America's AI Action Plan: New U.S. Strategy for International Diplomacy in AI

The Institute for Public Diplomacy provides an overview of the “America’s AI Action Plan”, which is built on three core pillars:

(I) Accelerating AI Innovation;

(II) Building American AI Infrastructure; and

(III) Leading in International AI Diplomacy and Security.

The Plan opens new opportunities and responsibilities for governments, and AI stakeholders— including technology developers, researchers, civil society groups, companies using AI, communities affected by AI systems, and public diplomacy practitioners.

While some critics contend that the Plan overlooks essential civil rights protections and lacks sufficient oversight mechanisms, the Institute asserts that principles of civil rights, equity, and fairness are embedded throughout the framework — most notably within Pillar I (“Accelerating AI Innovation”) and Pillar II (“Building American AI Infrastructure”). These pillars promote inclusive innovation by supporting equitable access to AI technologies, fostering diverse participation in AI development, and ensuring that guidance aligns with existing civil rights protections and trustworthy AI standards.

The Plan emphasizes that American AI technology should be developed free from ideological bias, while ensuring that working families are supported and not left behind.

For years, the Institute has highlighted that working families are among the most underrepresented groups in all decision-making processes, and we applaud their explicit recognition and inclusion in this Plan.

AI diplomacy strategies fail to address the needs or voices of working families, leaving them underrepresented in global engagement.

This post focuses on the Plan’s third pillar — Leading in International AI Diplomacy and Security — and summarizes its major highlights directly from the Plan.

On July 23, 2025, the White House released America’s AI Action Plan, a comprehensive strategy to secure U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence.

In accordance with the Plan,

"To succeed in the global AI competition, America must do more than promote AI within its own borders. The United States must also drive adoption of American AI systems, computing hardware, and standards throughout the world. America currently is the global leader on data center construction, computing hardware performance, and models. It is imperative that the United States leverage this advantage into an enduring global alliance, while preventing our adversaries from free-riding on our innovation and investment.

Export American AI to Allies and Partners

The United States must meet global demand for AI by exporting its full AI technology stack— hardware, models, software, applications, and standards—to all countries willing to join America’s AI alliance. A failure to meet this demand would be an unforced error, causing these countries to turn to our rivals. The distribution and diffusion of American technology will stop our strategic rivals from making our allies dependent on foreign adversary technology. Recommended Policy Actions • Establish and operationalize a program within DOC aimed at gathering proposals from industry consortia for full-stack AI export packages. Once consortia are selected by DOC, the Economic Diplomacy Action Group, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, the Export-Import Bank, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, and the Department of State (DOS) should coordinate with DOC to facilitate deals that meet U.S.-approved security requirements and standards.

Counter Chinese Influence in International Governance Bodies

A large number of international bodies, including the United Nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, G7, G20, International Telecommunication Union, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and others have proposed AI governance frameworks and AI development strategies.

The United States supports likeminded nations working together to encourage the development of AI in line with our shared values. But too many of these efforts have advocated for burdensome regulations, vague “codes of conduct” that promote cultural agendas that do not align with American values, or have been influenced by Chinese companies attempting to shape standards for facial recognition and surveillance.

Recommended Policy Actions

• Led by DOS and DOC, leverage the U.S. position in international diplomatic and standard-setting bodies to vigorously advocate for international AI governance approaches that promote innovation, reflect American values, and counter authoritarian influence.

Strengthen AI Compute Export Control Enforcement

Advanced AI compute is essential to the AI era, enabling both economic dynamism and novel military capabilities. Denying our foreign adversaries access to this resource, then, is a matter of both geostrategic competition and national security. Therefore, we should pursue creative approaches to export control enforcement.

Recommended Policy Actions

• Led by DOC, OSTP, and NSC in collaboration with industry, explore leveraging new and existing location verification features on advanced AI compute to ensure that the chips are not in countries of concern.

• Establish a new effort led by DOC to collaborate with IC officials on global chip export control enforcement. This would include monitoring emerging technology developments in AI compute to ensure full coverage of possible countries or regions where chips are being diverted. This enhanced monitoring could then be used to expand and increase end-use monitoring in countries where there is a high risk of diversion of advanced, U.S.-origin AI compute, especially where there is not a Bureau of Industry and Security Export Control Officer present in-country.

