Microsoft President Brad Smith has a pointed message for the Trump administration over its recent crackdowns on AI models from Anthropic and OpenAI. The top executive has warned that the US government is regulating one of the world’s most consequential technologies without the transparency, tools or rules needed to do it properly. Speaking to Fortune on the sidelines of the AI for Good Global Summit, Smith said what the industry is currently experiencing is regulation without clarity.“Everyone is reluctant to say there should be regulation, but what we really have right now is regulation without transparent or complete rules. Without rules, businesses can’t plan,” Smith was quoted as saying.
What triggered Brad Smith’s warning
Smith’s comments come after a turbulent few weeks for the AI industry, during which the Trump administration took steps to restrict access to two of the most advanced AI models in the world. Last month, the Commerce Department invoked export-control law to force Anthropic to pull its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models from the market worldwide. It cited cybersecurity risk as the reason.Weeks later, officials pressed OpenAI to hold back the public rollout of its GPT-5.6 model family, limiting early access to government-vetted partners only. Both restrictions have since eased with Fable 5 coming back online earlier this month, and OpenAI announced this week that GPT-5.6 will launch publicly this week.
‘Right concern, wrong way’
While Smith acknowledged that the government’s underlying concern was legitimate, calling the act right decision, he argued that the problem was not the decision to act rather it was what the government reached for when it did.“The US government got information that led it to conclude that there was an urgent cybersecurity risk, and when the government gets that information, I think it’s right to act,” Smith said, adding, “What the government found was that it only had one regulatory tool it could use: an export control tool. The government doesn’t have the tools it needs.”Smith’s suggests the path forward, saying: “Ultimately, common sense says don’t be heavy-handed, but have enough of a touch that you can do what needs to be done. I hope we can move the conversation in that direction.”Smith also acknowledged that regardless of intent, the damage to international confidence in American AI infrastructure is real and that the burden now falls on Washington and US tech companies to address it.
