Director of the National Economic Council in the Trump administration. In May 2026 he described a possible FDA-style pre-release review of frontier models; in September 2026 he said the private sector is the right place to address AI risks.
The FDA analogy for model review
Hassett supplied the administration's most explicit framing of the draft pre-release vetting proposal, telling Fox Business that a government review of models before public release would work "just like an FDA drug" (AI Pre-Release Vetting). Politico reported a 16-page draft executive order under which Commerce would act as adjudicator (Source: politico.com). On May 6, 2026 he said the White House was considering an executive order requiring AI models to pass a process so that "they're released in the wild after they've been proven safe, just like an FDA drug." White House chief of staff Susie Wiles posted later that day that the administration is "not in the business of picking winners and losers" on AI and would empower "America's great innovators, not bureaucracy" (Source: thehill.com).
A drug-approval analogy implies a specific institutional shape — pre-market authorisation, an adjudicating agency, a burden on the applicant to demonstrate safety — that differs sharply from the voluntary and disclosure-based instruments the administration has otherwise favoured, including the June 2026 executive order that expressly disclaimed authority to impose "a mandatory governmental licensing, preclearance, or permitting requirement." The two positions sit in tension, and the eventual order took the second.
Preemption of state AI laws
In July 2026 Hassett, together with David Sacks, backed Sen. Marsha Blackburn's Oval Office pitch to President Trump pairing her children's-online-safety package with a narrow preemption of state AI laws. The effort stalled after Sen. Ted Cruz objected and the White House pulled a prepared endorsement post, per July 21, 2026 reporting (Source: washingtonpost.com). See AI Federalism.
Private-sector approach to AI risk
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNBC on September 15, 2026 that the private sector is the "right place" to address concerns with AI, and that the government continues to monitor the industry and will use "law enforcement when necessary to make sure that the firms are acting responsibly" (Source: cnbc.com). He made the remarks amid the September 2026 debate over slowing frontier AI development, after Dario Amodei called for a slowdown that Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed (Source: cnbc.com; Coordinated slowdown proposals compared).
Speaking on Squawk Box, Hassett said "these are completely solvable problems" and that the government is not "asleep at the wheel" but is "watching closely," remarks that largely aligned with President Donald Trump's Truth Social posts of the previous day calling AI concerns a "hoax." Sen. Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, responded that trusting "the wealthiest companies in the world" to act on their own with no cross-check would give the public little assurance, and called for guardrails including some national-security pre-testing (Source: cnbc.com).
Relationships
- related: AI Pre-Release Vetting — the proposal the statement describes
- related: EO — Promoting Advanced AI Innovation and Security (Trump, signed June 2, 2026), AI Policy (umbrella), President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST)
- related: Coordinated slowdown proposals compared — September 2026 statement on private-sector responsibility for AI risk
- related: Susie Wiles, David Sacks, Marsha Blackburn — administration and congressional counterparts on AI policy
- contradicts: Mark Warner — disagreement over reliance on industry self-governance
- related: AI Federalism