Plug Loopholes in Existing Semiconductor Manufacturing Export Controls

Semiconductors are among the most complex inventions ever conceived by man. America and its close allies hold near-monopolies on many critical components and processes in the semiconductor manufacturing pipeline. We must continue to lead the world with pathbreaking research and new inventions in semiconductor manufacturing, but the United States must also prevent our adversaries from using our innovations to their own ends in ways that undermine our national security. This requires new measures to address gaps in semiconductor manufacturing export controls, coupled with enhanced enforcement.

Recommended Policy Actions

• Led by DOC, develop new export controls on semiconductor manufacturing subsystems. Currently, the United States and its allies impose export controls on major systems necessary for semiconductor manufacturing, but do not control many of the component sub-systems. Align Protection Measures Globally America must impose strong export controls on sensitive technologies. We should encourage partners and allies to follow U.S. controls, and not backfill. If they do, America should use tools such as the Foreign Direct Product Rule and secondary tariffs to achieve greater international alignment.

Recommended Policy Actions

• Led by DOC and DOS and in coordination with NSC, DOE, and NSF, develop, implement, and share information on complementary technology protection measures, including in basic research and higher education, to mitigate risks from strategic adversaries and concerning entities. This work should build on existing efforts underway at DOS and DOC, or, where necessary, involve new diplomatic campaigns.

• Develop a technology diplomacy strategic plan for an AI global alliance to align incentives and policy levers across government to induce key allies to adopt complementary AI protection systems and export controls across the supply chain, led by DOS in coordination with DOC, DOD, and DOE. This plan should aim to ensure that American allies do not supply adversaries with technologies on which the U.S. is seeking to impose export controls.

• Expand new initiatives for promoting plurilateral controls for the AI tech stack, avoiding the sole reliance on multilateral treaty bodies to accomplish this objective, while also encompassing existing U.S. controls and all future controls to level the playing field between U.S. and allied controls.

• Led by DOC and DOD, coordinate with allies to ensure that they adopt U.S. export controls, work together with the U.S to develop new controls, and prohibit U.S. adversaries from supplying their defense-industrial base or acquiring controlling stakes in defense suppliers.

Ensure that the U.S. Government is at the Forefront of Evaluating National Security Risks in Frontier Models

The most powerful AI systems may pose novel national security risks in the near future in areas such as cyberattacks and the development of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or explosives (CBRNE) weapons, as well as novel security vulnerabilities. Because America currently leads on AI capabilities, the risks present in American frontier models are likely to be a preview for what foreign adversaries will possess in the near future. Understanding the nature of these risks as they emerge is vital for national defense and homeland security.

Recommended Policy Actions

• Evaluate frontier AI systems for national security risks in partnership with frontier AI developers, led by CAISI at DOC in collaboration with other agencies with relevant expertise in CBRNE and cyber risks.

• Led by CAISI at DOC in collaboration with national security agencies, evaluate and assess potential security vulnerabilities and malign foreign influence arising from the use of adversaries’ AI systems in critical infrastructure and elsewhere in the American economy, including the possibility of backdoors and other malicious behavior. These evaluations should include assessments of the capabilities of U.S. and adversary AI systems, the adoption of foreign AI systems, and the state of international AI competition.

• Prioritize the recruitment of leading AI researchers at Federal agencies, including NIST and CAISI within DOC, DOE, DOD, and the IC, to ensure that the Federal government can continue to offer cutting-edge evaluations and analysis of AI systems.

• Build, maintain, and update as necessary national security-related AI evaluations through collaboration between CAISI at DOC, national security agencies, and relevant research institutions.

Invest in Biosecurity

AI will unlock nearly limitless potential in biology: cures for new diseases, novel industrial use cases, and more. At the same time, it could create new pathways for malicious actors to synthesize harmful pathogens and other biomolecules. The solution to this problem is a multitiered approach designed to screen for malicious actors, along with new tools and infrastructure for more effective screening. As these tools, policies, and enforcement mechanisms mature, it will be essential to work with allies and partners to ensure international adoption.

Recommended Policy Actions

• Require all institutions receiving Federal funding for scientific research to use nucleic acid synthesis tools and synthesis providers that have robust nucleic acid sequence screening and customer verification procedures. Create enforcement mechanisms for this requirement rather than relying on voluntary attestation.

• Led by OSTP, convene government and industry actors to develop a mechanism to facilitate data sharing between nucleic acid synthesis providers to screen for potentially fraudulent or malicious customers.

• Build, maintain, and update as necessary national security-related AI evaluations through collaboration between CAISI at DOC, national security agencies, and relevant research institutions.