US President Trump: The President is AI Regulation
According to NBC News, US President Trump stated that the only "regulation" that artificial intelligence truly needs is a strong president, and the US happens to have such a president—far beyond what is necessary; he also claimed, "We already have tremendous power to impose criminal and regulatory actions on these companies."
Trump specifically mentioned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, stating that his administration has prevented individuals in the AI field from engaging in "bad or potentially bad behavior," "like Dario," and indicated that this will continue; he characterized public warnings about AI risks as a "pathological conspiracy against AI and data centers," claiming that "only China is happy about this."
Trump further emphasized, "Whoever wins AI wins the future," and "We are ahead of all other countries and will continue to maintain that lead"; this aligns with his previous statement on social media, "Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs," which directly rebuts the joint call from CEOs of AI companies like Amodei, Altman, and Musk to "slow down development."
This is not the first time the Trump administration has suppressed local and industry-level AI regulatory demands using presidential power—in December 2025, Trump signed an executive order titled "Ensuring the National Artificial Intelligence Policy Framework," which called for the establishment of an "AI Litigation Working Group" to specifically sue state AI laws that do not align with the federal "minimal regulation" approach, instructing the Secretary of Commerce to investigate state laws requiring AI models to change "real outputs," effectively using the federal minimal regulation framework to suppress AI legislative authority in Democratic-led states like California and New York.
Vice President Vance's statement reveals subtle divisions within the administration team—he publicly expressed skepticism about tech companies' calls for government regulation, suggesting that such demands could be a "Trojan horse," implying that some companies are calling for regulation to raise competitive barriers and exclude smaller rivals; companies like Google and OpenAI have previously invested about $100 million through super PACs to influence AI-related policy directions.
Trump equates the personal authority of the president with AI regulation itself, objectively signaling to the market that "federal-level mandatory AI safety legislation will not be intensified," which benefits chip stocks like Nvidia and AMD, as well as AI labs rushing towards IPOs, maintaining expectations for capital expenditures. However, this "president as a guardrail" statement also highly concentrates the ultimate discretion of AI regulation in the hands of the president; if policy direction or enforcement standards change due to personnel changes, companies will face far greater uncertainty than under a codified legal system.
ABAB AI Insight
The Trump administration's use of executive power to suppress state-level regulation has precedent in the AI issue—the executive order signed in December 2025, titled "Ensuring the National Artificial Intelligence Policy Framework," explicitly called for the establishment of a dedicated "AI Litigation Working Group" to sue state laws that do not conform to the federal "minimal regulation" approach. Previously, Congress had twice (in July and November) rejected similar federal AI legislative proposals, indicating that this strategy of "bypassing Congress and directly using presidential executive orders and litigation to suppress local regulation" is a consistent tactic of the Trump administration in addressing AI regulatory disagreements, rather than a temporary statement.
Tech companies like Google and OpenAI have invested about $100 million through super PACs to engage in policy lobbying, with funding clearly directed towards maintaining the federal minimal regulation framework and suppressing state-level legislation; Trump's public claim of having "criminal and regulatory power" over AI companies also objectively informs these companies funding policy lobbying—that federal regulatory power ultimately rests with the president, which serves as a form of reassurance to businesses (that there will be no unexpected state regulatory shocks) while also implying a deterrent against specific companies (like Anthropic under Amodei).
Vance's characterization of tech companies' calls for regulation as a "Trojan horse" aligns with previous criticisms from White House AI policy officials like David Sacks, who described the "slow down coalition" as a "cartel in virtue's clothing"—both believe that the true motivation behind leading companies' calls for regulation is to raise compliance barriers and consolidate their own advantageous positions; this narrative of "regulation as a competitive tool" has historically appeared in regulatory battles in industries like finance and pharmaceuticals, and the current AI sector is in a tug-of-war phase where leading labs lobby the federal government to maintain a loose framework while simultaneously lobbying to suppress strict state legislation.
This is essentially a structural game regarding the ownership of regulatory authority— the Trump administration attempts to consolidate the AI regulatory system, which should be legislated by Congress and governed by states, into a highly centralized and discretionary single node of "presidential executive power + litigation working group," arguing for efficiency and national competitiveness; however, this mechanism of "replacing a codified regulatory framework with presidential personal authority" essentially substitutes the unpredictability of political cycles for the predictability of law—AI companies' short-term policy leniency comes at the cost of long-term policy stability, and once the governing team changes, regulatory standards may experience significant fluctuations.