MIT Technology Review · AIJan 23, 2026, 18:00 UTC+8

America’s coming war over AI regulation

On December 11, 2025, Donald Trump signed an executive order to challenge state AI laws via DOJ lawsuits and pressure states through federal broadband funding. The post cites New York’s RAISE Act, California’s SB 53, more than 1,000 state AI bills introduced in 2025, and over 100 laws passed across nearly 40 states. The real battleground in 2026 is courts, statehouses, and super PAC spending.

Why it matters: HKR-H/K/R all pass: the federal-vs-state AI law fight is a strong hook, and the piece adds an EO date, two named state laws, and state-bill counts. It hits builders' compliance nerve, but it is analysis of a coming battle, not a fresh rule rollout, so it lands at the low end of '

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Take

Trump’s December 11 executive order turns AI regulation from a safety fight into a jurisdiction fight, and model companies benefit from that framing. The order tells DOJ to sue states whose AI laws conflict with light-touch federal policy, then pushes Commerce to threaten federal broadband funding. New York’s RAISE Act was signed on December 19, and California’s SB 53 took effect on January 1; both focus on transparency, safety protocols, incident reporting, and frontier-risk scenarios.

I don’t buy the clean “national standard” story. States introduced more than 1,000 AI bills in 2025, and nearly 40 states passed over 100 laws. Congress stalled, so statehouses became the enforcement layer. For OpenAI, Character Technologies, and anyone shipping consumer AI, the hard part is not “patchwork” as a talking point. It is courts, state attorneys general, PAC money, and compliance teams pulling in different directions at once.

Source: MIT Technology Review · AI · technologyreview.com
Published: Jan 23, 2026, 18:00 UTC+8 · Jan 23, 2026