President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed weekend calls to slow frontier artificial intelligence development, saying the United States already has the criminal and regulatory power to police the industry and that the only guardrail AI needs is a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT.” Across about six Truth Social posts he labeled safety concerns a “HOAX,” branded himself the “Hoax Buster,” grouped AI fears with climate change, Russian election interference, and impeachments, and asked when industry leaders had ever sought regulation that would drive them to “oblivion and bankruptcy.” He cast the campaign as a “SICK conspiracy against AI and Data Centers” that would leave “only one happy” — China.

The posts followed Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei’s Saturday essay, “We Must Pace the Frontier,” published Sept. 12, which proposed a three-step framework of independent audits with embedded evaluators, coordination among democratic labs on safety standards, and eventual global pacing. Trump named “Dario” as someone the administration had stopped from doing bad or potentially bad things who was now “pretending to be a perfect little angel.”

The Nasdaq Composite closed down about 0.6 percent Monday. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell nearly 6 percent, and Nvidia shares dropped roughly 3.3 percent.

Lutnick’s Thaw, Then Trump’s Attack

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in early September that Anthropic had done what the administration asked and was “back on the right side.” About two weeks later Trump attacked Amodei by name. That sequence is the Monday peg: a brief public thaw, then a presidential broadside against the essay’s author.

The conflict’s substance predates the essay. Anthropic said it would not allow the Defense Department to use its technology for mass surveillance of Americans or for fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon then designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk and barred government contractors from working with the company. Anthropic sued. A federal judge vacated the designation in late August. Separately, in late February Trump directed agencies to stop using Anthropic products, with a six-month phase-out for those already relying on them; the General Services Administration pulled the firm from federal procurement channels.

Industry Backing And Internal Dissent

Elon Musk of xAI said, “Dario is right.” OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman agreed on pacing the frontier and said OpenAI would match Amodei’s independent-evaluator safeguard with employee-like access. Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis said the essay pointed “towards the right path forward” and that the “direction is correct,” with details still to work through.

David Sacks, a former White House AI adviser, told Altman and Amodei they already control the frontier and should pace without seeking a preferred regulatory framework. Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic researcher, resigned days before the essay warning that labs racing toward self-improving systems were “gambling with our lives” and could “kill us all.” Vice President JD Vance has been skeptical of executives who call for rules while they compete, saying he takes AI risks seriously but questions industry-led campaigns.

China’s Rebuttal To The Gift Narrative

Trump argued a U.S. slowdown would please Beijing. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun on Monday criticized slowdown calls as fear-mongering and said confrontation and competition disrupt global AI governance. Guo’s line undercuts the claim that pacing advocates are doing China’s work.

Trump revoked President Joe Biden’s AI executive order and issued his own in June prioritizing competition with China. Monday’s posts treated existing criminal and regulatory authorities, plus presidential oversight, as sufficient without new statutory guardrails matching Amodei’s three-step plan.