Three days after being sworn into his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to “[S]ustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security. ” The White House stressed that AI development must be “free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas,” and that with the right policies, America will “solidify its position as the leader in AI.”
This is the right starting point. Yet, while the administration has championed AI and cleared pathways for innovators, a significant contradiction threatens to undermine this core objective. Backwards-looking antitrust litigation, advanced by the Department of Justice (DOJ), is directly targeting the very companies that are making the nation-leading investments necessary to win the global AI race. There is no better example of this self-defeating dynamic than the case against Google.
For decades, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has executed a comprehensive AI strategy. This includes enormous commitments to internal R&D, strategic acquisitions and the construction of a dedicated global infrastructure of AI-focused data centers. The results speak for themselves. Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro, for instance, is consistently ranked as one of the best models on the market, outperforming competitors like ChatGPT-4o and Grok-3. This position was not accidental; it was built.
The scale of this commitment is staggering. In 2025 alone, Alphabet is investing $75 billion in artificial intelligence and data centers. This is not merely a line item on a budget; it is a foundational investment in the technology that is now deeply integrated into the fabric of Google’s products, from search to its multi-purpose AI app, Gemini. In a fiercely competitive global landscape, this type of substantial investment and risk-taking is essential for American tech to be successful.
All this progress is now directly threatened by the DOJ’s ongoing antitrust case. The government seeks remedies that would restrict Google from “self-preferencing” its own AI innovations within its ecosystem. While this is not an explicit ban on AI investment, it removes the primary incentive for a company like Google to undertake such astronomically expensive and risky projects. Why invest billions to build the world’s best AI if you are then forbidden from using it?
The bitter irony is that the DOJ’s entire case rests on a myopic and increasingly obsolete definition of market power, focusing on a monopoly in “general search.” This view ignores the seismic shift AI has already brought to the tech landscape. A new generation of formidable competitors, from OpenAI and Perplexity to Anthropic and more, is rapidly changing how consumers seek information.
Ultimately, hamstringing Google in the name of a dated vision of the marketplace would be a self-inflicted wound. It would not only stifle competition but also directly contradict President Trump’s goal of catalyzing AI dominance. Consider the contrast: on one hand, the White House celebrated a multi-firm commitment called “The Stargate Project,” a prospective $125 billion annual joint investment from Softbank, Oracle and OpenAI. The announcement was rightly praised as an early validation of the Trump administration’s AI optimism. Yet, on the other hand, Google’s $75 billion investment for this year is being treated not as a national asset, but as a liability to be litigated away in a federal courtroom.
America simply cannot win the future of AI with such inconsistency in Washington. We need to let our creators do what they do best: innovate for us, without “onerous and unnecessary government control over the development of AI.”