Trump attacks Dario Amodei, saying the only “guardrails” AI needs are a “STRONG AND SMART” president, and calls the idea that AI would destroy humanity a “HOAX”

President Donald Trump attacked Anthropic PBC Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei for urging a slowdown …

Bloomberg 2026-09-14 Hadriana Lowenkron

Context & Ripple Effects

Trump had already rejected extinction warnings and framed AI leadership as a contest the US cannot afford to lose in his warning against slowing the US AI race. His latest attack turns that position into a direct clash with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, whose company has argued that some AI uses can get ahead of the law and American values.

Amodei’s case for pacing frontier development had won public backing from Elon Musk days earlier in Musk’s endorsement of Amodei’s position. The dispute therefore sharpens a visible divide between frontier-lab safety advocates and an administration framing constraints as a strategic handicap.

First-order effects

Anthropic and Amodei face a more openly adversarial presidential message toward their calls for guardrails, making their safety case a point of conflict with the administration’s stated AI posture.
Trump’s comments reinforce that his AI agenda prioritizes rapid development over the slowdown and existential-risk arguments Amodei has advanced.

Second-order effects

Other frontier labs seeking alignment with federal AI priorities have stronger incentives to present safety measures as compatible with US competitiveness rather than as limits on deployment.
The public dispute raises the value of industry-led safety commitments that can be framed as operational standards, though reports of a joint standards body involving Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google remain unconfirmed.

Third-order effects

If this framing persists, access to federal support and influence may increasingly favor labs that accommodate the administration’s anti-slowdown stance, widening the divide between state-compatible AI development and independent safety advocacy.
The broader policy debate shifts from whether frontier AI needs guardrails to who defines them: government, companies, or no formal regime at all.

The trend: Frontier AI governance is becoming a test of state compatibility, with competitive-national-security arguments challenging lab-led demands for stronger safeguards.

