US President Donald Trump on Sunday ruled out slowing the development of artificial intelligence, saying the United States cannot risk losing its edge over China in the global race for the technology. Speaking to reporters at a golf course in Ireland, where he is attending the Irish Open, he said the US "is leading China" in AI and summed up his bet: whoever wins in AI "wins everything". In the same press availability, he floated the idea of keeping American forces in Iran and "taking the oil" once the war there ends.
The remarks land at the tensest moment yet in the American debate over AI safety. On Saturday, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei presented a three-part framework to pace the industry and buy time to manage its risks, with public backing from Elon Musk and OpenAI chief Sam Altman. According to G1, the debate intensified after two Anthropic researchers resigned and warned that rapid advances could lead to human extinction, and the Pentagon has also warned about the company's model. One of the researchers, Jacob Coxon, has called for international coordination to rein in the race.
For Brazil, the rivalry arrives through two channels. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping have a meeting scheduled for this month, and AI is expected to be among the topics, InfoMoney reported; the sit-down could set the rules of the competition between the world's two largest economies. Days earlier, at the summit of the Brics group in India, a bloc that includes Brazil, Xi promised to develop open-source AI for its members, according to CNN Brasil. For middle powers like Brazil, choosing between closed American frontier models and China's open-source offer has become a foreign policy decision as much as a technical one.
A split Congress and midterm money
Asked whether the industry should slow down, Trump conceded that some rules may be needed but rejected any pause. "We could put up guardrails. We can do this and that. But I think there are a lot of very negative forces bringing this subject up when they shouldn't", he said, according to G1, adding that critics raise things "that are not going to happen". On the CBS program "Face the Nation", Amodei called the competition between American and Chinese companies the hardest dilemma in trying to set a speed limit for AI.
"We should not kid ourselves, because the incentives to excel and the military advantage gained from it are so great that the ability to check that the other side is not cheating needs to be irrefutable. So I think that is going to be a job of years and, frankly, I do not know if it is possible", Amodei said.
The fight reaches Congress weeks before the November 3 midterm elections, which will decide control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. AI executives have poured money into the campaigns: America PAC, a super political action committee tied to Musk, has spent millions backing Republican candidates, G1 reported. House Speaker Mike Johnson backs "some guardrails" but warns that losing the lead to China would be a national security threat. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries wants Congress to move faster to slow the pace of development. In the White House, National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett said he expects meetings this week among officials handling cyber policy, science and technology, according to InfoMoney.
Iran and the oil
On Iran, Trump said he expects the war to end this year, possibly soon after the midterms, and that gasoline prices would collapse once the conflict is over. He then offered another option, drawing a parallel with Venezuela, where an August deal gave the United States control over a fifth of the country's oil reserves: "At the end of the day, we'll get out unless we decide to stay and take the oil, like in Venezuela", he said, according to CNN Brasil, adding that revenue from Venezuela "paid for the war many times". He also repeated his claim that Iran is "constantly asking" for peace talks, an assertion Tehran has already denied. Markets remain tense: traders expect oil prices to rise further on Monday after an attack on a pipeline in Saudi Arabia.