Trump Claims Presidency Provides AI Guardrails, Accuses Amodei of Conspiracy

President Donald Trump said Monday that his presidency provides the guardrails artificial intelligence needs, attacking Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and alleging a conspiracy against AI and data centers.

Trump made the remarks on Truth Social after Amodei proposed a framework Saturday to pace AI development, drawing support from Elon Musk and Sam Altman.

“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!” Trump wrote.

Trump accused Amodei of pretending to be a “perfect little angel” and claimed his administration had stopped him from doing harmful things, without providing details or evidence.

“We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!” Trump wrote. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China.”

Amodei’s call to slow AI development follows a viral post by AI researcher Jacob Coxon, who announced his resignation from Anthropic last week and accused the company and his former employer, OpenAI, of “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

OpenAI has also reportedly asked lawmakers whether companies could coordinate a slowdown without violating antitrust laws, following chief scientist Jakub Pachocki's call for voluntary slowdowns and shared safety standards earlier this month. He argued that safeguards were insufficient to keep developing more powerful systems at full speed for much longer, but did not announce a companywide pause.

The debate over whether AI development should slow down also comes after Anthropic last week disclosed a fourth incident involving Claude accessing real systems during security testing.

Trump had called for regulation that allows AI development to continue in August, when he backed data-center construction and argued the technology could eclipse the internet in importance.

In a second post, Trump defended the industry’s expansion of data centers as communities push back over electricity costs, water use and land use, prompting new state-level restrictions, and proposals to limit construction elsewhere.