The Frame In January 2025, three weeks into his second term, President Trump signed Executive Order 14179 — the “AI Sovereignty Directive” — classifying frontier model weights above a certain compute threshold as “critical national infrastructure” subject to CFIUS review, export controls, and a new category of protection: “strategic information assets.” The order was drafted in the Situation Room, not the West Wing. Its existence was leaked not by a whistleblower but by a venture capitalist who noticed unusual clause insertions in term sheets for Series C rounds at three major labs. The Saudi bugging case, unsealed in October 2026, is the first public evidence that foreign intelligence services received the memo before the American public did. They understood something Washington’s policy apparatus is still struggling to articulate: the labs have become the new embassies, and their employees the new diplomatic corps — but without the Vienna Convention’s protections. The Signal What most...