President Trump dismisses calls for an AI slowdown, saying “you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn't be bringing it up”

President denounces demands for regulation as existential fears over technology move to the centre of US politics

Financial Times 2026-09-14

Context & Ripple Effects

The administration had already framed AI policy around maintaining a U.S. advantage over China, including a rejection of extinction-risk warnings and a hands-off regulatory posture ahead of talks where AI safety is an agenda item. This statement makes the political trade-off explicit: safety arguments are being weighed against strategic competition.

That posture also fits Sriram Krishnan's July argument against a centralized “FDA for AI” model, signaling that the administration’s AI agenda favors development and deployment over a new sector-wide safety regulator.

First-order effects

AI companies and executives pressing for a slower frontier-model pace face a White House that treats their safety case as conflicting with U.S. competitive priorities.
Federal AI policy is less likely to be organized around a centralized, pre-deployment safety regime while the administration maintains its hands-off approach.

Second-order effects

Companies building models, data centers, and related infrastructure gain a clearer policy signal that expansion aligns with the administration’s strategic framing; Trump’s data-center push has already been linked to increased gas-power development.
AI-safety advocates must make their case in geopolitical terms—such as verifiable international constraints—rather than assuming domestic calls for restraint will set the policy agenda.

Third-order effects

If this framing holds, frontier-model governance will be shaped less by a standalone safety regulator and more by national-security competition, with access, capacity, and deployment treated as strategic assets.
The widening divide between AI-industry safety advocates and the White House turns the pace of model development into a political contest over who defines U.S. technological leadership.

The trend: AI governance is being recast as AI sovereignty, with competitive advantage over China taking precedence over calls for a domestic slowdown.

Discussion

@garymarcus Gary Marcus on x
You can't have a real slowdown and be a total China hawk. If you are truly committed to the slowdown, you have to make a deal.
@berniesanders Bernie Sanders on x
President Trump prides himself on being a great deal maker. Well. He now has the opportunity to make “the deal of the century.
@choblin29 @choblin29 on x
🚨Holy Shit. President Trump has now officially rejected Dario Amodei, Sam Altman and Elon Musk's call to slow frontier AI. Speaking in Ireland today, Trump said the US cannot risk losing its lead over China, said guardrails are possible, and dismissed parts of the safety push as …
@teortaxestex @teortaxestex on x
oh wow. Golden King vs the God-Builder Guild, who wins?
r/RepublicadeChile r on reddit
Donald Trump rechaza frenar avance de la inteligencia artificial
r/politics r on reddit
Donald Trump rejects calls from tech bosses for an AI slowdown
r/technology r on reddit
Donald Trump rejects calls from tech bosses for AI slowdown
r/MU_Stock r on reddit
Trump Downplays AI Concerns as CEOs Call for Slowing Pace
r/politics r on reddit
Trump Downplays AI Concerns as CEOs Call for Slowing Technology
@suchenzang Susan Zhang on x
even the normie influencers are catching on... (technically, these warnings just haven't FULLY played out YET, but like gary marcus, they might simply be off by another few years and the shape of what they're saying probably might change but can still look the same if you squint …
@andreassteno Andreas Steno Larsen on x
Essentially none of Darios “time-lined warnings” have played out yet..
@elonmusk Elon Musk on x
@kevinnbass Dario is right that there should be some oversight. Peer review of AI by competitors is the right way to start this off.
@mehreenzahra Mehreen Zahra-Malik on x
Perhaps the most frightening part of Amodei's essay is what he says about geopolitics. The US may need to slow frontier AI for safety but cannot safely do so if China keeps accelerating. The race itself becomes the trap: everyone may understand the danger while no one can afford …
@davidsacks David Sacks on x
Anthropic and OpenAI are already free to “pace the frontier” and should do so for business reasons, instead of first demanding a preferred regulatory framework
@cat_zakrzewski Cat Zakrzewski on x
House Speaker Mike Johnson said yesterday that he had talked to Trump about bringing AI leaders together for a meeting at the White House to discuss regulation. The Senate did that exactly three years ago, and nothing happened. Story from Sept. 13, 2023: https://www.washingtonpos…
@daniel_271828 @daniel_271828 on x
This strikes me as a pretty severe mischaracterization of Johnson's quote from the article. What he actually said was:
@atrupar Aaron Rupar on x
Buttigieg:
@politico @politico on x
Tech companies must be responsible for AI safety, Mike Johnson says, not Congress https://www.politico.com/...
@mehdirhasan Mehdi Hasan on x
Why did this man become a congressman let alone speaker? He literally never wants Congress to do anything about anything
@mattduss Matt Duss on x
China's govt exerts massive regulatory control over its AI industry, the idea that we'd fall behind by doing the same is just corporate propaganda. The key question is whether we are ready to really break from neoliberalism and assert our democratic right to discipline capital.
@atrupar Aaron Rupar on x
Mike Johnson punts on oversight of AI companies: “Congress is obviously less qualified than the people who are pushing this frontier to know the ins and outs of it”
@darrigomelanie Melanie D'Arrigo on x
Republican AI deregulation and letting AI CEOs self-regulate their industries is how we ended up in this moment. Solving this humanity-ending level threat shouldn't be left to the people who created the problem.
@atrupar Aaron Rupar on x
Mike Johnson on AI leaders calling for regulation of the industry:
@amy_siskind Amy Siskind on x
Listening to Mike Johnson, and he is clueless and incapable of doing anything in AI. Let's face it, it's going to take having Democrats in control of Congress to put up any guardrails. Republicans are hopeless, they just do not know how to govern.
r/NewsOfTheStupid r on reddit
Tech companies must be primarily responsible for AI safety, Mike Johnson says
r/politics r on reddit
Tech companies must be primarily responsible for AI safety, Mike Johnson says
r/ArtificialInteligence r on reddit
Tech companies must be primarily responsible for AI safety, Mike Johnson says
@davidrbellamy David Bellamy on x
I must be among an extremely small group of people (n=1?) that have both 1) trained a frontier LLM and 2) designed and synthesized custom viruses in a lab with my own two hands. And I think that the takes on AI killing us all by creating dangerous viruses is total bogus.
@ericxing Eric Xing on x
Well, I'd add one more with myself, as one with a PhD in biology and another PhD in AI and now working in both, to make n=2. Generating a hypothetical genome blueprint of a virus from LLM versus generating a true virus are completely different things. It is either an intentional …

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