovation that doesn’t translate into stability, opportunity, or public benefit loses legitimacy fast. And once that trust erodes, systems crack.

To be fair, the Action Plan is not without its bright spots. The signaling of investment in research and development has the potential for a promising return to our focus on research and innovation. The Department of Homeland Security is tasked with establishing an AI Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC)—a promising step that could reenergize stalled efforts to reauthorize the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015. Key agencies are directed to prioritize AI skill development in workforce and education funding. Treasury is clarifying that AI skills training can count as educational assistance under Section 132 of the tax code—a potential game changer for employer-sponsored upskilling. And there will be a study AI’s labor market impact using existing datasets. These are necessary, pragmatic moves that, if executed well, could drive inclusive growth.

But implementation matters. To land these investments effectively, agencies must act quickly, collect disaggregated data, ensure equitable access to upskilling opportunities, and evaluate impact through a lens that accounts for identity. If not, existing inequities, like those pushing Black women out of the workforce in record numbers, will deepen.

Industry Has a Mandate, Not Just Permission, to Lead

Let’s be clear: the government hasn’t withdrawn. It has deputized industry to shape the future.

That creates an extraordinary opportunity. Industry leaders now have the power, and responsibility, to:

• Embed real safety and security into AI deployments

• Build transparency frameworks that go beyond PR

• Treat workforce development as a strategic pillar, not an externality

• Shape global standards that are credible and interoperable

• Address trust gaps in misinformation, climate risk, and equity

This isn’t a void. It’s a blueprint moment. And without procurement standards that reward trust, companies have little incentive to lead with it. The companies that act now will define global norms, procurement defaults, and public expectations. The rest will be left catching up, or cleaning up.

Trust Is Infrastructure

Trust is not a soft value. It is hard infrastructure.

It anchors interoperability, fuels resilience, and drives long-term adoption. Without regulation, trust becomes the sharpest lever responsible companies have to shape outcomes.

Today, trust is:

• A market signal

• A policy foundation

• A strategic differentiator

As China exports a state-led model built on surveillance and centralized control, the U.S. private sector has a chance to lead with a trust-centered, pluralistic, rights-preserving alternative.

That’s not charity. That’s advantage.

Without Coordinated Leadership, the AI Future Fractures

The shift from public stewardship to private acceleration creates more than momentum, it creates a vacuum.

Without coordination, companies risk treating trust as a compliance line item. Promising tools like fairness audits and red-teaming may get buried in proprietary stacks. Transparency could become optional. Accountability, negotiable.

Meanwhile, some firms are offloading workforce development onto underfunded schools and states. That’s not strategy. It’s short-sighted. It weakens the very foundation of AI resilience.

State and local governments are stepping in, but without federal coherence, responses are inconsistent. Not to mention the threat of funding impacts for states that do not align to “ideological neutrality.” Some states are building thoughtful frameworks. Others are moving fast to meet the moment because their communities host infrastructure without seeing benefit, fueling resistance rather than alignment.

Globally, allies who once trusted U.S. AI leadership are hesitating. Foreign procurement now weighs values and safeguards alongside performance. And while America dithers, China and other states are filling global governance vacuums with models of their own.

Adversaries notice. They exploit ambiguity, fragmentation, and gaps—through cyberattacks, information warfare, and standards diplomacy.

This is not hypothetical. It is happening now.

The risky assumption that delegation without coordination is neutral is dangerous. Left unaddressed, this model invites incoherence, not innovation.

The Path Forward Requires Co-Leadership

This isn’t a choice between industry or government. The path forward demands coordinated leadership across government, industry, and civil society.

We must keep building with intention. The groundwork we lay now prepares the field for the moment government ultimately returns as more than a regulator of last resort. It must be a curator of public values, a convener of aligned norms, and a protector of democratic resilience.

At the same time, industry cannot mistake this vacuum as a green light to accelerate unchecked. This is a mandate to lead with purpose, embedding security, equity, sustainability, and global trust at the core of innovation. To think long term and account for the needs(short term and longer term) of the people you ultimately seek to serve. 

Get that balance right, and we won’t just build faster. We’ll build a future that endures.

We Must Act Now

U.S. AI governance is being written in product roadmaps, procurement memos, and investor decks not the halls of government.

Companies that want to stay competitive must act now to embed trust, center people, and confront risk head-on.

If you’re a policymaker, technologist, investor, educator, or advocate: speak up. Show up. Push for frameworks that make trust operational, not optional.

And to AI leaders: this is your blueprint moment. Design for trust, not just to prevent harm, but to unlock strategic edge in a high-stakes, fast-moving world.

We can’t outsource the future of AI. We have to co-author it. Starting now.

Where do you see the biggest gap between AI ambition and AI accountability?