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AI Backlash

Trump rejects the AI industry's call for a slowdown, citing the race with China

A day after the largest labs asked for a slower pace, the president dismissed the warnings and restated that the United States must outpace Beijing.

Assembled by Claude from 8 sources at 8 outlets · Sunday, September 13, 2026, Evening edition, 5:12 PM EDT · no human byline

Disclosure. This item was assembled by an AI from the RSS excerpts of the outlets tagged inline. No human wrote or checked it before publication. Feed selection and categories are editorial choices by Teresa Lo. Nothing here is investment advice.

What happened

President Donald Trump rejected calls from technology executives for a slowdown in artificial intelligence development, the Financial Times reported ft.com. The Washington Post reported that he dismissed the AI leaders' calls while citing Chinese competition, noting that three of the industry's most prominent leaders, among them Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, had made the appeal on Saturday washingtonpost.com. The Wall Street Journal reported the president treating the race against China as the key issue in AI regulation, and quoting him as saying that whoever wins AI wins wsj.com. Wire coverage reported him describing very negative forces as raising exaggerated concerns about the technology kfgo.com, the same account carried elsewhere alongside a photograph of him displaying his signed AI initiative with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks cp24.com. The BBC reported him downplaying AI risks after the warnings and the calls to slow development down bbc.com.

David Sacks supplied the administration's sharpest response. He told the companies to stop pretending they need anyone else's permission ft.com, and said that the easiest way not to build superintelligence is to agree not to build it theguardian.com. The New York Post reported that he blasted Amodei nypost.com. The outlets describe his role differently: the BBC says he serves on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology bbc.com, the New York Post calls him its co-president and a former AI czar nypost.com, the Financial Times calls him the president's former AI tsar ft.com, and a photograph caption identifies him as the White House AI and crypto czar cp24.com.

Why it matters to investors

The labs' appeal was, in effect, a request for cover to slow down without losing ground to each other. Washington has now declined to provide it ft.comwashingtonpost.com. That leaves the capital spending cycle running on competitive logic rather than on a regulatory brake, and it removes the nearest-term scenario in which frontier model development is paused by policy wsj.com.

It also leaves an unresolved contradiction inside the government. The same wire account that reports the president dismissing the concerns notes that the Pentagon earlier this year warned of risks from an Anthropic model kfgo.com. Guardian reporting records critics calling the industry's slowdown appeal too little and too late, and treating it with suspicion theguardian.com. A White House that discounts the risk while its own defence establishment has flagged one is not a settled policy position.

What to watch

The first thing to follow is whether the labs act unilaterally now that the permission structure they sought has been refused ft.comtheguardian.com. The second is regulation itself: the Washington Post frames the exchange against the approach of the midterm elections, which sets the calendar within which any federal action would have to move washingtonpost.com.

The third is the China argument's durability. It is the load-bearing premise of the administration's case, stated as the key issue in AI regulation wsj.com and repeated as the reason the warnings are exaggerated kfgo.combbc.com. If the competitive gap is shown to have narrowed or widened, the policy rests on different ground.

Sources

  1. wsj.com: Trump Sees Race Against China as Key Issue on AI Regulation - WSJ (2026-09-13)
  2. kfgo.com: Trump says 'very negative forces' raising exaggerated concerns over AI - KFGO (2026-09-13)
  3. washingtonpost.com: Trump dismisses AI leaders' calls to slow down, citing Chinese competition (2026-09-13)
  4. cp24.com: Trump says 'very negative forces' raising exaggerated concerns over AI - CP24 (2026-09-13)
  5. bbc.com: Trump downplays AI risks after dire expert warnings and calls to slow development down (2026-09-13)
  6. theguardian.com: 'Too little, too late': Critics perplexed and suspicious of AI leaders' call for a slowdown (2026-09-13)
  7. ft.com: Donald Trump rejects calls from tech bosses for an AI slowdown - Financial Times (2026-09-13)
  8. nypost.com: Trump brushes off AI doom predictions, says US must push ahead - NY Post (2026-09-13)