White House SIF co-chair: “We will control AI companies that do not cooperate with the government”

Deputy Secretary of Defense Emil Michael, co-chair of the U.S. White House's 'Superintelligence Force' (SIF), announced that if artificial intelligence (AI) companies do not cooperate with the government, various administrative measures, including export controls, will be used to control their actions.

Deputy Minister Michael is the person who pushed for the designation of Antropic as a ‘supply chain risk company’ after it refused to remove safety measures.

The Information, an IT media outlet, reported on the 19th (local time) that Vice Minister Michael said this in an interview with the company.

Deputy Minister Michael argued that it is the Trump administration's responsibility to control AI companies such as Antropic.

So far, the Trump administration's AI oversight approach has focused primarily on voluntary measures, such as the non-binding joint agreement signed by major AI companies after a White House summit late last month.

However, Deputy Minister Michael argued that it would be appropriate to apply stricter checks on AI companies if necessary.

He cited export controls imposed on Antropic last June, which blocked access to AI models for users outside the U.S., as an example.

“We have many tools at our disposal, from restricting the export of technology that we believe could benefit a hostile country to full-blown export controls to restricting the use of that software by foreign nationals,” he said. “If a real problem arises, you can trust that the administration and the president will respond with urgency.”

He also opposed the idea of ​​anthropomorphizing AI models, citing as an example Antropic's policy of allowing Claude to terminate conversations with malicious users.

“If you don’t want humans to lose control, you shouldn’t give models the power to control humans,” he said.

He added that he would not allow Antropic to be used within the Department of Defense "as long as such moral principles are embedded in the software."

Deputy Minister Michael criticized cutting-edge AI companies calling for stronger regulations for safety, saying they are behaving like drunk drivers who expect someone else to stop their car instead of stopping their car themselves.

He also acknowledged the growing national security risks associated with AI.

“I’m a little concerned that China’s open source model is becoming dominant in the U.S. because those companies are controlled by the Chinese government,” he said.

“One way to respond to the growing use of these models in the US is to audit model weights,” he said, adding that he prefers to respond to this problem in the same way as the growing US open source alternatives such as Reflection, Thinking Machines and Nvidia’s Nemotron.

However, he also acknowledged that none of these companies have yet reached the cutting edge level.

Deputy Minister Michael said he was also concerned about corporate espionage.

He mentioned the recent case of OpenAI's Saudi Arabian employee installing a wiretapping device and said, "Not all foreign nationals are bad, but foreign nationals carry a certain degree of risk."

He argued that companies should be more vigilant rather than increase government control.