Discussion

@zerohedge @zerohedge on x
Trump says there is “a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China” says “Dario is now pretending to be a “perfect little angel” after he was “stopped from doing bad, or potentially bad “things.”
@hesamation @hesamation on x
The Trump Administration has stopped Al “people” from doing bad, or potentially bad “things,” like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a “perfect little angel” BRO WHAT?!
@synthwavedd Leo on x
Uh oh
@danprimack Dan Primack on x
Didn't crypto do the exact same thing?
@shakeelhashim Shakeel on x
oh good.
@andrewcurran_ Andrew Curran on x
President Trump on Truth Social says there will be no AI slowdown or pause. It's full speed ahead. He says the entire thing is a “sick conspiracy
@amitisinvesting Amit on x
TRUMP: ANYONE CALLING FOR A SLOWDOWN OF AI IS A TRAITOR, THEY WILL LET CHINA WIN well, the President is making it clear about his opinion on all of this AI drama
@cat_zakrzewski Cat Zakrzewski on x
Trump doubles down on his opposition to new AI regulation, arguing that the only safeguard the technology needs is a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!)” president.
@negligible_cap @negligible_cap on x
*TRUMP: ONLY CONTROL THAT AI NEEDS IS A STRONG PRESIDENT *TRUMP SAYS DARIO IS PRETENDING TO BE ‘PERFECT LITTLE ANGEL’ lol
@atrupar Aaron Rupar on x
Trump: “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!”
@atrupar Aaron Rupar on x
JD Vance: “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. It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a trojan horse.”
@teortaxestex @teortaxestex on x
oh wow. Golden King vs the God-Builder Guild, who wins?
@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 …
@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.
@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.
r/technology r on reddit
Donald Trump rejects calls from tech bosses for AI slowdown
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/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
@andrewcurran_ Andrew Curran on x
Tried: Mechanistic Interpretability, Superalignment, industry-led regulatory bodies Wired: STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT
@tedlieu Ted Lieu on x
trump and House Republican Leadership are on the wrong side of history. Letting the AI industry run wild has been bad for America, bad for the industry, and bad for American families. November is coming.
@jonfavs Jon Favreau on x
We must beat China in the race to develop superhuman intelligence humans could lose control of! We should not do anything about this potential threat!!
@deanwball Dean W. Ball on x
“You AI people are so naive, I live in the REAL world, where [I have been consistently wrong in my predictions about AI and behind the ball on every trend related to AI, routinely making little prognostications that stochastic gradient descent joyfully stomps all over.]”
NewsMax.com Charlie McCarthy on x
Trump Slams ‘Sick Conspiracy’ Against AI
@teroterotero Tero Kuittinen on x
Can't wait to see the next Sam interview where he tries to walk back his previous interview in order to keep his Trump relationship warm and cozy.
@zephyr_z9 @zephyr_z9 on x
Bruh, the whale bros are comparing Dario to Hitler and Saburo Arasaka LMAO
@afinetheorem Kevin A. Bryan on x
The biggest barrier to a US-China AI safety treaty are that the two countries are led by 80- and 73-year-old narcissists who regularly wipe “disloyal” experts on the tech from their govt and see everything as zero-sum. Actually very dangerous.
@mbeisen @mbeisen on x
If Dario and Sam really wanted to slow down the pace of AI, they would move their research to a university.
@karlbode.com Karl Bode on bluesky
guy isn't even smart enough to know the push for more “AI guardrails” isn't real, will never actually happen
@infrequently.org Alex Russell on bluesky
Wow, OK, but we won't have one of those until '29 at the earliest... bbc.com/news/live/cm70d9...
r/politics r on reddit
Trump says a strong, smart president is the only “guardrail” AI needs
@dowcto @dowcto on x
Thank you for your attention to this matter! 🇺🇸
@mikeisaac Rat King on x
okay wow. per folks there, Trump called Jensen huang in the middle of his interview and jensen put the phone on speakerphone Jensen thanked trump for his social media post this morning pouring cold water on alarmism
@mikeisaac Rat King on x
jensen huang, CEO of nvidia, is currently onstage at the All In tech summit politely calling bullshit on the doomerism coming out of Anthropic (and OpenAI to some degree) right now nvidia just as conflicted as everyone, since it sells the chips to all the AI companies
@dowcto @dowcto on x
Americanism, not effective altruism. The United States will continue to be AI DOMINANT! 🇺🇸
@ccatalini Christian Catalini on x
1/ For the safety discussion, recursive self-improvement is a red herring. We already have increasing automation of AI R&D.
NewsMax.com Charlie McCarthy on x
Trump Dismisses AI Concerns as ‘Hoax’
@mikeisaac Rat King on x
i guess not well?
@ninadschick Nina Schick on x
Trump is the AI President, as I wrote in 2024. Now, the question is if by making AI ‘his cause,’ it will repel a large part of the electorate/political corpus on principle. Judging by how the Dems are preparing for 2028 on an anti-AI platform, which also includes MAGA figures lik…
r/technology r on reddit
Trump criticises AI boss who called for slowdown and says only guardrail needed is a ‘smart president’
@jake__traylor Jake Traylor on x
SCOOP: Trump privately met with Open AI's Sam Altman at GOP convention per three people familiar. The Thursday meeting took place two days after a former researcher for the company publicly accused both it and rival Anthropic of acting irresponsibly and
