Tag: White House AI framework

AI, Soft Power, and the New Thucydides Trap

The White House’s latest AI framework reads like a familiar story dressed in new clothes: we must move fast, avoid “overregulation,” and ensure that the United States “wins” the AI race—because China.

That framing is not new. It is, in fact, a modern version of the Thucydides Trap: the idea that when a rising power threatens to displace an established one, conflict—economic, political, or otherwise—becomes more likely. But what is striking here is not the invocation of competition. It’s how narrowly that competition is defined.

The framework implicitly treats AI dominance as a function of compute, capital, and model scale. Build bigger models faster, feed them more data, and ensure that domestic firms face as few constraints as possible. In that telling, creators, rights, and consent become secondary considerations—at best friction, at worst obstacles.

But that is a profound misread of where U.S. advantage actually lies.

American leadership has never been just about scale. It has been about legitimacy—the ability to build systems that other countries, companies, and individuals trust enough to adopt. That is the essence of soft power. And soft power is not generated by extraction; it is generated by rules that are perceived as fair.

When U.S. policy signals that training on creative works without meaningful consent is acceptable—or even necessary to “win”—it risks trading long-term legitimacy for short-term acceleration. That is a dangerous bargain. It tells the world that American AI leadership is built not on innovation alone, but on the uncompensated appropriation of global cultural and informational resources.

Other jurisdictions are already responding. The EU is experimenting with transparency mandates. Rights holders globally are pushing for enforceable consent regimes. Even countries that want to encourage AI development are increasingly wary of frameworks that look like data extraction at scale without accountability.

This is where the Thucydides analogy breaks down—or at least becomes more complicated. The real risk is not simply that China catches up technologically. It is that the United States, in trying to outrun that possibility, undermines the normative foundations of its own leadership.

Soft power erosion is not dramatic. It doesn’t announce itself with a headline. It accumulates quietly: in trade negotiations, in regulatory divergence, in the willingness of other countries to align—or not align—with U.S. standards. Over time, that erosion can matter more than any benchmark score or model release.

There is another path. The United States could lead by insisting that AI development is compatible with consent, compensation, and provenance. It could treat creators not as inputs to be harvested, but as stakeholders in a system that depends on their work. It could build infrastructure—technical and legal—that makes those principles operational, not aspirational.

That approach may look slower in the short term. It may impose costs that competitors are willing to ignore. But it is also how durable leadership is built.

Because in the long run, the question is not just who builds the most powerful models. It is who builds systems that the rest of the world is willing to trust.

And that is a competition the United States cannot afford to lose.

The Constitutional Shadow of the White House AI Framework: Law Without Law

One of the most important things about the White House AI framework released last week is what it is not.

It is not an executive order.

That may sound like a technical distinction, but it is doing an enormous amount of work here. Because by avoiding the form of an executive order, the framework avoids something even more important: Judicial review.

An executive order that attempted to declare AI training on copyrighted works lawful—or to constrain Congress from acting—would immediately invite challenge in the very judicial branch the framework also seeks to influence. Oh, that would be fun.

It would raise Administrative Procedure Act questions. It would trigger separation-of-powers scrutiny. It would likely be litigated within days.

This framework does none of that and is not susceptible to judicial challenge.

Instead, it achieves much of the same practical effect—shaping legal outcomes, constraining policy space, and signaling preferred doctrine—without creating a justiciable action. It is, in effect, law without law, and outcomes by positioning. Silicon Valley’s favorite.

Takings by Policy, Not Statute

Start with the most obvious constitutional issue: the Takings Clause of Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which states that “private property [cannot] be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Copyright is a form of property. That is not controversial. It is a statutory property right grounded in the Constitution’s Intellectual Property Clause, and it carries exclusive rights that have long been understood as economically valuable.

Now consider what the White House framework does.

It declares that AI training—mass, indiscriminate ingestion of copyrighted works—as lawful. It does so without requiring compensation. And it does so in a context where the resulting systems can substitute for, or diminish the market for, the original works.

If that official policy position of the Executive Branch were enacted into law, it would raise a straightforward question:

Has the government authorized the use of private property for public and commercial purposes without compensation? Or more directly, has the Executive Branch just announced that will not prosecute that indiscriminate ingestion for any reason? Can we expect to see amicus briefs from the Solicitor General opposing copyright owners pursuing their rights in court?

That is sounding a lot like a taking.

But because the framework is not law, it avoids the moment where that question must be answered. It does not extinguish rights formally. It renders them economically hollow in practice, while leaving the formal structure intact.

