President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday rolling back key cybersecurity policies from the Obama and Biden eras.
The White House slammed Biden’s last-minute Executive Order 14144 as a “sneak” that pushed “problematic and distracting issues” into cybersecurity.
One major rollback: Biden’s push to accept digital IDs for public benefits is off. Trump’s team claims it risked “widespread abuse by enabling illegal immigrants to improperly access public benefits.” 
Mark Montgomery of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies pushed back in an interview with Politico.
“The fixation on revoking digital ID mandates is prioritizing questionable immigration benefits over proven cybersecurity benefits.”
On AI, Trump scrapped Biden’s requirements to test AI for energy infrastructure defense, fund federal AI security research, and have the Pentagon use AI for cybersecurity.
The White House framed the AI pivot as focusing on “identifying and managing vulnerabilities, rather than censorship,” nodding to Silicon Valley complaints about AI “censorship.”
Trump also axed Biden’s mandate that agencies adopt quantum-resistant encryption quickly.
Federal contractors no longer have to certify the security of their software either — Trump’s team calls those requirements “unproven and burdensome software accounting processes” that favor “compliance checklists over genuine security investments.”
The order also wipes out Obama-era sanctions for cyberattacks on the U.S., now limiting such sanctions only to “foreign malicious actors.” Officials say this stops “misuse against domestic political opponents” and clarifies that “sanctions do not apply to election-related activities.”