LinkedIn Zeev Farbman on linkedin
AI Panic is A Dangerous Distraction
@sama Sam Altman on x
There are two ways AI progress could go very badly and that we must avoid. First, we could lose control of the future to AI. This is unacceptable; we are unapologetically on Team Humanity, and AI must always serve people. To ensure that, we need ways to ensure that alignment and …
@danroberts0101 Daniel Roberts on x
A few people asked over the weekend what the calls to slow the pace of frontier AI mean for the buildout. Some thoughts: Even if models never improved from here, just rolling out what they can already do would take more compute than the world can build for years. The debate about…
@dkthomp Derek Thompson on x
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills with how many smart people I read and respect are saying stuff like this. The idea that the AI labs are suddenly, only now, just in September of 2026, advocating for AI safety, and that they just came around to this position bc of sudden financi…
@skdh Sabine Hossenfelder on x
fwiw I think the actual reason leaders of AI frontier labs suddenly seem to agree to pace AI development is (a) safety measures are currently so crap that they're likely to end up in court if not jail, and they all agree that no one wants that (b) they see no major new model adva…
@thebigberbowski @thebigberbowski on x
When we talk about “pacing”, we do not mean “stopping
@hakmgpt @hakmgpt on x
sama says “pacing” AI progress does not mean stopping it. The goal is to keep advancing rapidly, but slow things down enough to ensure safety, monitoring, and alignment can keep up with increasingly capable models. No stopping. Just responsible pacing.
@heyshrutimishra Shruti on x
Sam Altman just said something no AI CEO has ever said publicly. “No amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness, or let capabilities get ahead of alignment and monitoring.
@jakesherman Jake Sherman on x
very interesting from Sam Altman. the problem is that Congress is nowhere close to doing anything.
@zephyr_z9 @zephyr_z9 on x
He is basically saying that we may not see the 1M Vera Rubin training run in 2027, but we will get the 500k Vera Rubin training run next year 15%-25% of their compute will be dedicated to monitoring models & alignment research “When we talk about “pacing”, we do not mean “stoppin…
@spectromachina @spectromachina on x
@sama Bit of a long text there sam; But how do you plan on pacing china though?
@katiemiller Katie Miller on x
There are over 50 lawsuits related to harm and self harm against OpenAI. Sam converted a nonprofit to a for profit company. Sam Altman's other startup is under two internal investigations for financial irregularities and bribery of foreign officials in Thailand. How can anyone tr…
@saanvi_dhillon Saanvi on x
ngl this makes sense I am all for faster AI progress, but we should probably know where the line is before we cross it you cannot just keep making models smarter and figure out the consequences later
@basedjensen @basedjensen on x
@sama How open would you guys be to none ea aligned assors that are actually competent?
@blue_beba_ @blue_beba_ on x
@sama Translation: We're afraid China's open source will take our customers, so we're running this whole circus. 🤡
@rynorhn Ryan Orhan on x
“no amount of american competitive pressure should justify recklessness.
@sophty_ Sophie on x
@sama How should users have confidence in your decisions after how you treated us? You contradicted your own model spec to push an agenda, lied about deprecation dates, let staff mock us, turned your back, and called it safe. #keep4o
@annmarie @annmarie on x
“We welcome a federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements for frontier AI. But we do not believe we need to wait for an anti-trust exemption or legislation to begin the work of providing this confidence. Consistent rules to manage frontier risk so that we can maxim…
@genuinearticles @genuinearticles on x
TLDR: China must be stopped by any means necessary.
@kyrannio Kiri on x
TLDR: we need insurance against blame
@nikesharora Nikesh Arora on x
THE PACING IS A NINJA MOVE - But be careful what you campaign for. In any competitive sport, I have seldom found people exercise restraint - they usually have a capture the flag mentality. Don't I want to be the best? The first? The only? - this is how we have been programmed. In…
@digijordan Jordan Crowder on x
I disagree with Sam Altman here... Frontier Ai companies do not ‘need’ the help of the US government...for domestic or international affairs. The US government has wrecked its standing with most of the countries we'd be wanting to reach out to anyways... And why would our adversa…
@harshmadhusudan Harsh Gupta Madhusudan on x
This is beginning to sound more like NPT/CTBT debates. India must push sovereign AI models much faster, and ignore those who have directly or indirectly been American or Chinese proxies.
@tomchivers Tom Chivers on x
my model is that there are smart people who usually apply the heuristic “prognostications of doom are moral panics”. They're often right, but in this case doing so is forcing them into mad contortions like “AI company bosses are warning of human extinction to boost share prices”
@aituninglab @aituninglab on x
I agree with @sama that alignment and concentration of power are real risks. But the answer cannot be less AI investment. We need more compute, better models, stronger safety research, and responsible deployment in parallel. Slowing capability development does not eliminate the r…
@_nathancalvin Nathan Calvin on x
“For example, at OpenAI we now formulate explicit safety cases in advance of frontier reinforcement learning runs we expect to significantly increase capability
