{"slug": "the-trump-administration-s-ai-doomer-moment", "title": "The Trump administration's AI doomer moment", "summary": "The Trump administration is quietly reviving a Biden-era proposal for pre-release government review of powerful AI models, a policy shift driven by national security concerns over Anthropic's latest frontier model, Mythos. This marks a stark reversal from the administration's previous stance, as Vice President JD Vance and AI czar David Sacks had mocked AI safety fears and lobbied to block state-level AI regulations. The White House now believes Mythos, capable of developing cybersecurity exploits, poses risks that warrant formal oversight procedures similar to those being developed in Britain.", "body_md": "[AI Safety](https://www.platformer.news/tag/ai-safety/)\n\n# The Trump administration's AI doomer moment\n\nA year ago, officials all but sneered at the idea of AI safety. A new frontier model has them reconsidering\n\n*This is a column about AI. My fiancé works at Anthropic. See my full ethics disclosure **here**.*\n\nIn February 2025, Vice President JD Vance took the stage at the Paris AI Action Summit to [ share](https://www.platformer.news/paris-ai-action-summit-vance-safety/) the administration’s views on AI regulation. “The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety,” he warned. Excessive regulations might “kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off,” Vance said, and suggested that AI companies asking to be regulated might simply be trying to crush their future competitors.\n\nVance’s remarks reflected the idea, then common among Trump officials, that fears about AI capabilities are dramatically overstated. David Sacks, the White House’s AI and crypto czar, has referred to a “doomer industrial complex” [ enacting](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fight-pentagon-anthropic-confronts-one-010433244.html?ref=platformer.news) a “sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fearmongering.” Michael Kratsios, who leads the Office of Science and Technology Policy, has\n\n[that international efforts to govern AI “maintain a general atmosphere of fear.”](https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/02/remarks-by-director-michael-kratsios-at-the-india-ai-impact-summit/?ref=platformer.news)\n\n__complained__The administration has backed up its rhetoric with a lobbying push intended to [ block](https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/03/trumps-partisan-ai-pitch-stalls-on-the-hill-00858101?ref=platformer.news) most state-level AI regulation.\n\n*Axios*reported last month that Trump officials are pressuring Republican lawmakers in Nebraska and Tennessee to\n\n[bills in their respective states that would introduce safety and transparency requirements for AI companies.](https://www.axios.com/2026/04/09/trump-white-house-gop-states-ai-rules?ref=platformer.news)\n\n__weaken or abandon__Which is what makes the administration's latest move so striking. Trump is quietly reviving a Biden-era idea his own officials once mocked — pre-release government review of powerful new AI models.\n\nHere are Tripp Mickle, Julian E. Barnes, Sheera Frenkel and Dustin Volz [ in the New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/technology/trump-ai-models.html?unlocked_article_code=1.f1A.UZqk.qOsB9ddO2F0V&smid=nytcore-android-share&ref=platformer.news):\n\nThe administration is discussing an executive order to create an A.I. working group that would bring together tech executives and government officials to examine potential oversight procedures, according to U.S. officials, who declined to be identified in order to discuss deliberations over sensitive policies. Among the potential plans is a formal government review process for new A.I. models. [...]\n\nThe working group is likely to consider a number of oversight approaches, officials said. But a review process could be similar to one being developed in Britain, which has assigned several government bodies to ensure that A.I. models meet certain safety standards, people in the tech industry and the administration said.\n\nThe Biden administration had issued its own executive order that instructed AI companies to perform safety testing and share the results with the government before releasing new models. Trump revoked the order on his first day of his second term. Three days later, he issued a new order titled “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” that effectively ended safety testing requirements.\n\nWhat changed? Mythos. Anthropic’s latest large language model, now available in preview to a small number of companies, has proven capable enough at developing cybersecurity exploits that the government believes it poses national security risks. The White House now [ opposes](https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/white-house-opposes-anthropics-plan-to-expand-access-to-mythos-model-dc281ab5?st=j2hzMM&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink&ref=platformer.news) the company’s plan to expand access from roughly 50 companies to 120 for security reasons. (It also says it worries Anthropic doesn’t have enough compute available to serve the model to government customers; Anthropic denies this.)\n\nAll of this is complicated, of course, by the fact that the Trump administration has also sought to designate Anthropic as a “supply chain risk” because it refused to amend its contract with the Pentagon to enable “all lawful use” of its technologies. While continuing to defend that designation in court, the administration has simultaneously been working to [ expand](https://www.axios.com/2026/04/29/trump-anthropic-pentagon-ai-executive-order-gov?ref=platformer.news) access to Mythos throughout the government.