Sept. 14, 2026, 11:26 AM EDTBy Megan Brand

President Donald Trump rejected the idea of placing guardrails on artificial intelligence, saying in a Truth Social post Monday that the only control needed is “a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!”

In the same post, he appeared to hint at the government pursuing criminal or regulatory penalties against AI companies after industry insiders warned of potentially catastrophic dangers posed by the rapidly evolving technology.

“The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ — and we will continue to do so!” he said, referring to Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, maker of the Claude AI chatbot.

Amodei said in a Saturday essay that AI companies should “slow the pace” of AI development.

“We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!” Trump continued. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!”

Even as the American public and members of his own party grow increasingly skeptical of AI, the president has framed the technology’s continued growth as an economic and geopolitical imperative. Communities that reject AI data centers will wind up “backwards and poor,” he warned recently. And in Ireland last weekend, he was even blunter: “Whoever wins AI wins.”

Yet, a recent NBC News Decision Desk poll found that 70% of adults said they were more worried about AI than excited about it. A similar percentage — 69% of adults — said they somewhat or strongly oppose the construction of an AI data center in their local area. That includes 57% of Republican voters.

Top AI chief executives publicly agree on slowing its development01:58

Amodei’s recent warning has prompted other AI leaders to publicly call for a slowdown in its development so researchers can better understand and control any threats posed by the technology. They include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who said his company would adopt one of the safeguards Amodei proposed in his essay.

Last week, Anthropic AI researcher Jacob Coxon resigned, writing in a viral X post that OpenAI and Anthropic were “gambling with our lives,” warning that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” A lead Anthropic researcher, Evan Hubinger, said in a post on X that Coxon was right, saying, “we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!”

Many politicians responded with their own calls for stronger checks on AI to address safety concerns.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Monday called for a Senate briefing with top administration officials. House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested in interviews Sunday that AI leaders come together for a meeting to determine how to move forward, while also warning that “we cannot put a moratorium on this because China will overlap us.”

Beijing on Monday disparaged the warnings from U.S. tech leaders as “fearmongering” from a “Cold War playbook” aimed at hobbling China.

More AI researchers warn of AI’s threat to humanity12:01

Vice President JD Vance on Monday told reporters that AI leaders’ warnings is “something that we’re concerned by,” but said the administration wants to ensure “we actually regulate smartly.”

“I have to say, just personally, I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them,” Vance said. “It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse. So I think we just have to be careful about this.”

During his trip to Ireland, Trump asserted over the weekend that the U.S. was leading China on artificial intelligence and said that “whoever wins AI wins.”

“We can put guardrails,” he said Sunday. “We can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”