Susie Wiles is the White House Chief of Staff in the second Trump administration and was the architect of the 2024 Trump campaign. In March 2026, after David Sacks's departure as White House AI czar, she took on the White House AI policy portfolio jointly with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Roles
Wiles serves as White House Chief of Staff. She managed the 2024 Trump campaign before entering the administration. Since March 2026 she has held the White House AI policy portfolio jointly with Scott Bessent, the arrangement that succeeded David Sacks's tenure as White House AI czar.
The Wiles–Bessent pairing inherited an unsettled portfolio: the Anthropic supply-chain-risk designation, the Pentagon classified-network deal that excluded Anthropic (May 1, 2026), and competing factions within the administration, including Sacks' "demystify Mythos" push and Cairncross's drafting of a frontier-AI-oversight executive order. According to reporting, Wiles's role has centered on public messaging while Bessent has been more operational on Mythos-related decisions, though the precise division of labor is not firmly established.
Positions and statements
In a late-May 6, 2026 X post, Wiles called Trump "the most forward leaning president on innovation in American history" and praised frontier labs' safety efforts. The post came as the White House was reportedly drafting a frontier-AI oversight executive order in response to Vice President JD Vance's April call with Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, and Satya Nadella over Mythos cyber-capability concerns. (Source: insideaipolicy.com)
In the same May 6, 2026 post, reported by The Hill the following day, Wiles said the administration is "not in the business of picking winners and losers" on AI, wrote that "This administration has one goal; ensure the best and safest tech is deployed rapidly to defeat any and all threats," and added that "The White House will continue to lead an America First effort that empowers America's great innovators, not bureaucracy, to drive safe deployment of powerful technologies while keeping America safe." The remarks followed National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett's statement earlier that day that the White House was considering an executive order requiring AI models to pass a process so "they're released in the wild after they've been proven safe, just like an FDA drug" (Source: thehill.com). Contemporaneous reporting placed Wiles and Bessent in a middle-ground camp within the administration pushing for a framework in which AI companies voluntarily give the government first sight of new models (Source: politico.com).
A Wall Street Journal account published September 16, 2026 described her role in the order's revival. When Sacks got Trump in May to scrap the planned executive order that would have subjected AI models to an extended government review, Wiles and Bessent were caught off guard and unhappy, and Wiles told others that Sacks had persuaded Trump in a last-minute call, according to people familiar with the matter. At the urging of Wiles and Bessent, Trump later signed a slimmed-down version (EO — Promoting Advanced AI Innovation and Security (Trump, signed June 2, 2026)). The account states that senior administration officials have gathered almost daily in recent months to map out potential guardrails; only its opening was retrievable (Source: wsj.com).
Engagement with frontier labs
Wiles has been the administration's point of contact for frontier-lab leadership on the vetting question. She met Anthropic's chief executive over the company's new AI technology following tensions between the administration and Anthropic over the use of AI in federal agencies (Source: broadbandbreakfast.com). OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said in late July 2026 that he would meet Wiles while in Washington, ahead of the administration's AI evaluation framework (Source: cnbc.com).
The voluntary-review approach the Wiles–Bessent camp favored took form later in 2026: the White House completed a frontier AI evaluation framework offering companies up to 30 days of voluntary pre-deployment government review of cybersecurity capabilities, briefed major developers on it at a closed-door meeting on August 4, 2026, and does not plan to publish its details; on August 12, 2026 the administration signalled it would extend the framework to open-weight models once they reach frontier capability (Source: New Developments Log/2026-08-18-0805-ai-developments.md). See AI Pre-Release Vetting.
Relationships
- related: Scott Bessent — joint AI portfolio holder.
- related: David Sacks — predecessor as White House AI lead.
- related: Sean Cairncross — National Cyber Director leading the Mythos response.
- regulator-of: Anthropic — operative White House decision-maker on Anthropic supply-chain-risk designation and Mythos federal-access posture.
- related: AI Pre-Release Vetting, Executive Order 14365.
- related: EO — Promoting Advanced AI Innovation and Security (Trump, signed June 2, 2026) — the June 2, 2026 order she and Bessent urged Trump to sign after its May postponement.
Confidence
- High that Wiles is Chief of Staff and a joint AI portfolio holder.
- Medium for the precise division of labor between Wiles and Bessent on operational AI policy (public reporting has been impressionistic).