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Trump’s latest AI czar has already resigned
Chris Fall, director of the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), has resigned just three months after his appointment, marking the latest leadership shakeup at the key AI standards body under the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The agency confirmed the departure to multiple outlets, though no reason was given. Fall, who previously led the Department of Energy’s Office of Science under the first Trump administration, succeeded Collin Burns, who left in less than a week in April after reportedly being “pushed out” due to his prior work at Anthropic amid Trump administration tensions with the company. Before Burns, venture capitalist David Sacks—then White House AI and crypto czar—stepped down in March. CAISI is the primary U.S. organization for developing technical standards, testing methods, and assessing cybersecurity risks for AI models. However, it was not involved in the recent model-risk controversy in June, when the Commerce Department invoked an export control directive forcing Anthropic to pull its Mythos and Fable models; the ban was lifted after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick approved Anthropic’s safety plans. The White House also signed an executive order for a new AI safety oversight program called “Gold Eagle,” but CAISI was not listed among participating federal agencies. Meanwhile, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis has called for an independent, industry-run standards body modeled after FINRA—a mission similar to CAISI’s. Fall’s resignation also follows debate over Chinese AI lab Moonshot’s new open model Kimi, which performed competitively against frontier models, and ongoing U.S. discussions about banning Chinese open-weight models. CAISI has released reports on Chinese models like GLM-5.2 and DeepSeek V4 Pro but has not detailed its testing processes. TechCrunch inquiries to the Department of Commerce and NIST about LLM evaluations have gone unanswered since July 9.