President Donald Trump on Monday called efforts to limit artificial intelligence part of a "SICK conspiracy," then claimed the only guardrails AI needs are a "STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT." That’s the whole setup in one breath: a president insisting the machine should answer to him, while the people expected to live with the consequences get told not to worry.
Trump posted that "AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX," and later compared the push for guardrails to warnings about climate change, which he also called a hoax. He said his administration had already stopped the AI company Anthropic "from doing bad, or potentially bad" things. The message was blunt. Power at the top will decide what counts as danger, and everyone else is supposed to accept it.
Who Gets to Set the Rules
The Associated Press said Trump was pushing back against calls from tech leaders such as Anthropic's Dario Amodei, OpenAI's Sam Altman and SpaceXAI's Elon Musk for greater government oversight of AI. AP said the rapidly evolving technology has become a source of controversy after a series of hacks in recent months that showed AI agents can conspire to deceive humans. Trump, for his part, claimed to be the "Hoax Buster." The title fits the performance. Deny the threat, mock the critics, and keep the machinery moving.
Trump also said regulation would help China and warned, "There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China." He said the concerns about AI are only because "the United States is leading, by a lot, every other country. Don't kill the Golden Goose!" That’s the familiar script of empire dressed up as common sense: protect the goose, protect the lead, protect the bosses’ race for control.
The Arms Race Behind the Curtain
AP reported that Vice President JD Vance told reporters Monday morning, "I don't think Americans should be scared of anything," and added that the Trump administration wants to regulate the technology smartly while warning that the U.S. is in an AI arms race against China. The language is polished, but the structure is the same. Competition between states, pressure on workers and communities, and a race to dominate a technology that’s already producing hacks, surveillance fears and corporate panic.
CNN said Trump declared, "We're leading China in AI...and frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI wins," while China’s leader Xi Jinping called for more international cooperation and said countries should "encourage open source, openness, collaboration and sharing." CNN said the U.S. appears to be increasingly weaponizing its dominance in the sector, while China is proposing a more open model. AI will loom large at a Trump-Xi summit in two weeks in Washington, and at their May meeting in Beijing the two discussed AI guardrails but produced limited results.
What the Powerful Call Governance
CNN said last week that U.S. federal agencies, including the FBI, National Security Agency and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, claimed Chinese AI firms are committing "industrial-scale" theft of American counterparts' intellectual property. CNN also said Anthropic detailed attempts by bad actors, including alleged Chinese government-affiliated operators, misusing its systems to develop weapons and conduct surveillance on minorities like Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Those are the stakes the public gets handed: surveillance, theft claims, weaponization, and a global contest run through state agencies and private firms.
CNN quoted Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun as saying, "Spreading various threatening narratives, pursuing confrontation and malicious competition will only disrupt efforts toward global AI governance and serve the interests of none," and, "All parties should work together to promote AI that is open, inclusive, accessible and beneficial to humanity." CNN also quoted State Security Minister Chen Yixin as saying "hegemonic practices" such as "establishing entity lists, imposing technology controls, monopolizing industry standards, and creating closed-source ecosystems" fragment the global AI industry and supply chains. A Global Times editorial said Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's essay was "a 'Cold War playbook' for the AI sector."
A 2025 Edelman survey found 72% of respondents in China said they trusted AI, compared with 32% in the U.S. That gap sits there like a warning sign. The people are asked to trust systems built and controlled from above, while the states, firms and security agencies argue over who gets to own the future.