By Lee Kim JD CISSP CIPP/US, Senior Principal, Cybersecurity and Privacy, HIMSS

The White House released America’s AI Action Plan in July 2025, following President Trump’s Executive Order 14179, Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence, signed in January 2025. The order directed the creation of a national roadmap to ensure U.S. leadership in the global AI race.

The Action Plan asserts that the private sector will drive AI innovation, while the federal government serves as the enabler by creating the conditions for American AI leadership to thrive. This includes removing regulatory barriers, building the infrastructure needed to support AI at scale, safeguarding national security and coordinating international efforts. It also sets out near-term policy actions for federal agencies to implement these priorities and deliver on the Trump Administration’s vision for U.S. global leadership in AI.

The plan has three major components:

• Pillar I calls for accelerating AI innovation by ensuring the United States has the most powerful systems and leads in their creative and transformative application, with the federal government creating conditions for private-sector innovation to flourish.
• Pillar II emphasizes building American AI infrastructure, highlighting the need for expanded energy generation and resilient infrastructure to meet the unprecedented demands of AI and support long-term growth.
• Pillar III focuses on international AI diplomacy and security, with the United States seeking to build a global alliance by exporting its AI systems, hardware and standards while preventing adversaries from exploiting American innovation and investment.

Pillar I: Accelerate AI Innovation

Pillar I focuses on accelerating AI innovation by ensuring the United States develops the most powerful systems and leads in their creative and transformative application. The Trump Administration emphasizes that private-sector-led innovation is central, while the federal government provides the regulatory and policy framework to support growth.

Reduce or Eliminate Regulations: Remove Red Tape and Onerous Regulation

The plan seeks to remove barriers to American AI innovation. It rolls back prior rules that could have imposed heavier regulation and bars federal funding from supporting states with laws that would limit AI growth. It also directs the federal government to prevent conflicting state rules from disrupting national oversight of AI and to review recent enforcement actions to make sure they are not based on legal theories or requirements that would burden AI development.

Expand Access to AI Resources

To make powerful AI tools more accessible, the plan calls for building a robust computing market, expanding private-sector partnerships and scaling up the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot. These efforts aim to connect more researchers and startups with critical computing power, data and models while also advancing open-source adoption.

Accelerate AI Adoption

The plan calls for the establishment of AI Centers of Excellence — including in the healthcare and public health sector — to enable real-world testing and validation of AI. It also supports the development of domain-specific standards and productivity metrics, along with regular assessments of AI adoption in the U.S. and globally to inform defense, national security and competitive strategies.

In healthcare, domain-specific initiatives would be carried out in coordination with NIST to convene public, private and academic stakeholders. These efforts are intended to accelerate the creation and adoption of national standards for healthcare AI systems and to evaluate how effectively AI enhances performance and productivity in clinical and operational settings.

Strengthen the AI Workforce

As stated by the plan, “AI can help America build an economy that delivers more pathways to economic opportunity for American workers.”

AI has the potential to boost productivity and create entirely new industries, opening doors to greater economic opportunity. At the same time, it will change how work is done across all sectors, requiring a strong response to help workers adapt.

To prepare for this shift, the Trump Administration has launched initiatives to expand AI education for youth and build pathways into high‑paying skilled jobs. The focus will be on expanding AI literacy and training, offering rapid retraining opportunities and ensuring workers can successfully transition into AI‑driven roles. New research hubs will track AI’s impact on the labor market, while pilot programs will test innovative strategies to help workers thrive in a changing economy.

Advance AI-Enabled Manufacturing

To maintain leadership in AI-driven emerging technologies, the plan calls for strategic investment in advanced manufacturing and in strengthening supply chains for next‑generation hardware.

These efforts aim to advance world‑class capabilities in producing critical AI‑enabled technologies, including healthcare‑related innovations such as self‑driving and autonomous vehicles, medical robotics, advanced medical devices and pharmaceutical manufacturing systems.

Build World-Class Scientific Data Sets

The plan calls for the creation of the world’s largest and highest‑quality AI‑ready scientific datasets through efforts such as setting minimum data standards, expanding secure access to restricted federal datasets and advancing large‑scale genome sequencing.

These initiatives aim to provide the foundation for AI models that drive breakthroughs in biology, medicine and healthcare while ensuring strong protections for privacy, confidentiality and civil liberties.

Advance the Science of AI

The plan calls for strategic and targeted investment at the frontier of artificial intelligence research to ensure the United States remains the leading pioneer of future breakthroughs.

Just as large language models and generative AI systems marked a paradigm shift in the science of AI, future advances may similarly redefine the boundaries of what is technically possible. To bolster American leadership, the plan prioritizes theoretical, computational, and experimental research, with these priorities reflected in the National AI R&D Strategic Plan.

Improve Interpretability and Safety

The plan prioritizes breakthroughs in AI interpretability — the ability to understand the reasoning behind AI outputs — as well as advances in control and robustness to ensure reliability in high‑stakes settings, including national security. It calls for coordinated research programs and red‑team style exercises, such as hackathons, to stress‑test systems and improve transparency, accountability and safety.

Build a Trusted AI Evaluation Ecosystem

Reliable AI requires rigorous and standardized evaluation. The plan supports the creation of government‑wide testbeds, advanced evaluation tools and collaborative research frameworks to measure AI performance across sectors. It also emphasizes the development of best practices and shared metrics to ensure consistent and trustworthy assessments.