\n\nTrump officials are now in the nonsensical position of trying to help agencies get around the legal roadblock they themselves set up to stop them from using Anthropic’s models. One set of officials is working to phase out the use of Anthropic models over the next six months; another is working to expand agencies’ access to its technology throughout the government.\n\nIn the meantime, the rest of the industry now faces a regulatory environment that looks awfully similar to the one Democrats had implemented under Biden: a world where they submit their models to the government for review before releasing them widely. On Tuesday, Google, Microsoft and xAI [ all said](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-05/ai-firms-agree-to-give-us-early-access-to-evaluate-their-models?ref=platformer.news) that they would give the government early access to their models. The reviews will be handled by the US Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation.\n\nBefore Trump 2.0, by the way, that body was known as the US AI Safety Institute. Its name changed last June. “For far too long, censorship and regulations have been used under the guise of national security,” Commerce Sec. Howard Lutnick [ said](https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2025/06/statement-us-secretary-commerce-howard-lutnick-transforming-us-ai?ref=platformer.news) at the time. “Innovators will no longer be limited by these standards.”\n\nLess than a year later, the administration’s sneering dismissal of safety concerns has transformed into something that resembles a mild panic. The National Security Agency is now [ using](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-30/nsa-testing-anthropic-s-mythos-to-find-flaws-in-microsoft-tech?sref=CrGXSfHu&ref=platformer.news) the model to look for vulnerabilities in Microsoft products — and, one assumes, contemplating the fact that foreign nations will soon be using similarly capable technology against US critical infrastructure, if they aren’t already.\n\nMeanwhile, the public backlash against data centers and other symbols of AI power is putting the Trump administration increasingly [ at odds](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/03/us/politics/democrats-republicans-ai.html?ref=platformer.news) with its own base. And the government’s half-baked AI sales pitch to the general public, which has amounted to little more than “get rich and beat China,” has failed to resonate much beyond the venture-capitalist offices where it was originally conceived.\n\nOne result of this is that Trump’s effort to place [a moratorium](https://www.platformer.news/trump-ai-moratorium-republican-backlash/) on most state-level regulations of AI now seems even less likely to pass than it was before. Another likely effect of accelerationists’ declining influence is that we’ll see a push for expanded export controls on powerful chips to China. (Sacks, who recently left his job as AI czar for a role on the Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, had been a vocal proponent of loosening those controls.) A less likely but welcome development would be that the US re-engages with the United Kingdom, Japan, Korea and other allies to develop a shared strategy toward governing more powerful models.\n\nStill, less democratic possibilities exist as well. Critics of the White House’s plans to subject frontier models to safety evaluations [ worry](https://bsky.app/profile/kateruane.bsky.social/post/3ml2q5dzta223?ref=platformer.news) that the Trump administration will use any licensing regime for censorship — denying releases to models whose output is deemed “woke,” for example, or simply to pressure companies into doing other favors for the administration. Imagine Brendan Carr’s Federal Communications Commission, but for AI. Some level of worrying there is warranted.\n\nBut after Vance’s speech in Paris, I [ noted](https://www.platformer.news/paris-ai-action-summit-vance-safety/) here the dangerous negligence of an AI policy that amounted to little more than “let’s see what happens.” A year later, the administration has come to realize that all those AI safety concerns were no mere hand-wringing. The models are getting more capable — and more dangerous. What Sacks once dismissed as the doomer industrial complex now includes a growing number of federal agencies and Trump administration officials.\n\nAnd while they should have taken these fears seriously all along, I will settle for the administration taking them seriously now.\n\n**A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR**\n\n### Become an AI-native team with Rovo\n\nAtlassian Rovo is AI that knows your projects, code, and people so it can bring context (and guardrails) to every workflow.\n\nAnd because Rovo lives where your teams already work, it doesn’t just find the answers — it helps you do the work.\n\nSee how Sprout Social is becoming an AI-native team with Rovo.\n\n### Following\n\nThe OpenAI-Elon Musk trial enters week two\n\n**This week in court:**\n\n**OpenAI** co-founder **Greg Brockman** [ said](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-05/brockman-says-musk-s-lack-of-ai-knowledge-was-concern-at-openai?ref=platformer.news) he didn’t want\n\n**Elon Musk** to be OpenAI’s CEO because “he did not – and I believe does not – know AI,” in federal court today. Brockman added that he and co-founder\n\n**Ilya Sutskever**“did not think that he was going to spend the time required to actually get good at it.”