The unofficial reason: Not enough tech CEOs could make it to Washington, D.C. on short notice, according to several reports. And what’s an executive order signing without a photo op?

The anticipated executive order would have tasked the Office of the National Cyber Director and other agencies with developing a process to evaluate AI models for security before their release. This is partly in response to concerns from the release of Anthropic’s Mythos and OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 Cyber — both of which can quickly find and exploit security vulnerabilities.

One of the key sticking points in the EO’s language, per CNN, is a proposed requirement for AI companies to share advanced models with the government between 14 and 90 days ahead of launch.

Trump said he was concerned that the EO’s language today “could have been a blocker.”