Modernize Federal AI Use

To enhance government efficiency, the plan calls for scaling AI adoption across federal agencies through shared procurement platforms, interagency coordination and talent exchange programs. It also ensures that frontline workers have both access to and training in the use of frontier AI tools.

Expand AI Use in Defense

The Department of Defense will accelerate AI adoption by automating key workflows, securing access to emergency compute capacity, launching a virtual AI test environment and expanding AI education across military academies and colleges.

Protect U.S. AI Innovation

The plan emphasizes stronger collaboration between government and industry to safeguard commercial and government AI innovations against cyber threats, insider risks and other security vulnerabilities.

Address Synthetic Media Risks

To combat the growing threat of malicious synthetic media, including deepfakes, the plan supports the development of forensic detection tools, legal guidance, and evidentiary standards to help courts, law enforcement and the public maintain trust in digital content.

Pillar II: Build American AI Infrastructure

Strengthen Energy and Compute Capacity

The plan emphasizes that sustaining U.S. leadership in AI requires substantial investment in energy generation and resilient infrastructure.

Expanding capacity and modernizing the grid are essential to support the growing demands of AI workloads — particularly the compute‑intensive requirements of healthcare AI across a wide range of applications — including advanced diagnostics, medical imaging, precision medicine, clinical research, population health and other fields.

Train a Skilled Workforce for AI Infrastructure

The plan recognizes that building the infrastructure to power America’s AI future requires a workforce with the skills to design, operate and maintain it.

Addressing shortages in critical roles — from electricians and advanced HVAC technicians to other high‑demand technical occupations — is essential for sustaining growth.

The plan calls for identifying priority roles that underpin AI infrastructure, developing modern skills frameworks, supporting industry‑driven training and expanding early pipelines through general education, career and technical education, and Registered Apprenticeships.

These efforts are designed to ensure there is sufficient talent needed to maintain leadership in AI infrastructure and to support innovation in healthcare and beyond.

Enhance Cybersecurity for Critical Infrastructure

The plan calls for bolstering cybersecurity protections across critical infrastructure — which includes the healthcare and public health sector.

As AI systems advance in coding and software engineering, their use in both cyber offense and defense will expand. For critical infrastructure providers, many of whom operate with limited resources, maintaining a strong defensive posture is essential. The plan emphasizes that AI‑enabled defensive tools can help these organizations stay ahead of emerging threats.

But deploying AI in safety‑critical settings (which includes healthcare where patient safety is at risk) exposes systems to adversarial risks such as data poisoning and manipulated inputs that could compromise performance. To address this, the plan calls for AI systems that are secure, robust and resilient, equipped to detect performance shifts and alert operators to potential malicious activity.

It also supports the creation of an AI Information Sharing and Analysis Center (AI‑ISAC), led by DHS in collaboration with other federal partners, to share threat intelligence and vulnerability information across critical infrastructure sectors.

Promote Mature Federal Capacity for AI Incident Response

The proliferation of AI technologies means that prudent planning is required to ensure that, if systems fail, the impacts on critical services or infrastructure are minimized and response is immediate.

The plan calls on the federal government to promote the development and incorporation of AI incident response actions into existing incident response doctrine and best practices for both the public and private sectors. Recommended actions include efforts led by NIST, including CAISI (NIST’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation), to partner with industry and ensure AI-specific risks are addressed in standards, response frameworks and technical capabilities of incident response teams.

Pillar III: Lead in International AI Diplomacy and Security

Export American AI to Allies and Partners

The plan calls for meeting global demand for AI by exporting the full U.S. technology stack — including hardware, models, software, applications, and standards — to allied nations.

This approach is intended to prevent U.S. partners from becoming dependent on adversary technology and to reinforce American leadership in establishing trusted AI standards.

For healthcare, this could include the export of U.S.-developed AI-enabled systems. To implement this strategy, the Department of Commerce will lead a new program to gather proposals from industry consortia for full-stack AI export packages.

Federal agencies — including the State Department, the Export-Import Bank and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency — will coordinate to facilitate deals that align with U.S. security requirements and standards. In the healthcare context, these efforts promote consistent standards and facilitate the adoption of healthcare AI solutions worldwide.

Ensure U.S. Government Evaluates National Security Risks in Frontier Models

The plan emphasizes that the most advanced and capable AI systems — known as frontier models — may pose novel national security risks in the near future.

These include potential misuse in cyberattacks, the development of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or explosives (CBRNE) weapons, and the exploitation of emerging security vulnerabilities, including biological threats.

Key Takeaways

America’s AI Action Plan sets out a clear framework for accelerating innovation, expanding the infrastructure to sustain it, and shaping global standards for the safe and effective use of AI.

In healthcare, the plan highlights AI’s potential to advance scientific discovery, enhance patient outcomes and bolster resilience against cyber and biosecurity threats. Its focus on workforce training, modern infrastructure, rigorous evaluation and international engagement together reflect the plan’s emphasis on enabling private-sector innovation while addressing national priorities such as security, competitiveness, and global leadership in AI.

Patient safety and care require safe, secure, and innovative AI — a responsibility we all share. - Lee Kim JD, CISSP, CIPP/US