What America’s AI Action Plan Means for Leaders Now - FleishmanHillard

Article

July 24, 2025

By Josh McConnell

Don’t think of this as just a policy reset. It’s a reputational crossroads. In a deregulatory moment, the real challenge isn’t compliance. It’s communication plain and simple: how to explain, defend and lead through what comes next.

The U.S. government has issued its clearest signal yet that it intends to lead the world in AI through acceleration over regulation.

America’s AI Action Plan, unveiled this month, reframes U.S. tech policy around three pillars: innovation, infrastructure, and international competitiveness. It rolls back many of the Biden-era safety and fairness frameworks, instead emphasizing open-source development, rapid deployment and private-sector partnership. For CCOs and CMOs, this isn’t just a policy update. It’s a pressure shift. With fewer federal rules in place, the burden of defining and defending responsible AI now falls squarely on companies themselves. That means your narrative, transparency and readiness matter more than ever.

How To Respond Ahead of the Spotlight

1. From frameworks to frontline comms, you can feel scrutiny shifting
With Biden-era guardrails rolled back, there’s more ambiguity and reputational risk. Review your systems, filtering practices and content neutrality positions ASAP. Comms teams need clarity and defensibility, especially where DEI, safety filters and model transparency intersect.

2. Prepare your public narrative before the news cycle tests it
Build messaging that goes beyond launches and investor decks. Emphasize ethical foresight, safety, training transparency and societal value in your comms. Assume watchdog groups, press and policymakers are already watching and look at your narrative through their eyes and position accordingly. Even consider a virtual audience simulation that will pressure test messaging for different mindsets. It’s ultimate defense as offense.

3. Make your company part of the national story
This plan isn’t just tech policy. It’s economic and diplomatic strategy. Companies that align their messaging with national priorities like innovation, infrastructure and workforce development will carry more weight with policymakers, partners and procurement leaders.

And in today’s generative search environment, those narratives aren’t just for press releases. They’re a crucial part of brand discovery. Organizations are can shape how they are surfaced, summarized and evaluated in search. If your brand isn’t telling a clear story, it’s likely that AI will try to do it for you or ignore you completely.

4. Engage now, not later
If your teams haven’t opened dialogue with NIST, OSTP or other agency stakeholders, now is the time to start. Participation in federal consultations and comment periods will shape procurement standards and signal leadership. You don’t want silence to be interpreted as an absence of a point of view.

5. Signal leadership through your talent
AI-readiness isn’t just about model performance. This is all about workforce planning. Use this moment to communicate investments in retraining, apprenticeships and education. This is reputational insulation and long-term eligibility for federal partnerships.

6. Strengthen your risk and compliance narrative
This plan includes stricter export controls, national security filters and new expectations for “secure by design” standards. Global comms must now reflect both regulatory divergence (EU, China) and internal alignment across legal, engineering and policy.

7. Know where your infra story fits
For companies in data centers, chips or energy, this is also an opportunity moment. Comms teams should coordinate early with government affairs, bid teams and legal to ensure eligibility positioning aligns with public messaging.

8. Plan for federal-state friction
As state-level bias audits, content governance and privacy laws expand, tensions with federal policy will grow. Your public narrative and internal compliance playbook must account for that dual reality.

The companies that lead through this moment won’t be those that publish the longest policies. They’ll be the ones who explain their role with the most clarity, credibility and consistency both internally and externally.

The policy shift is clear: the U.S. is betting on speed, scale and innovation. But for communications leaders, the implications run deeper.

The questions coming next about explainability, bias, security and global alignment won’t be answered by engineers alone. They’ll require strong narratives, clear values and messages that hold up under scrutiny. Communications team won’t follow this story. They’ll help define it.

 Josh McConnell is a VP of Technology based in New York where he helps companies navigate complex narratives at the intersection of innovation, reputation and culture. He brings over 15 years of experience across journalism and corporate comms, with leadership roles at Uber and Xero. As a journalist, he regularly interviewed tech leaders including Tim Cook, Satya Nadella and Jack Dorsey.