In the span of 48 hours, the White House floated the idea of a Food and Drug Administration- (FDA) style pre-deployment vetting regime for frontier AI models, then immediately walked it back. On Tuesday, POLITICO reported that the administration was circulating a 16-page draft executive order with provisions on cybersecurity, open-weight models, federal contracting, and a pre-release review system for the most capable AI systems. On Wednesday, N…