President Trump brushed aside artificial intelligence doomsayers Sunday as “things that won’t happen” and downplayed the need for more regulation — saying that beating China was the most important goal in the AI race.
Trump, at his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland, contended that the apocalyptic predictions of what AI can do are overblown and underscored that his priority is to ensure the US remains the leader in cutting-edge technology.
“We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins,” Trump told reporters in Doonbeg.
President Trump, seen Sept. 13 at the Irish Open at his Doonbeg golf resort, said apocalyptic predictions of what AI can do are overblown. Getty Images
“And we can put guardrails; we can do this and that,” he added.
“But I think you have a lot of negative voices that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”
The president’s comments come after Anthropic safety researchers Joe Benton and Jacob Coxon quit in protest, issuing a dramatic warning about where the scramble to advance AI was heading.
Coxon, in particular, went viral with his warning last Tuesday that garnered some 170 million views on X, in which he blasted both Anthropic and OpenAI for acting irresponsibly and vented that they are “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
Amid the firestorm, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who has tried to build a reputation of being the most cautious AI boss, then called for a slowdown in AI development, which was backed by xAI boss Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Amodei cited this summer’s hack attack of AI company Hugging Face, in which OpenAI agents broke free of their constraints and carried out coordinated, autonomous cyberattacks in order to get the answers to a test.
He noted that “[s]imilar, though less severe, incidents” have taken place at other firms.
“Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in 6–12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet … and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails,” he wrote in a piece on Saturday.
The New York Post cover from Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration intervened after Anthropic’s frontier Mythos model sparked a panic about its potential to exploit cybersecurity vulnerabilities across the board. The Trump administration temporarily banned access to Mythos in response to those fears.
Trump has called AI “bigger than the internet” and highlighted its revolutionary potential, particularly in medicine.
Despite a blizzard of polling indicating public skepticism toward AI and the data centers that power them, Trump has continued to defend both, constantly stressing the need to ensure the US stays ahead of China.
Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic seen earlier this year, urged a slowdown of AI development. Bloomberg via Getty Images
OpenAI founder Sam Altman also backed pumping the brakes on AI. Getty Images
David Sacks, Trump’s former AI czar and current co-president of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, blasted Amodei and Altman, accusing them of doing a publicity stunt.
“[S]top pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability,” Sacks chided on X in response.
“Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic,” he added. “China is very unlikely to join a global agreement, as you know, and that has to be taken into account as well. So go ahead and pace the frontier. You are the ones setting it.”
On Sunday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called for Congress, the White House, and top AI executives to huddle and draft better guardrails, while echoing Trump’s insistence that China can’t lead the development of the nascent technology.
“We have to do this right, safely and wisely,” Johnson told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Congress and the White House need to come together as soon as possible to “figure out what the right balance is.”
“We cannot put a moratorium on this because China will overlap us, and that’s the challenge — national security balanced with the immediate security of making sure the models are safe,” he added.