That is the key move: functional elimination without formal abolition.

Ex Post Facto in Everything but Name

The framework also raises a second, less discussed issue: the logic of ex post facto lawmaking.

The Ex Post Facto Clause technically applies to criminal law. But the underlying principle is broader: the government should not change the legal consequences of past conduct to benefit favored actors or disadvantage others. Of course, copyright owners raising this argument will have the Spotify retroactive safe harbor in Title I of the Music Modernization Act thrown in their face as rank hypocrisy, which they would richly deserve, although as any 10 year old can tell you, two wrongs don’t make a right, at least in theory.

Here, the timeline matters.

  • Massive datasets have already been scraped.
  • Models have already been trained.
  • The conduct that enabled this may, in many instances, have been legally questionable—and in cases of willful infringement, potentially criminal under federal copyright law. Or if you listen to me, the largest case of criminal copyright infringement in history.

Now comes the policy years after the fact in the face of over 150 AI lawsuits all based on copyright infringement to one degree or another:

Training is lawful.

That looks less like interpretation and more like retroactive validation.

Even if framed as civil doctrine, the effect is similar to retroactive decriminalization of conduct tied to vested rights. It sends a clear message: conduct that may have been unlawful when undertaken will be treated as lawful because it is now economically indispensable to the broligarchs.

That is not how the rule of law is supposed to work.

Separation of Powers by Suggestion

The framework’s treatment of Congress is equally striking. It does not say Congress lacks authority to legislate. The President cannot say that. Well…he can, but there’s no foundation for the statement. The Constitution is clear: Congress defines copyright.

Instead, the framework says Congress should not act in ways that would affect judicial resolution of the training question.

That is an unusual formulation. Congress legislates in areas under litigation all the time. Indeed, it is often expected to clarify statutory ambiguity.

What the framework is doing is more subtle: It is attempting to shape the legislative field without formally constraining it.

And it pairs that with an implicit second message:

  • Legislation that restricts training or mandates licensing is inconsistent with executive policy.
  • Such legislation is therefore unlikely to be signed by the President. So why bring it?

That is a veto signal—delivered without the political cost of an actual veto.

Judicial Signaling Without Command

The same dynamic applies to the courts.

The framework claims to “defer” to the judiciary. But it simultaneously declares a preferred outcome: training is lawful.

That is not deference. That is signaling.

Judges are, of course, independent. But they do not operate in a vacuum. They are aware of executive priorities, legislative inaction, and market realities. When all three align around a single policy direction, it creates an interpretive gravitational force that is difficult to ignore.

And the signal travels further.

To lawyers.
To regulators.
To anyone whose career may intersect with executive appointment.

It normalizes what counts as a “reasonable” position within the current policy environment.

Prosecutorial Silence as Policy

There is also a more immediate, practical consequence.

While the framework does not have the force of law, it functions as an indirect directive to the Department of Justice. By declaring training lawful as a matter of policy, it signals that federal enforcement resources should not be used to pursue cases premised on the opposite view.

In effect, it tells prosecutors:

Do not spend time considering criminal enforcement for large-scale copyright violations tied to AI training. Do not spend time considering antitrust enforcement against the broligarchs. In fact, don’t spend any time prosecuting anyone regarding AI.

That matters because, for example, willful copyright infringement at scale can, in certain circumstances, give rise to criminal liability. I mean if that doesn’t, what does? Yet under this framework, even the possibility of such enforcement is quietly set aside.

This is not formal immunity. But in practice, it can look very similar.

Why “Not an Executive Order” Matters

If this were an executive order, all of these issues would be front and center:

  • Is this a taking?
  • Does it exceed executive authority?
  • Does it interfere with Congress?
  • Does it interfere with the Judiciary?

Because it is not and EO, these important issues remain in the background—present but untested.

That is the genius, and the danger, of the approach.

It allows the executive branch to:

  • Shape doctrine
  • Influence courts
  • Constrain Congress
  • Guide enforcement priorities
  • Normalize contested conduct

—all without triggering the mechanisms designed to check it.

The Constitutional Shadow

The AI framework does not violate the Constitution in any formal sense.

It does something more complicated.

It operates in the constitutional shadow—where policy can reshape rights, incentives, and expectations without ever crossing the line that would allow a court to say no.

But shadows matter.

Because by the time the law catches up—if it ever does—the world the Constitution was meant to govern and protect may already have changed.