The Administration is Already Governing AI Development. It Just Doesn't Have a Strategy

The National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence is silent on whether and how to govern the trajectory of AI development itself. It says nothing about frontier model safety evaluation, responsible scaling, international coordination on development risks, or verification mechanisms. It explicitly recommends against creating a new federal AI rulemaking body and shields developers from liability for third-party misuse of their models. On its own, the document suggests that the administration’s position is that AI applications need some guardrails while AI development should be left to the market and accelerated as fast as possible. If the administration actually adhered to that stance, it would at least represent a coherent strategy. But the administration’s own actions tell a different story. Across multiple policy domains, the government is already making consequential decisions about the direction of AI development. It just isn’t calling them governance. I argue we need a new, independent research institution designed to do what government agencies and corporate labs structurally cannot, which is to build a rigorous, empirical foundation for governing frontier AI. The White House framework addresses the questions we already have the tools to think about. The harder questions, which the administration is already answering through its uncoordinated actions, are the ones where we are flying blind. Building the tools to answer them is an investment nobody is making, but it is the only way to turn ad hoc reactions into actual strategy.