The U.S. AI Action Plan: No Guardrails, Just Momentum vs The EU AI Act

U.S. AI Action Plan

Dr Ian Gauci reflects on America's blunt approach to AI and how it contrasts with the EU's regulatory framework.

The newly released U.S. AI Action Plan (July 2025) is worth your time not just for what it includes, but also for what it deliberately leaves out. It's blunt, unapologetic, and structurally coherent. And perhaps most notably, it couldn't be more different from the EU's AI Act.

Unlike the EU, which leans heavily into layered risk classifications, conformity procedures, centralised enforcement, and symbolic guardrails like CE marks and registries, the U.S. takes a different route. There is no horizontal framework. None.

Instead, what we see is a sovereign action plan, one that strips away regulatory friction and sidesteps sector-wide legal obligations. The focus? Infrastructure, scale, and international reach. In short, the U.S. is not looking to codify rules. It's trying to export its own tech stack faster than everyone else.