The government announced Friday it will review access to the most advanced frontier artificial intelligence models before their broader release marks a turning point in American technology policy. For years, the prevailing philosophy has been to build first and regulate later. That era appears to be ending. As AI systems become more capable, the federal government has concluded that some level of oversight is necessary before the most powerful models are widely deployed.
That is the right instinct.
The challenge is ensuring that sensible oversight does not evolve into unnecessary bureaucracy.
Policymakers should remember the lessons of India’s “License Raj,” the system of government permits and approvals that dominated much of India’s economy for decades after independence.
While intended to protect the public and promote orderly development, it instead created bureaucracy, discouraged competition, and slowed innovation. The United States should not allow AI oversight to evolve into a similar system of permissions that favors incumbents over innovators.
Government review should focus on evaluating risks, not deciding which companies deserve to compete.
If approval to deploy frontier AI models becomes slow, unpredictable, or politically influenced, innovation will inevitably migrate elsewhere. Startups will struggle while established technology companies with vast compliance departments absorb the additional burden with relative ease. The unintended consequence could be exactly what policymakers hope to avoid: greater market concentration and fewer competitors.
This is especially important because the economics of frontier AI already favor large players. Developing cutting-edge models requires enormous investments in computing infrastructure, engineering talent, specialized chips, and electricity. Excessive regulation would raise the barriers even higher, making it increasingly difficult for the next generation of innovators to challenge today’s market leaders.
READ: Sreedhar Potarazu | The White Rabbit Effect: How AI is changing our relationship with time (June 25, 2026)
None of this means government should stand aside.
Unlike previous generations of software, frontier AI models can identify software vulnerabilities, generate sophisticated phishing campaigns, write malicious code, manipulate images and voices, and autonomously perform increasingly complex tasks. Their capabilities raise legitimate concerns about cybersecurity, fraud, national security, and critical infrastructure. The public deserves confidence that these risks have been carefully evaluated before these systems are released.
The emphasis, however, should be on evaluating the technology rather than licensing the industry.
A thoughtful review process should examine several key areas.
First, every frontier model should undergo rigorous testing against jailbreaks and prompt injection attacks. Researchers continually discover new ways to bypass built-in safeguards. Developers should demonstrate not only that protections exist but that they can rapidly identify and patch new vulnerabilities.
Second, models should undergo standardized cybersecurity evaluations. Independent experts should determine whether a system materially increases the ability of malicious actors to discover software vulnerabilities, automate cyberattacks, or assist in developing dangerous capabilities.
Third, AI developers should publish standardized safety reports. These should include hallucination rates in high-risk domains, known limitations, performance under adversarial testing, and documented failure modes. Just as pharmaceutical companies publish clinical trial data, AI companies should provide evidence supporting their safety claims.
Fourth, oversight should not end once a model is approved. Continuous monitoring, mandatory reporting of significant safety incidents, and rapid deployment of security updates should become standard practice. AI systems will continue to evolve after release, and regulation must recognize that reality.
Critics of the new policy correctly point out that no government review can ever eliminate AI risk. Cybersecurity has always been a continuous contest between attackers and defenders. Every safeguard will eventually be challenged, every model will require updates, and no approval process can guarantee perfect security. Delaying deployment indefinitely in pursuit of a perfectly safe model is neither realistic nor desirable. The objective should be risk reduction, not risk elimination.
Where I differ from those critics is that the absence of perfect security does not justify the absence of oversight. Just as the Food and Drug Administration approves medicines that continue to be monitored after they reach the market, frontier AI models should undergo rigorous prerelease evaluation followed by continuous surveillance. The goal is not to certify that a model is perfectly safe. It is to demonstrate that its risks are understood, disclosed, continuously monitored, and mitigated as new vulnerabilities emerge. Government should not decide who wins the AI race, but it has a legitimate responsibility to ensure the race is conducted safely, transparently, and under rules that apply equally to everyone.
These are not barriers to innovation. They are the equivalent of crash testing automobiles before they reach consumers or certifying aircraft before passengers board. Safety and innovation have never been mutually exclusive.
READ: Sreedhar Potarazu | What AI can teach us about fatherhood (June 21, 2026)
Equally important is preserving open competition.
Government should never become the gatekeeper that decides which companies may build advanced AI systems. If a developer satisfies objective safety standards, the rules should apply equally whether the company is a startup, a university research lab, or one of the largest technology firms in the world. Oversight must be transparent, consistent, and based on measurable technical criteria rather than subjective judgment.
Healthcare illustrates why this balance matters. Physicians increasingly rely on AI for clinical documentation, decision support, diagnostics, and patient communication. Hospitals deserve confidence that these systems have been rigorously evaluated for hallucinations, security vulnerabilities, and reliability. At the same time, smaller companies developing specialized medical AI should not spend years navigating regulatory uncertainty while only the largest corporations have the resources to obtain approval.
America’s greatest technological achievements were built on a simple principle: establish clear rules without dictating who gets to innovate. The internet, biotechnology, cloud computing, and countless other breakthroughs flourished because entrepreneurs competed on ideas, not political access.
Artificial intelligence deserves the same approach.
We need oversight that protects society from catastrophic failures without creating bureaucratic gatekeepers. We need transparency without protectionism. We need safety without stagnation.
Artificial intelligence is the engine of the next industrial revolution. Every powerful engine needs brakes, but no one buys a car because of its brakes. They exist to make the journey safer, not to keep the car in the garage.
America’s AI policy should follow the same principle. Build guardrails that protect the public without trapping innovation behind a new License Raj. If we get that balance right, the United States can remain both the world’s safest and most innovative home for artificial intelligence.