‘Trojan Horse!’ JD Vance Suggests It’s Suspicious AI CEOs Are Calling for Government Regulation

The Trump administration is scoffing at warnings about artificial intelligence from the likes of Bill Gates and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, as the tech giants ask for government cooperation to keep AI from developing too quickly.

Gates penned an essay last month, writing, “We need a plan to ensure that the good outweighs the bad.” Meanwhile, Amodei wrote this week that “we must slow the pace” of AI advancements before the technology gets too big to control.

But all of the hullaballoo seems to have fallen on deaf ears at the White House.

President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday, “AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX” meant to keep the U.S. from competing with China.  And in an earlier post, Trump insisted, “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!”

On CNN’s The Arena With Kasie Hunt Monday, the host marveled at the administration’s lack of concern, as Vice President J.D. Vance questioned the tech giants’s motivations.

“It is worth taking a moment to realize the remarkable position that we’re in right now,” Hunt said. “So, these companies are building immensely powerful and potentially immensely dangerous tools. And the people who are in charge, the people who know the models best, are telling us that we are not far from a day when they could lose control of their own creations. Standing opposite them are a president calling it a hoax, and his number two, the vice president, questioning their motives.”

Hunt played a tape of Vance saying, “There are obviously risks to AI. There are some benefits to AI. I have to say, just personally, I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them. It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse. So I think we just have to be careful about this.”

“Okay,” said a dubious Hunt before playing video of Amodei explaining why government oversight is necessary:

So, the one thing that we’re asking for from government right now is it can sit down in the room and with all the industry players and we can all talk together and the government can make sure that we’re, you know, we’re not doing anything nefarious from the perspective of antitrust and collusion. We’re just trying to make our system safe and to work together on making the system safe. And so I think that’s an important role for the government to have.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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