Somewhere in Kansas, a grandmother uses a pharmacy app to manage prescriptions, receive refill reminders, and arrange pickup. An AI assistant could make that routine easier, helping her understand instructions and prepare questions for her pharmacist. That is technology serving a human purpose: helping someone stay independent and spend more time with the people she loves. But she should not have to surrender her privacy to enjoy those benefits. Her health information should never become a resource for the Chinese Communist Party.

Americans use AI to write, learn, plan, and solve problems. Some embrace its possibilities; others worry about losing control over their work, choices, and information. Beneath those differences lies common ground. People want agency: the ability to direct their own lives. They want purpose: meaningful work, stronger relationships, and time for what matters. They want security: confidence that their families and country are protected. American AI policy should deliver all three.

AI can help entrepreneurs compete, workers develop skills, and caregivers navigate demanding days. It can expand opportunity and strengthen human judgment. Americans should be able to enjoy those advantages confidently. But using a helpful tool is not permission to sell the details of your life to a foreign adversary. China does not have to steal every piece of information it wants. Commercial data markets can provide another route. In 2023, Duke University researchers purchased sensitive information about American military personnel, veterans, and their families for as little as 12 cents.

Available information included health, financial, religious, and demographic details. Those findings exposed a national security vulnerability. Records that seem mundane individually can become revealing when combined. Health information, location histories, and financial details can expose routines, relationships, and vulnerabilities.

AI makes such information easier to analyze at scale. An adversary could use it to identify military families, target government personnel, or sharpen influence operations. Information collected to make life easier could become a tool for surveillance and coercion. Privacy and American strength therefore belong in the same conversation. Protecting personal information preserves citizens’ freedom to act while denying adversaries opportunities to exploit them. Washington has begun addressing this threat.

The Justice Department’s Data Security Program, effective since April 2025, prohibits or restricts certain transactions giving countries of concern, including China, access to Americans’ bulk sensitive personal data and government-related data. That foundation should be enforced and strengthened while preserving beneficial AI development. First, give Americans meaningful control. Companies should clearly explain what sensitive information they collect, why they need it, and whether they share it.

Services should collect only what they require and offer practical choices about unrelated uses. A daily prescription reminder should not require surrendering control over an intimate medical history. Second, make national security protections follow the data. Regulators should scrutinize intermediaries, ownership, and onward transfers so adversaries cannot evade restrictions by routing purchases through another country. Enforcement should address deliberate efforts to split transactions to avoid applicable thresholds. Third, establish workable federal standards for privacy-preserving data use.

Removing names alone may not prevent identification. Standards should require testing for reidentification risk, documentation of lawful sourcing, safeguards against misuse, and accountability for subsequent transfers. These protections would give American researchers and businesses clearer rules for developing useful AI.

Privacy should be built into innovation, giving consumers confidence and companies greater certainty. Finally, Commerce and Justice should coordinate their authorities and assess whether targeted export controls could address sensitive AI-training data transfers beyond existing protections. Additional controls should address demonstrable national security risks and provide clear compliance guidance. Americans should not have to become data-security experts to refill a prescription or use a digital assistant.

Businesses and government must make responsible choices possible and enforce protections against foreign exploitation. Our ambition should be powerful American technology worthy of public trust. AI should help citizens make decisions, pursue meaningful work, and live securely. The grandmother in Kansas should use her pharmacy app confidently. The entrepreneur should grow a business. The worker should master new tools. Their information should serve their ambitions, not Beijing’s.

America will lead in AI by expanding opportunity and protecting the freedom that gives innovation its purpose. More agency. Greater purpose. Stronger security. That is an AI future Americans can share. Juan Caro is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce and senior fellow for Law and Justice Policy at America First Policy Institute. Rear Admiral Peter Brown (ret.) is the former Homeland Security advisor to the president at the White House and senior fellow for Western Hemisphere Security and Maritime Affairs at America First Policy Institute.