In a notable divergence from leading tech figures, Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson have criticized recent calls from the artificial intelligence sector to decelerate the pace of development. The debate intensified after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei released an open letter advocating to “pace the frontier,” a stance quickly endorsed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Elon Musk on X. Alphabet co-founder Demis Hassabis also signaled tentative agreement with the proposal.
However, the political leadership appears unconvinced. Reporting from the Financial Minutes indicates that Trump and Johnson believe the industry’s reaction is excessive. They express concern that a voluntary slowdown would create an opening for China to surpass the United States in the global AI competition.
“Look, we’re leading China in AI … and, frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI, wins,” Trump stated, emphasizing the strategic imperative to maintain American dominance in the field.
They call it overreaction, I call it common sense. We really want to speedrun a scenario we don’t understand?
Trump basically just admitted AI is a weapon of war now. Scary how casual he is about the stakes here.
Is national security really more important than existential risk? The race to the bottom worries me more than China.