When DeepSeek, Alibaba, and other Chinese firms released their AI models, Western researchers quickly noticed they sidestepped questions critical of the Chinese Communist Party. U.S. officials later confirmed that these tools are engineered to reflect Beijing’s talking points, raising concerns about censorship and bias.
American AI leaders like OpenAI have pointed to this as justification for advancing their tech quickly, without too much regulation or oversight. As OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane wrote in a LinkedIn post last month, there is a contest between “US-led democratic AI and Communist-led China’s autocratic AI.”
An executive order signed Wednesday by President Donald Trump that bans “woke AI” and AI models that aren’t “ideologically neutral” from government contracts could disrupt that balance.
The order calls out diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), calling it a “pervasive and destructive” ideology that can “distort the quality and accuracy of the output.” Specifically, the order refers to information about race or sex, manipulation of racial or sexual representation, critical race theory, transgenderism, unconscious bias, intersectionality, and systemic racism.
Experts warn it could create a chilling effect on developers who may feel pressure to align model outputs and datasets with White House rhetoric to secure federal dollars for their cash-burning businesses.
The order comes the same day the White House published Trump’s “AI Action Plan,” which shifts national priorities away from societal risk and focuses instead on building out AI infrastructure, cutting red tape for tech companies, shoring up national security, and competing with China.
The order instructs the director of the Office of Management and Budget along with the administrator for Federal Procurement Policy, the administrator of General Services, and the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy to issue guidance to other agencies on how to comply.
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“Once and for all, we are getting rid of woke,” Trump said Wednesday during an AI event hosted by the All-In Podcast and Hill & Valley Forum. “I will be signing an order banning the federal government from procuring AI technology that has been infused with partisan bias or ideological agendas, such as c …