The ceremony was scheduled. The CEOs were on the guest list. And then it wasn’t happening. On Thursday, US President Donald Trump scrapped a planned AI executive order, which had already been delayed multiple times, citing concerns that it might erode America’s competitive edge over China. “We’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that lead,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. What he did not say was that the order had been effectively killed by the very industry it was meant to oversee. Lobbied out in one night According to Semafor , which first reported the backstory, the White House’s plans were halted after Elon Musk of xAI, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and venture capitalist David Sacks, who, until recently, was Trump’s AI and cryptocurrency tsar, all spoke directly with Trump between Wednesday night and Thursday morning.…