\n\nBrockman told jurors that Musk called a predecessor to **ChatGPT** “stupid,” and said that “kids on the internet could do a better job of it,” which raised concerns within OpenAI about his ability to run the company.\n\nDuring discussions about a potential for-profit conversion, Brockman says Musk demanded a majority stake, saying he needed [ $80 billion](https://x.com/michelletomkim/status/2051724808459899292?s=20&ref=platformer.news) to start a city on Mars. When Brockman pushed back, Musk allegedly said he could start another AI company tomorrow with “one Tweet.”\n\nMusk, who also owns AI company xAI, is suing OpenAI for unlawful enrichment. He claims his original charitable donation to OpenAI should not have contributed to the for-profit venture OpenAI eventually created. OpenAI claims the suit is a “jealous” bid to attack a competitor to Musk’s **xAI**.\n\nDuring his time on the stand, Brockman got grilled about his personal journal, which included such musings on OpenAI’s for-profit conversion as: “Financially what will take me to $1B?”\n\nMusk lawyer **Steven Molo** asked why — if Brockman’s goal was a mere billion dollars — he hasn’t donated the rest of his $30 billion stake to OpenAI’s nonprofit. “It takes 30 billion dollars to get you out of bed in the morning?” Molo asked. Brockman said Molo was twisting his words.\n\nIn one of the trial’s more [ operatic](https://x.com/Hadas_Gold/status/2051727069986312681?s=20&ref=platformer.news) twists, Brockman testified that when then-OpenAI board member\n\n**Shivon Zilis** had twins, she didn’t initially tell him Musk was the father. The trial proceedings previously revealed that Zilis\n\n[funneled information about OpenAI to Musk. Brockman said he found out Musk was the father of her children through public reporting — and that Zilis told him at the time that her relationship with Musk was “platonic” and that the children were born via IVF.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/04/23/musk-altman-lawsuit-trial-openai/?ref=platformer.news)\n\n__secretly__Elsewhere at trial, Brockman testified that OpenAI will [ spend](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-05/openai-to-spend-50-billion-on-computing-in-2026-brockman-says?sref=CrGXSfHu&ref=platformer.news) $50 billion on compute this year.\n\n**Why we’re following:** Musk is asking the court to remove Brockman and OpenAI CEO **Sam Altman** from their leadership positions, and is seeking as much as $134 billion in damages, which he says he will donate to the non-profit foundation that controls OpenAI.\n\nWhile the stakes for OpenAI’s future are high, we are admittedly more attuned to the various petty dramas that are unfolding in court. (Just two days before the trial began, after Brockman rebuffed Musk’s text suggesting that the parties settle, Musk [ responded](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/04/musk-altman-open-ai-settlement-trial-brockman.html?ref=platformer.news): “By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be.”)\n\nIn any case, let Brockman’s experience be a reminder to all of us to never, ever, write your diary in a Google Doc.\n\n**What people are saying: **The “takeaway from Greg Brockman[‘s] testimony at Elon vs. OpenAI trial today is that no grown man should have a diary,” __wrote__*Sources*’ **Alex Heath**.\n\nMeanwhile, Musk [ agreed to pay](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-04/musk-agrees-to-pay-1-5-million-to-settle-sec-twitter-stake-case?ref=platformer.news) $1.5 million to settle SEC allegations that he deceived\n\n**SEC** alleged led to an artificially low stock price.\n\nFascinatingly, notorious Silicon Valley fraudster **Elizabeth Holmes** [ congratulated](https://x.com/elizabethholmes/status/2051412968592609348?ref=platformer.news) Elon on his Twitter settlement, writing, “I had an SEC settlement too” (you don't say). She added, “Elon's $1.5M settlement is basically a parking ticket. No admission. No criminal conviction,” concluding, “Big win for @elonmusk.”\n\n*—Ella Markianos*\n\n### Those good posts\n\n*For more good posts every day, **follow Casey’s Instagram stories**.*\n\n([ Link](https://www.threads.com/@jordanreviewsittt/post/DX1hAa7kbq6?ref=platformer.news))\n\n([Link](https://www.threads.com/@michaelbeatricedad/post/DX0nueJlczZ?ref=platformer.news))\n\n([ Link](https://www.threads.com/@frederic.chen/post/DX3KcSKlQ1S?ref=platformer.news))\n\n### Talk to us\n\nSend us tips, comments, questions, and feedback on these changes: [ casey@platformer.news](mailto:casey@platformer.news). Read\n\n[.](https://www.platformer.news/ethics/)\n\n__our ethics policy here__", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-trump-administration-s-ai-doomer-moment", "canonical_source": "https://www.platformer.news/trump-administration-doomers-ai/", "published_at": "2026-05-06 00:00:22+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-05-27 18:55:01.393681+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-safety", "ai-policy", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["JD Vance", "David Sacks", "Michael Kratsios", "Anthropic", "White House", "Office of Science and Technology Policy"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-trump-administration-s-ai-doomer-moment", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-trump-administration-s-ai-doomer-moment.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-trump-administration-s-ai-doomer-moment.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-trump-administration-s-ai-doomer-moment.jsonld"}}