President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed warnings that artificial intelligence could destroy humanity as a “hoax” and argued that strict regulation would put American companies at a disadvantage against China, according to posts on his Truth Social platform.
Trump questioned why leaders in the AI industry would back rules that he said could drive their companies “into oblivion and bankruptcy,” framing the debate as the latest in a series of what he has long called politically driven hoaxes.
“AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX,” Trump wrote, grouping the claim alongside the Russia investigation, Ukraine-related controversies and the two impeachments he faced during his presidency. He described them collectively as “HOAXES and SCAMS that America was forced to endure.”
Xi and permitting as bargaining chips
The president pointed to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s decision not to stand in the way of AI development, and warned that U.S. permitting difficulties could push major projects offshore.
“President Xi, of China, just announced that China will be doing absolutely nothing to stand in the way of AI, or its future,” Trump wrote. He then cited Google, saying the company “has recently stated that they want to build a massive Plant in Finland, all because they are finding permitting too difficult in the United States.”
“I am not happy about this, and want them to change their thinking,” he added.
‘Bigger than Oil, Gold, Diamonds, or even the Internet’
Far from treating the technology as a threat, Trump described AI and the data centers that power it as potentially the most significant economic engine in history.
“AI, and Data Centers, will be the Greatest Economic Development Engine in History — Bigger than Oil, Gold, Diamonds, or even the Internet,” he wrote. “It will not be stopped by brilliantly run Destructive Forces during the Term of President DONALD J. TRUMP!”
The remarks came in response to a wave of calls from AI executives — including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk — who have urged Washington to establish stronger safeguards around the technology. Their concerns have spanned AI safety, accountability, economic disruption, scientific development and national security.
A day earlier, a swipe at Amodei
Trump had already rejected those concerns on Sunday, arguing that global dominance would belong to whichever country took the lead on AI and that the only “guardrails” the technology needs is a strong president.
“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. He claimed his administration had already stopped AI “people” from doing bad “things,” naming Amodei — whom he accused of “pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel'” — and said the government already holds “tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies.”
He also described what he called a “SICK conspiracy” against AI and data centers, arguing that only China benefits from it. “WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!” he wrote.
Trump closed that post by asserting the United States is ahead of China and “all others,” and warning “Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers” to beware.
The two posts amount to the clearest statement yet of the president’s posture toward the AI safety debate: treat the industry’s warnings as a political fabrication, keep federal barriers low, and compete with Beijing on speed rather than precaution.
That stance puts the White House at odds with much of the industry’s own leadership, some of whom have spent the past two years warning that powerful systems could outpace oversight. Amodei, Altman and Musk have each publicly pushed for tougher safeguards, even as their companies race to build more capable models.
Trump’s framing also puts permitting policy at the center of the argument. Data centers require enormous amounts of land, power and water, and the administration has treated slow approvals as a competitiveness problem rather than an environmental or grid-management one. His reference to Google’s Finland plans — raised as an example of what he called an exodus driven by U.S. red tape — reflected a broader warning that capital will simply go where construction is easier.
Whether that dynamic plays out as Trump described is a question the administration has not answered with policy specifics. The posts did not outline new executive actions, legislation or agency directives. Instead, they functioned as a public rebuttal to the safety camp — and as a signal that the president intends to own the AI boom politically rather than slow it down.
The political calculation is straightforward enough: Trump is betting that voters feel the economic upside of AI infrastructure far more than they fear its risks, and that a deregulatory message plays better than a cautionary one. His comparison of AI alarmism to the Russia and impeachment fights is a familiar move, folding a new technology debate into the grievances that animate his base.
Still, the executives he criticized are not marginal figures in the Republican-aligned tech world. Musk in particular has been a prominent supporter of the president, and Altman has courted Washington extensively. That makes the public scolding notable — a sitting president telling the architects of the technology that their own safety warnings are the problem.
For now, the posts leave the substance of U.S. AI oversight where it was. What has changed is the temperature: the president has made clear he sees the safety debate as an obstacle to be run over, and that he intends to answer claims about existential risk with claims about economic upside.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/09/14/trump-calls-ai-fears-hoax-regulations-bankrupt-u-s-companies/