President Donald Trump said Saturday he will form an 'AI Force' and appoint an artificial intelligence tsar, signaling a new federal posture toward a fast-moving industry that is already reshaping capital, productivity and national power.
Trump said his administration 'will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry.' He added, 'Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows!' He also said the existing criminal and civil justice system can handle bad actors using AI.
In the same post, Trump compared the new initiative to Space Force, which he called a 'tremendous SUCCESS' in his first term. He said AI could eventually represent as much as 25% of U.S. GDP and be more impactful than the internet. He also said, 'We are leading China, and the rest of the World, and I intend to keep it that way!'
The announcement comes as major AI companies and industry leaders have been talking about slowing development. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently announced a new safety measure that would give independent evaluators permanent, employee-level access inside the company as part of a broader plan to slow the pace of AI development. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk, and Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis agreed.
Altman also said his company and other leading AI labs may be close to announcing a pact to slow AI development and jointly address safety risks. Separately, a lawsuit filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleged AI companies violated antitrust laws by agreeing to coordinate slowdown efforts, a claim the plaintiffs said could reduce the value of AI subscriptions they paid for.
Trump’s move also lands against a backdrop of warnings from researchers and lawmakers. BBC reported that claims by current and former researchers that the technology could endanger humanity have raised alarm bells, while the Joint Committee on Human Rights in the UK has called for a new bill on AI to address the scale and seriousness of the threats.
For markets, the signal is clear: Washington is not preparing to pause the race. It is trying to manage it without choking off growth, even as concerns about safety, regulation and industrial concentration pile up.
That is the tension investors and taxpayers should watch. Capital rewards clear rules, and the companies building AI want neither chaos nor a government slowdown that freezes investment. But when the technology is this powerful, the public will demand accountability from both the firms and the bureaucracy. The market has already voted on the upside. Now Washington has to prove it can protect the public without smothering free enterprise.