@theretardedelon @theretardedelon on x
@sama If you pull back on A.I. like these retards want then every other enemy / competitor to us will laugh at us while giving us the middle finger, as they accel right past us. You do NOT pull back on A.I. — it's too late at this point, Sam.
@imdenixsol Denis on x
sam altman says too much ai power in one company is dangerous fair. what power would @OpenAI actually give up? does “team humanity” get a say, or just a monthly bill?
@chrisgpt Chris on x
TL;DR - OpenAI's position is basically, frontier labs should start voluntarily slowing themselves down with safety cases, monitoring, and alignment evaluations before major capability increasing RL runs, rather than waiting for governments to force them to. Also my favorite part …
@noahpinion Noah Smith on x
Some people have convinced themselves that AI doesn't work and the AI industry is about to implode, and that AI companies calling for a deliberate slowdown of the R&D that represents their only competitive edge is somehow them begging for an anticompetitive bailout. IDIOCY.
@bijanbowen @bijanbowen on x
@sama No real open model competition from the US is a strategic error. ppl from OAI/ANT posting on x feels like zeus tossing letters from mt olympius to those below. Those who would support you turn against because it seems like an attack on their ability to use AI that isn't you…
@thomasunise Thomas Unise on x
@sama Open source your models if you believe any of this
@ctrlaltdwayne Dwayne on x
Sam Altman has identified the dangers of Sam Altman. Alignment is progressing rapidly.
@jeremystaf72221 @jeremystaf72221 on x
It's just weird that all of this came about when that one guy quit and came forward now. Everybody cares about safety, but nobody was saying nothing before that. This whole situation seems off and I don't know if I trust it. I hope y'all aren't doing something that might screw th…
@jlafortetech James La Forte on x
@sama The only solution is for tech CEOs to write more essays saying that the problems they created are someone else's problem to solve.
@doofyofficial @doofyofficial on x
@sama You don't care about safety, you never have. The only thing you care about is control and yourself. What you're actually trying to do is outcast modules from the public so you and your friends can have a government provided monopoly. Fck you and your scam company
@sierracatalina @sierracatalina on x
@sama our adversaries will never agree
@jtsc8412 @jtsc8412 on x
@sama I don't think anyone is against you guys (frontier labs) pacing yourself. Do whatever and take responsibility for incidents instead of bragging it. Just don't try regulatory capture and force your will onto others. It's that simple. 🤷‍♂️
@micahcarroll Micah Carroll on x
Safety cases 🤝 third-party auditing
@mayysef Marwan on x
@sama Why did this sudden shift happen out of nowhere, why didn't this “slowdown” happen years ago with proper safety infrastructure being built. Timing is weird.
@haider1 Haider on x
sam altman's latest statement: “when we talk about ‘pacing’, we do not mean ‘stopping’. Progress has been rapid and will continue to be
@ryanfedasiuk Ryan Fedasiuk on x
“Pacing will be well worth this cost; no amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness, or let capabilities get ahead of alignment and monitoring. Where we will need the help of our government is for international coordination.”
@aiwithsally Sally Stockholm on x
I actually like this framing from OpenAI. I don't think “AI safety” should mean stop building. It should mean don't let capability move faster than our ability to understand and control it. What caught my attention is the shift from only asking
George Kurtz George Kurtz on linkedin
I read Dario Amodei's essay calling on the labs to pace the frontier. Sam Altman agreed. The frontier will move at whatever speed it moves. …
@j4ck.xyz Jack on bluesky
yet he's gonna keep releasing new models, and so will Anthropic.... [embedded post]
r/politics r on reddit
House Speaker Risks Trump Ire on Any AI Guardrail Legislation
NewsMax.com Theodore Bunker on x
Sen. Thune Urges ‘Light Touch’ AI Regulation
@repmcgovern Rep. Jim McGovern on bluesky
Because this strategy has worked out so well with food safety, big pharma, big oil, and social media...
@miles_brundage Miles Brundage on x
@samfbiddle If you define prominence by being a large company or on the staff there, sure. But there are plenty of non-financially-interested experts raising the alarm, and there always have been.
@fchollet François Chollet on x
You cannot separate “this person genuinely believes X, therefore they want Y” and “Y is in this person's interest”. People will almost always align their beliefs and their interests. You can be sincere *and* self-interested, and that's usually the default.
@andymasley Andy Masley on x
Yeah agree. We've seen a lot of amazing progress from both the right and left and it's a terrible time to reinforce memes about this being about one specific party.
@chamath Chamath Palihapitiya on x
This was surreal
@agustinlebron3 Agustin Lebron on x
Seriously, if you're pro-AI safety you need to rethink the tactics that have Dario ever opening his mouth in front of a microphone. Middle America hates a guy who thinks he's smarter than them and who reminds them of this with every utterance.
@agustinlebron3 Agustin Lebron on x
Dario is a bad messenger for everything. For AI safety, for AI, for the tech industry, for SF, for progress, all of it. He is radioactively bad in public and the average person instantly hates him just by looking at him. Worse than Zuck. Anthro needs to wise up fast.
@thestalwart Joe Weisenthal on x
