Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has privately expressed alarm about the slow pace of progress on AI policy, even before the White House again delayed an executive order on the subject Thursday.
The drafting of the executive order has exposed tensions between Bessent, who has taken on an outsize role in the policy’s creation, and National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross, according to a senior White House official, another senior U.S. official and two other people familiar with the dynamics. They, like some others in this report, were granted anonymity to speak freely about a closely held policy.
Bessent was displeased in the early stages of the policymaking process with the pace of the administration’s response to Anthropic’s advanced AI model, Mythos, as he and Cairncross disagreed over their respective lanes, the senior White House official and the two people said.
Specifically, he was concerned Cairncross was not moving swiftly enough to address potential risks to critical infrastructure and the financial system, according to the senior U.S. official and the two people, as well as another administration official. The arrival of Anthropic’s Mythos accelerated those concerns and complicated an already fraught policy debate inside the government.
