Sam Altman publicly blessed President Trump's AI executive order as striking exactly the right balance, then privately admitted to his own staff that he never expected it would let the government vet his customers one by one.
The OpenAI chief executive praised the order within hours of its signing on 2 June 2026. Three weeks later, his company was forced to stagger the launch of its most powerful model, GPT-5.6 Sol, while federal officials approved each early customer.
