President Donald Trump has postponed signing an executive order that would empower the government to assess AI models prior to their public release. Trump indicated dissatisfaction with the order’s wording, telling the White House press pool, “I didn’t like certain aspects of it. We’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that leading.”

The informal reason for the delay, according to multiple reports, is that not enough tech CEOs could travel to Washington, D.C. on short notice—and what’s an executive order signing without a photo opportunity? The anticipated order would have directed the Office of the National Cyber Director and other agencies to create a process for evaluating AI models for security vulnerabilities before their release. This move responds partly to concerns raised by the release of Anthropic’s Mythos and OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 Cyber, both of which can rapidly identify and exploit security flaws.

A key point of contention in the executive order’s language, as reported by CNN, is a proposed requirement that AI companies share advanced models with the government between 14 and 90 days before launch. Trump expressed worry that the order’s current wording “could have been a blocker.”