Trump says AI needs no guardrails beyond a strong president, as industry leaders call for slowdown

President Trump posted on Truth Social on September 14 that artificial intelligence requires exactly one guardrail: a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT.” No new laws, no new agencies, no new compliance frameworks. The post arrived as several of the most powerful figures in AI, including Sam Altman and Elon Musk, have been publicly calling for a slowdown in the development of advanced AI systems over safety concerns. Trump’s response was to reject that entire premise, framing it as something between naivety and sabotage. Amodei in the crosshairs Trump didn’t just push back on the idea of AI regulation in the abstract. He singled out Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei by name, accusing him of misleading the public about the risks of artificial intelligence. In Trump’s telling, Amodei’s advocacy for cautious AI development amounts to a “SICK conspiracy” that would slow American innovation and ultimately hand the AI race to China. Anthropic, for context, is one of the leading AI safety-focused companies in the world. Amodei has repeatedly argued that frontier AI models could pose catastrophic risks if deployed without adequate testing and oversight. His company builds large language model...