President Donald Trump is confronting an unusual wave of resistance from Congress, where Democrats and a number of Republicans are pressing for restrictions on the country's largest AI firms, as reported by The Guardian on Tuesday.
According to recent polling from the University of Maryland's Program for Public Consultation, 85% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans back creating a new federal agency to monitor and regulate AI. The same survey found 82% of Democrats and 78% of Republicans support mandatory government safety testing for AI systems involved in critical decisions.
Trump on Monday pushed back against leading artificial intelligence executives who have pressed for new limits on the technology, the New York Times reported. Writing on social media, he insisted the industry needs no oversight beyond, in his words, "a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT."
Trump went on to call safety concerns a "hoax," arguing such warnings would only help China gain an edge in developing the technology. He drew a comparison between AI critics and climate change activists, saying "the people that say AI is going to destroy the World" are the same voices sounding alarms about a warming planet, which he also dismissed as fabricated.
The posts thrust Trump into the center of a growing national debate over how the government should manage and regulate a technology evolving so rapidly, the New York Times noted. Researchers and industry figures have cautioned that AI could trigger mass job losses, fuel new biological weapons, and enable autonomous warfare, none of which the president directly addressed. He instead focused on questioning why industry leaders are calling for a slowdown at all.
"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!" he wrote Monday.
He went further, taking aim at Anthropic's chief executive by name. "The Trump Administration has stopped AI 'people' from doing bad, or potentially bad, 'things,' like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a 'perfect little angel' – and we will continue to do so!" Trump added. He also claimed his administration already wields significant authority, writing: "We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!"
The New York Times noted that it remained unclear precisely which authority Trump was referring to, or what specific actions his administration claims to have already halted. Existing US law can be used to prosecute deliberate hacking into computer systems, though whether it would cover an autonomous AI agent breaching a network on its own is far less certain. As AI firms move toward public listings, they will also fall under the securities rules governing publicly traded US companies – yet beyond that, the sector largely operates without dedicated regulation.
