The Trump Administration is hamstrung by deep staters and Biden holdovers working against America-First policies.

For example, even though President Trump is all about putting “America First” and seeks to boost US companies and allies, Biden-era officials deep inside the Washington bureaucracy have stopped the new Administration cold on just such policies in the AI arena.

During the last week of President Biden’s term, the Bureau of Industry and Security (a 500-person agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce) launched a series of unreasonably restrictive new regulations over AI chips, semiconductors and biotechnology. This knowingly defied the new direction of the incoming Administration.

These restrictions surrounded the Biden Administration’s “AI Diffusion Rule.”  In the form of an executive order, this rule required that domestic AI chip makers reserve 50 percent of all production for domestic consumption. It put severe limitations on the exportation of the remaining chips to so-called “Tier 1” allies and a few others. Biden’s AI Diffusion Rule went into effect a week before President Trump was sworn into office in 2025. One of Trump’s first acts of office was to rescind this Biden rule as “ill conceived.”

The rule was not only ill-conceived but also ineffective. There is nothing in the AI Diffusion Rule that would prevent a Tier One allied country – say Japan, for example – from........

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