President Trump announced on Saturday that he will form an “AI Force” and name an artificial intelligence czar, while rejecting calls from researchers and lawmakers to slow the technology’s development. Writing on Truth Social, Trump compared the new body to the Space Force he created during his first term and said the czar announcement would come in the near future, adding that “only High I.Q. individuals need apply.”
The announcement lands in the middle of an unusually loud week for AI risk warnings. Researchers at several top labs have issued public statements about losing control of advanced systems, and executives including Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, xAI’s Elon Musk and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis have all called at some point for a slower pace or stronger safeguards. Trump dismissed those concerns as another in a list of what he described as “hoaxes” promoted by Democrats.
“We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry,” Trump wrote, saying harmful conduct would be handled “with our already existing Criminal and Civil Justice System” rather than new rules. He framed AI as an economic and strategic priority, predicting it could account for as much as 25% of US gross domestic product, and said the United States leads China and the rest of the world in the field. “I intend to keep it that way,” he added. In a separate line he said the country would “cherish” and “watch over” the industry as it grows, language that sits oddly with the enforcement-only approach in the same post.
What the AI Force actually is
The White House has not said what the AI Force will do, who will staff it, or how it relates to existing bodies. The name echoes the US Tech Force, a program launched in December 2025 that recruited about 1,000 engineers from companies including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI for two-year stints building AI systems inside federal agencies. That program sits under the Office of Personnel Management and works on implementation, not policy, and its alumni get hiring commitments from the same companies they served alongside.
Whether the AI Force is a second cohort of that program, a new policy shop, or something else is unclear. Politico reported that tech industry representatives were themselves puzzled by the announcement, viewing it mainly as a response to growing public concern over AI’s risks rather than a worked-out plan. The AI czar role is similarly undefined; the administration has not said whether the position sits in the White House, what its budget would be, or how it would interact with the White House science office and the existing AI and crypto czar arrangement under David Sacks.
What the announcement does settle is direction. For months, the administration has been pressed from two sides: state governments passing their own AI rules, including California’s Governor Gavin Newsom signing an executive order this week to explore new AI rules and consider a “kill switch” requirement, and Republicans in Congress pushing a national framework that would pre-empt state law. Trump’s post puts him firmly on the side of no new constraints at the federal level.
The states are not waiting
The tension with the states is now the main event. Reporting over the weekend described Republican and Democratic governors alike defying the White House on AI regulation, with Nevada’s Governor Joe Lombardo issuing his own executive order on data centers and Virginia’s Governor Abigail Spanberger moving to tighten data center tax incentives after a fight with state legislative leaders. A bipartisan bill to protect ratepayers from data center costs has stalled in the Senate, and senators are now competing with their own versions of consumer protection bills.
Industry groups that spent 2025 lobbying for federal pre-emption may get what they asked for in one sense: a White House that refuses to regulate. But they lose on the other, because a vacuum at the federal level is precisely what has been pulling regulation down to the states, where companies face a patchwork instead of a single rulebook. House Democrats have separately pressed Speaker Mike Johnson to keep lawmakers in session to address AI safeguards, a request he has so far shown little appetite for.
| Body | Status | Known role |
|---|---|---|
| AI Force | Announced September 19 | None stated |
| AI czar | To be named | Adviser, scope undefined |
| US Tech Force | Active since December 2025 | About 1,000 engineers in federal agencies |
| State AI rules | Expanding | California, Nevada, others acting unilaterally |
The other live variable is timing. The midterm elections are less than two months away, and AI has become a genuine campaign issue, with polls showing public anxiety about job displacement and data center costs. An AI czar named before November would immediately become a political appointment to defend; one named after could start with a clearer mandate, or none at all if the composition of Congress changes.
The broader context is a week in which the AI policy conversation got louder on every front at once. California’s legislature passed a bill to retrain Hollywood workers displaced by AI, which Newsom signed. A GOP-appointed regulator cited Trump’s own statements when rejecting the gas plant that would have powered an Amazon data center. And the California antitrust suit alleging that major labs agreed to slow development turned Amodei’s safety essay into a legal exhibit. Against that backdrop, a presidential post promising speed and no rules reads less like a settled policy and more like one side of an argument the rest of Washington is having without him.
For now, the announcement tells the labs what they wanted to hear. There will be no federal slowdown, no new safety regulator, and enforcement of harmful uses stays with laws written before modern AI existed. Whether that position survives contact with the first serious AI incident of the next administration cycle is the question nobody in the post attempted to answer.