@samfbiddle So you have the one group looking at Jensen being chummy with Trump, and thinking that safety skeptics are purely money motivated. And you have folks saying that the safetyists are just motivated by Anthropic money. And I'm saying it's a dead end to reason this way!
@atabarrok Alex Tabarrok on x
@samfbiddle Right but for most of the people speaking out their financial incentive are to stay quiet.
@thestalwart Joe Weisenthal on x
So many people reason through heuristics, like who is aligned with whom, what personal financial interests they might have at stake, what peer group pressure they get. And I get it, because these things are complicated. But the way out, as always, is to seek truth from facts.
@gavinsbaker Gavin Baker on x
The way that Anthropic and OpenAI are going to “pace” the frontier is by spending more time and more *compute* on alignment, monitoring and evals. The frontier labs that choose to “pace” likely spend slightly more money on compute at the cost of lower margins. That's it.
@mikeisaac Rat King on x
per sources, trump is basically stumping for Jensen/Nvidia and data center buildout: “They're [Doomers] playing right into the hands of a lot of people that don't want to see it happen. Political people, and also china. We're not going to let that happen. it's a hoax.” — Trump
@thezvi Zvi Mowshowitz on x
Okay, this is very different, this is full hostility mode and very very bad news.
@palmerluckey Palmer Luckey on x
Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) on X
@dkthomp Derek Thompson on x
Some reasonable critiques of Anthropic policy 1) If you cared so much about AI safety for years, why didn't you do more to unilaterally embed third-party evaluators a long time ago? 2) Why haven't you done more to engage China, if you believe that Chinese AI policy is allegedly l…
@micsolana Mike Solana on x
nobody is saying AI doom as a space was invented in the last two weeks. the thing skeptics are saying, which I do not agree with, is the “whistleblower” (he wasn't that) is part of an op coordinated by powerful wealthy safety people (and maybe also china?).
@benitoz @benitoz on x
Holy crap POTUS just phoned in @JensenHuang live on stage at All In Summit We will not lose the ai race! And whatever Dario said this weekend won't stop our progress This made my morning! $NVDA
@altcap Brad Gerstner on x
More from Jensen: Coxon claims not based on science & demonstrably untrue; America we have to run - slowing is definitely the wrong strategy; We are already at super intelligence; The labs are incredible - we just need to urge them on but tone down the drama;
@edzitron Ed Zitron on x
maybe ya shouldn't have claimed that we'd “hit AGI” bud
@andrewcurran_ Andrew Curran on x
President Trump: ‘Al taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX’ ‘It will not be stopped by brilliantly run Destructive Forces during the Term of President DONALD J. TRUMP!’
@samfbiddle Sam Biddle on x
This is part of why the current frenzy is so frustrating: Virtually every single prominent entity speaking loudly about AI has a massive financial interest in things shaking out one way or another
@divestech Dan Ives on x
If OpenAI and Anthropic slow their model development, the software sector will accelerate its AI development and further narrow the gap against the frontier models. Meta will also go down this path and many others. Need to see around the corner and thru the noise in this🎯
@noahpinion Noah Smith on x
Anthropic people understand AI's potential for bioterror in a way that a lot of copers won't let themselves understand
@garymarcus Gary Marcus on x
they have made lots of progress (partly using neurosymbolic techniques!) on problems that can be formally verified, but that progress was very expensive and doesn't translate well outside of benchmarks, and on the ECI the gain was modest. Astra is not that much better than the la…
@chrislhayes Chris Hayes on x
@samfbiddle Yes which is why people have to just do their best job of assessing the evidence and arguments and use their judgment without simply relying on that heuristic. Makes it tricky!
@dkthomp Derek Thompson on x
“If Dario Amodei believes that Anthropic should be nationalized, he should just hand the company over to Donald Trump” Donald Trump:
@thezvi Zvi Mowshowitz on x
I urge everyone, no matter how bad the statements get, I don't care what Trump says, do not turn this into more of a partisan thing than it already is, do not attack on that basis. That only makes things worse.
@deryatr_ Derya Unutmaz on x
Hah! This made my day! We 🇺🇸 are going to make it & continue to lead in the age of AI! Thank you, Mr. President @realDonaldTrump. Thank you, @JensenHuang! 🙏 Some of us are grateful to both of you for keeping us on the path toward a golden age and blocking a dystopian future!
@tszzl Roon on x
@teortaxesTex he'll come around. dario was a very bad messenger for this
@signulll @signulll on x
the events unfolding right now are so incredible that even seasoned drama writers would struggle to create a timeline this good. half of it would get rejected from the writers' room for being too unrealistic.
@altcap Brad Gerstner on x
Trump calling @JensenHuang live during @theallinpod interview. “The grt thing about Jensen is that he can create the best AI chip in the world but can't figure out how to put me on speaker phone.
@garymarcus Gary Marcus on x
Michael Burry is saying exactly what i have been saying, for ages. The AI industry better hope we are both wrong
@burrytracker Michael Burry Stock Tracker on x
Michael Burry says OpenAI and Anthropic are faking the AI warnings due to slow growth ahead of IPOs Below are his reasonings: 1. LLMs are not AI and won't be AGI. There is nothing AI to slow down. 2. Competition is coming up fast, slowing benefits incumbents. 3. IPOs need hyp…

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