President Trump today signed an executive order that would try to make AI systems ineligible for federal contracts if they're deemed "woke."

Why it matters: The government is tech's biggest buyer, and companies will now have to weigh content decisions with the whims of the Trump administration.

Driving the news: Trump signed the executive order during an event hosted by the Hill & Valley Forum and the All-In podcast that featured Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and other big names.

• Earlier in the day, the White House unveiled its AI action plan.
• The executive order says the government can only procure "neutral" and "not biased" technology.

What they're saying: "The American people do not want woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models, and neither do other countries," Trump said.

• "I encourage all American companies to join us in rejecting poisonous Marxism in our technology."
• The EO states that "while the Federal Government should be hesitant to regulate the functionality of AI models in the private marketplace, in the context of Federal procurement, it has the obligation not to procure models that sacrifice truthfulness and accuracy to ideological agendas."

The EO states that the agency heads should only procure LLMs developed in what it calls "unbiased AI principles" of "truth-seeking" and "ideological neutrality."

• The EO defines truth-seeking as LLMs "that prioritize historical accuracy, scientific inquiry, and objectivity, and shall acknowledge uncertainty where reliable information is incomplete or contradictory."
• Ideological neutrality's definition states that LLMs "shall be neutral, nonpartisan tools that do not manipulate responses in favor of ideological dogmas such as DEI. Developers shall not intentionally encode partisan or ideological judgments into an LLM's outputs unless those judgments are prompted by or otherwise readily accessible to the end user."

The OMB director has 120 days to issue guidance to agencies to implement this EO.

• It allows for exceptions in the case of national security.

The executive order was designed by AI czar David Sacks and senior AI White House policy adviser Sriram Krishnan.

• Sacks on a call with reporters today said GSA will put together contractual language stating that LLMs procured by the federal government "would abide by a standard of truthfulness, of seeking accuracy and truthfulness, and not sacrificing those things due to ideological bias."
• The AI action plan recommended that federal procurement guidelines be updated to only allow contracts with LLM developers "who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias."
• Sacks said that "really DEI is the main one."

Flashback: Trump during his first term signed an executive order requiring government agencies to review whether advertising and marketing dollars were being spent on platforms engaging in alleged censorship.

• In Trump's second term, companies like Meta and X have pushed for what they call free expression, getting rid of fact checkers and watering down content moderation policies.

The other side: "Demanding that developers refrain from 'ideological bias' or be 'neutral' in their models is an impossible, vague standard that the Administration will be able to weaponize for its own ideological ends," the Center for Democracy and Technology said.

• The Supreme Court has also ruled that the government can't use its spending authority to control contractors' speech outside the scope of the contract, CDT noted.

The intrigue: Companies with wide-ranging content moderation practices have so far secured Defense Department contracts.

• xAI, whose owner Elon Musk champions virtually no guardrails on online speech, recently secured up to a $200 million Department of Defense contract, as did Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI.

What we're watching: The Trump administration will have to balance its push to combat alleged ideological bias along with its goal of ensuring U.S. tech stays globally competitive.

President Trump also signed executive orders aimed at helping to deploy U.S. tech around the world and build data centers in the U.S.

Why it matters: The executive orders lay out Trump's approach to AI exports and infrastructure, with a distinct focus on easing regulations.

What's inside: The export regime executive order stands up a new program that will assess whether a full-stack AI technology package will get priority access to federal financing tools.

• The EO tasks Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick with establishing this new "American AI Exports Program" and issuing a public call for proposals to be "designated as priority AI export packages."
• These would be able to benefit from a host of federal financing tools including direct loans and loan guarantees, equity investments, co-financing, political risk insurance, and credit guarantees, per the EO.

Catch up quick: Citing national security concerns, the Biden administration sought to cut off China's access to advanced U.S. tech through third countries by implementing a global licensing regime known as the AI diffusion rule.

• Trump scrapped the rule in May.
• This latest move is in line with recent actions by the president to open up global access to U.S. tech, including signing an AI deal with the UAE and allowing Nvidia to export certain chips to China again.

What they're saying: "The last administration was obsessed with imposing restrictions on AI, including extreme restrictions on its exports," Trump said on Wednesday ahead of signing the EO.

• "As you know, they made it very difficult to export. This alienated American partners and drove even our friends into the arms of China and other countries. That's why upon taking office I repealed the so-called Biden diffusion rule."

The EO addressing data centers calls for accelerating federal permitting of infrastructure.

• The AI action plan recommended that federal lands be made available for data center construction, stating that "America's environmental permitting system and other regulations make it almost impossible to build this infrastructure in the United States with the speed that is required."
• The EO states that the Interior and Energy Departments should offer up appropriate sites for qualifying projects.

Context: Just before then-President Biden left office, he also issued an EO to accelerate the construction of large-scale data centers and clean energy facilities on federal lands.

• Trump rescinded that in Wednesday's executive order.

"It will be a priority of my Administration to facilitate the rapid and efficient buildout of this infrastructure by easing Federal regulatory burdens," Trump's EO states.

"From this day forward it'll be a policy of the United States to do whatever it takes to lead the world in artificial intelligence. Such an important thing happening. This is really something that nobody expected. It just popped out of the, popped out of the air and here we are."