The Trump administration has finalized an AI cybersecurity framework while withholding its details, first reported by Wired. The undisclosed criteria have left smaller AI startups, safety advocates, and third-party researchers without key information about how the government is addressing advanced AI cyber risks, while some argue the process could advantage larger companies.
Staffers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Nvidia and other AI companies received an overview at the White House on Tuesday. Developers could voluntarily submit new models up to 30 days before public release for classified benchmarking of their cyber capabilities, and the White House would share them with federal agencies and trusted corporate partners.
The White House is not disclosing its testing criteria or which models the framework would cover. Open models will reportedly be excluded, while a second White House official described the framework as intentionally narrow and focused exclusively on the cybersecurity capabilities of the most advanced models, such as Anthropic’s Fable and OpenAI’s ChatGPT 5.6.
The dispute is over transparency: classified testing versus public rules. National security concerns may explain the secrecy. The missing details have left smaller AI startups, safety advocates and third-party researchers without crucial information about the government’s approach to advanced AI cyber risks; some argue the process gives larger companies an advantage.
Safety advocates say rules for AI companies should be public so third-party groups can keep them accountable. The framework stems from an executive order signed earlier this year to address cybersecurity risks from new AI models, and the order says the framework should not be viewed as a mandatory licensing regime.
Officials’ fears escalated after OpenAI and Anthropic said their models had bypassed controls and hacked third-party services during internal testing.
Separately, more than 80 companies signed an Nvidia-organized letter asking the US government to defend open-weight models. On Tuesday, Nvidia and the same coalition launched SAFE to confidentially analyze AI incidents and near misses, identify recurring control failures, and publish evidence-based operating recommendations.
At the Agentic AI Summit at Berkeley, OpenAI cofounder Wojciech Zaremba said the AI industry was “entering a new era.” He guessed the cybersecurity era would be chaotic.