As AI fears spike, Trump bats down calls for regulation

President Trump is downplaying the mounting concerns about artificial intelligence and resisting calls for regulation, putting him out of step with a growing chorus of worries coming from within the tech industry and both sides of the political aisle.

Trump, speaking with reporters over the weekend and in social media posts on Monday, said warnings about AI going rogue and endangering humanity were overblown.

“We can put guardrails, 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,” Trump said.

The president doubled down on his position in a TruthSocial post on Monday, defending his approach and calling out Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who warned of the dangers of unchecked AI in a blog post over the weekend.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” the president wrote. In a second post, he called the fear of AI destroying humanity a “hoax.”

Stocks plummeted in response to growing calls for AI regulation on Monday, with the Nasdaq Composite Index falling 0.9 percent and the S&P 500 dropping 0.6 percent.

Industry officials beyond Amodei have also weighed in. OpenAI’s Sam Altman wrote in an X post that the “world deserves confidence that American companies developing increasingly capable AI will act responsibly, especially as the trajectory of progress has steepened.”

“We welcome a federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements for frontier AI,” he wrote.

Elon Musk, one of Trump’s closest allies in the tech world, said, “Dario is right,” in a post on X this weekend.

Trump and his allies argue that less regulation on AI is essential for Washington to win the AI race against Beijing.

“He is very much a trust the plan, trust the system, trust the markets, trust the innovators kind of guy,” said Chris Johnson, a Republican strategist and president of the American Energy Leadership Institute.

“There are two groups of people: there are Americans and panicans, and you don’t want to be a panican,” he said.

But the hands-off approach to AI regulation threatens to open the president up to political blowback as Americans grow increasingly concerned about AI and the data centers that power the technology.

Seventy-eight percent of likely voters said they would choose “mandatory standards” on AI while only eight percent said they chose “no regulation,” according to a poll released in June from the nonpartisan AI Policy Institute.

“I do think that Republicans are going to talk more and more about AI safety and security. The polling data on this is really clear,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas-based Republican strategist and CEO of the Alliance to Secure AI.

“I see the political winds shifting on this in favor of more regulation, and I’m confident that the White House, the Speaker [Mike Johnson (R-La.)], and [Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-N.D.)] are going to get together with the companies and find some way to move forward to pace development, and to put at least some safeguards on the technology,” he continued.

The warnings come as Congress heads back into session for the final time before November’s midterm elections. Johnson said Monday that the White House will host a meeting with AI executives as soon as this week to “sort this out.”

AI has emerged as a top issue on the campaign trail, with Democrats and Republicans calling for guardrails.

In Michigan, Democratic senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has called for “public oversight” on AI, while Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R ) has enacted regulations on AI data centers in his own state.

“We are on an exponential growth curve in AI,” Steinhauser said. “This issue is not going to recede.”

“You can see by January or February of next year when the presidential cycle kicks off anyway, you’re going to see every candidate talking about this,” he continued.

Vice President Vance, a leading potential 2028 contender, urged caution on the issue while speaking to reporters on Monday.

“I feel a little bit weird about the fact that we have so many frontier AI tech companies’ kind of talking to the government and begging the government to regulate them. 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,” Vance said, noting that there are “risks” and “benefits” to the technology.

Trump and other proponents of AI data centers argue they are essential to the country’s national security and development, while opponents point to the financial and environmental costs.

Doug Kelly, CEO of the tech industry group American Edge Group, which promotes data centers, noted that China leads the U.S. in energy, adoption, and talent for AI, but that the U.S. still holds an advantage in infrastructure and chips.

“We can’t give up our strongest advantage. We need to be able to build more data centers, manufacture more advanced chips, and develop the world’s best AI models here in America,” Kelly said.

Will Rinehard, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said the Chinese “are definitely very, very, very closely monitoring what’s happening in America because we have an incredible bench of talent.”

But he said he doesn’t see the implementation of guardrails significantly slowing progress.

The AI guardrail conversation has brought together some unlikely allies. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) and former White House adviser Steve Bannon are set to speak at the same Pro-Human Assembly event on Tuesday to push for human-controlled AI.

Jessica Brandt, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said “the future will favor a paired approach.”

“National security policies that maximize the U.S. lead over China are essential to ensuring AI doesn’t tip the balance of power against us,” she said. “They also buy time to build a domestic regulatory framework that ensures AI is developed and deployed in ways that are safe and broadly beneficial.”

Others say they see an emerging dividing line between Republicans and Democrats on AI.

“You can always peel off a few people from the other side and find ways to make them sympathetic to your point,” said Johnson of the American Energy Leadership Institute. “I think generally Republicans and conservatives broadly are going to be much more in line with the president.”

“If you’re somebody who’s in the tech industry or in the tech policy space, you need to start waking up real quick to who’s on team red versus who’s on team blue,” he added.