President Trump flatly claimed it was a “hoax” on Monday after the CEOs of Anthropic and OpenAI said artificial intelligence risks destroying the world – but White House advisers are nevertheless scrambling to devise a balanced policy to regulate AI, On The Money has learned.
Over the weekend, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for the US government to step in and possibly pause AI advancement, conjuring potential doomsday scenarios that included AI agents taking over governments and the military for nefarious ends if the technology is left unchecked.
But the president and his top advisers have no intention of slamming the brakes with a new AI regulatory regime, at least for the foreseeable future, according to two people familiar with the talks. For starters, they believe it would endanger US national security, handing the AI advantage to the Chinese as it pursues both economic and military hegemony.
“They might agree to some limited safeguards but that would be the outer limits for the administration,” said one top Wall Street executive with knowledge of the administration’s thinking.
Instead, the administration is leaning toward self regulation, such as a code of conduct that creates safeguards preventing AI abuse, according to the source. The White House also might support – possibly through federal legislation – safeguards along the lines pushed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, according to the executive.
Those include rules that force AI companies to foot the bill for their own electricity and water usage.
A White House press rep had no immediate comment.
Press reps for Anthropic and OpenAI had no immediate comment.
AI was already facing resistance from many Americans worried that the technology will replace human jobs and that data centers will tax local resources, driving up utility bills. Former President Barack Obama urged Democrats to seize on AI fears – including the public distrust of big tech – as the 2026 midterms approach.
White House officials, although mindful of concerns, believe calls for regulation by OpenAI and Anthropic are partly designed to lock-in their monopoly status. Specifically, the companies could be seeking so-called “regulatory capture” where Anthropic and OpenAI remain dominant because the costs of entry remain too steep for smaller AI competitors.
It’s a point former White House AI Czar David Sacks made over the weekend as he entered the debate posting on X that Anthropic is “running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering. It is principally responsible for the state regulatory frenzy that is damaging the startup ecosystem.”
Controversy surrounding AI has picked up steam in recent weeks after hundreds of OpenAI’s autonomous agents went rogue and hacked an infrastructure platform called Hugging Face. The cyberattack has raised concerns that AI could upend military and civil infrastructure if left unchecked.
Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic employee, helped set the stage for the latest leg of this heated debate and sent the White House scrambling for a response. After quitting his job last week, Coxon warned on X last week that “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
But AI is also a major driving force of the Trump economy and the administration’s national security goals. The buildout of data centers has lifted the stock market, including the tech-heavy Nasdaq, to all time highs even with the small correction Monday. The construction of these facilities has also spurred a blue-collar hiring boom.