Trump's Secret AI Framework Draws Senate Pressure as New Task Force Gets 120 Days to Sort It Out
President Trump signed an artificial intelligence executive order earlier this year that promised a regulatory framework for frontier AI models. That framework has not been released. On October 6, two Democratic senators sent a letter demanding to know why, and to whom the drafting process has been open.
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal addressed their letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and White House cyber adviser Sean Cairncross. The core accusation: the Trump administration is shaping AI policy around the preferences of major technology companies rather than addressing safety and national security risks from increasingly capable models.
“We are concerned that the Trump administration is accommodating the interests of Big Tech CEOs rather than addressing the safety and security risks posed by increasingly sophisticated AI systems,” the letter states.
The New Task Force
The letter arrived in the same week Trump formalized a new AI governance structure. The administration has created what it calls a “Super Intelligence” task force, led by Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, who was named White House AI czar on October 5. The task force has 120 days to analyze AI risks and opportunities and report back.
Scott Kupor is listed as a co-chair of the task force. Kupor is the managing partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a firm with substantial investments across the frontier AI sector. He rejected claims in an interview that the administration is captured by industry interests, saying the task force would approach the mandate independently.
The structure creates a governance picture that is roughly the opposite of what Warren and Blumenthal are demanding. The senators want transparency into what lobbying has shaped the unreleased framework. The administration’s response has been to create a new body with a 120-day runway before it produces anything public.
What the Framework Was Supposed to Do
Trump’s AI executive order tasked agencies with developing a framework that would govern how the federal government approaches frontier AI development, deployment, and risk assessment. The framework was intended to clarify the administration’s position on mandatory pre-release testing, export controls, and how the US intends to approach international AI governance.
Earlier AI policy moves from this administration include a security executive order that dropped mandatory pre-release testing for commercial frontier models, and a national legislative framework that attempted to preempt state-level AI laws. Neither resolved the question of what the federal government’s substantive position on frontier model risk looks like.
The Warren-Blumenthal letter is asking that question directly: who has been consulted, under what conditions, and when will the public see what has been agreed.
The Governance Vacuum
The practical effect of the delayed framework is that frontier AI companies have been operating without a clear federal signal for most of 2026. Labs have voluntarily committed to various safety protocols, including the CAISI pre-release testing agreement signed by Google, Microsoft, and xAI earlier this year. But voluntary commitments are not the framework the EO promised.
With Jay Clayton’s task force now running a 120-day clock from around early October, the framework is unlikely to appear before early 2027. Warren and Blumenthal are asking for answers before that. Whether they get a substantive response or a procedural one will indicate how much the administration is willing to open the process before the deadline.
The political context matters too. Midterm positioning on AI is becoming concrete: Democrats who backed a more interventionist regulatory approach are now using the absence of any federal framework as evidence that the administration chose industry access over public interest. Republicans who supported the EO argue that light-touch federal policy avoids the fragmentation of state-level regulation.
Neither side has produced a detailed policy. The task force is supposed to be the mechanism that resolves the internal cabinet disagreements that have so far prevented one from emerging.