Executive order

The Pentagon issued new guidance last week focused on implementing the Trump administration's so-called truth-seeking and ideological neutrality principles in AI procurements.

A memo dated October 20th from John Tenaglia, the Pentagon's head of acquisition, noted that the initiative is in direct support of a previous EO from President Donald Trump on preventing woke AI in the federal government and an Office of Management and Budget memo on increasing public trust in artificial intelligence through unbiased AI principles.

Trump's EO issued last year laid out the administration's truth-seeking and ideological neutrality edicts for AI procurements, stating that large language models purchased by federal agencies shall be truthful in responding to user prompts seeking factual information or analysis and prioritize historical accuracy, scientific inquiry, and objectivity, and shall acknowledge uncertainty where reliable information is incomplete or contradictory.

The models must be neutral, nonpartisan tools that don't manipulate responses in favor of ideological dogmas such as DEI, Trump wrote, adding that developers shall not intentionally encode partisan or ideological judgments into an LLM's outputs unless those judgments are prompted by or otherwise readily accessible to the end user.

Tenaglia noted in his memo that compliance with the White House directive is mandatory.

The importer records part of, you know, is the party legally responsible for compliance, payment of duties? The order would draw a very sharp distinction between the US and foreign importers with additional eligibility requirements, additional bonding, and trusted trader requirements for foreign importers.

I would also flag that on this piece of the EO, there is an interim final rule that is pending with the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, that's under review.

An IFR means that when it comes out, it will be immediately effective and that the agency will take comments after the fact.

But it appears to be getting after this foreign importer of record piece that the EO calls out.

So this is something to really be paying attention to.

if you are an importer of record.

Second on the EO, bonding.

So a customs bond is a financial guarantee that duties, taxes, penalties are going to be paid.

And many employers who are federal contractors have really, over the last 21, 22 months, been faced with kind of a multitude of changes.

And we're sort of reflecting on this because it feels like those changes are now becoming solidified in more of a go-forward program as opposed to daily press releases or social media releases or executive orders.

And one of the things we've been doing recently with several clients is kind of, okay, let's put all the pieces together and how are we going forward, particularly as we roll into 27.

And I think with that, let me just sort of do a little foundational element quickly.

As we know, the rollback of the federal contractor affirmative action obligations and the focus on illegal DEI is really premised on two executive orders that President Trump signed.

The first one rescinded LBJ's Executive Order 11246, essentially gutted OFCCP.

And then the question really turned to how is the Trump administration going to end this newly coined term, illegal DEI? Well, after we're about 21 months into the Trump administration, we're beginning to get some answers as to how those changes are going to be implemented.

So first, the two executive orders.

You know, we are two months or so after Russia has launched its widespread, uh, invasion of eastern Ukraine, and we have seen a series of executive branch actions to impose sanctions on, uh, Russia, uh, in kind of end of February and, uh, through the, the, the first part of March in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

So we'd seen sanctions out of the White House pursuant to an executive order, uh, Executive Order 14024, targeting, you know, the Russian sovereign wealth and assets, targeting some major, you know, Russian companies of different, uh, different kinds.

And then I wanna say it was on March 8th of 2022, uh, President Biden issues this second executive order, or an additional executive order, EO 14066, uh, which prohibits, A, the importation, this is an executive order issued pursuant to IEEPA.

It, uh, prohibits, A, the importation of oil, of Russian oil, uh, and energy products into the United States, and it also prohibits new American investment, uh, in the Russian, uh, energy sector.

And because this EO came down fairly quickly and because there was, uh, you know, sort of ongoing and prior to the invasion, prior to these sanctions, the US had been importing, uh, not enormous, but non, uh, non-zero volumes of energy from, uh, Russia, I think particularly for sort of northeastern markets coming across the Atlantic.

The Treasury Department issued a wind down license, uh, same time that this EO comes down.

They say notwithstanding the EO, through, I wanna say sort of late April, I think it was probably 45-day wind down license, or April 20-something maybe, uh, saying, you know, imports are continue to be allowed for this period of time, uh, to kind of allow the on-the-water, you know, uh, on-the-water tankers, uh, to continue to come into the US.

So, so the executive branch, again, early March, acts against Russian, US imports of Russian oil, uh, but also creates this kind of wind down period through late April.

I mean [laughs] but yeah, it's, it is a, a very, very powerful policy, uh, implement, uh, if you wanna say.

Uh, and, um, y- you're, you're going in exactly the right direction here, Ethan, in terms of setting the, the tone, uh, especially when we- we're thinking about executive orders, or what I'm gonna call them, EOs, because I'm lazy.

So if you hear me say EO-

[laughs]

... it's executive order, so I don't have to say executive orders a million more times.

Um, w- it is not a huge surprise that President Trump in his second term has a bunch of EOs that are space related, because space is something, uh, that we saw in his first term that is something very near and dear to him.

He created the Space Force, uh, and I'm not gonna touch with a 20-foot pole whether or not that should have happened, because it exists, and that's all I care at this point.

It's there.

Um, one is Hegseth's announcement of the execution of-- televised execution of this guy from Fort Hood shooting.

And then we're gonna dig into something with a lot more meat, which is Trump's post on Truth Social, which ties in with an EO that he signed on the 29th of September, declaring that anybody that uses artificial intelligence is the enemy as a term, because it's now been renamed to super intelligence.

And we're gonna dig into the implications of this, which go far beyond his ridiculous post.

He gets into the actual workings of what's happening with AI and what the consolidation of power looks like.

Use the link posted below the podcast to take advantage of this offer.

Check it out today.

So the legal definition is in this AEO was the order explicitly states that superintelligence currently has the same legal meaning as the existing statutory definition of AI, which is fifteen USC ninety-four oh one parent-- paragraph three.

It is a rebrand, not a change in law or technology status.

It's impossible to administer these schemes without consideration, at least in some circumstances, of the message of a project and whether it aligns with these values.

At issue here is efforts by the NEA to implement Executive Order 14168, which set forth a series of priorities related to the president's concerns about the use of federal funds to promote gender ideology, which was a priority in the prior administration.

Initially, the NEA changed its application process to require applicants to certify compliance with the EEO, which amounted to a type of eligibility bar on projects that promoted gender ideology.

The NEA rescinded that and has adopted a far more modest approach.

As set forth in the final notice that is at issue here, the NEA has stated that all applications, regardless of whether they promote gender ideology, will be evaluated according to the same statutory standards.