Trump and His Adviser Describe Criticism of AI as a Shadowy Plot

Trump Wants Full Speed Ahead on AI

Even as tech CEOs cast AI as a kind of runaway train, Trump is urging full speed ahead. “We’re leading China in AI, we’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins,” he said over the weekend.

It’s an increasingly rare position, even within the Republican Party. Chair of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology David Sacks, however, also remains bullish — and went so far as to claim on Fox last week that criticism of AI was an “op.”

“The truth is, this was a well-orchestrated media op,” he said of warnings by Jacob Coxon, the Anthropic safety researcher who quit last week. “And it was designed to scare the public about AI — so they implement their preferred approach to AI, which is a government takeover, to have a very heavy hand in government regulation of AI.”

Trump seemingly echoed that over the weekend. “I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up,” he said.

The base isn’t necessarily in the same place. Steve Bannon is set to speak at an event this week to call for greater controls on the technology, alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — the loudest elected, Democratic-aligned AI-skeptical voice — and Coxon. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), too, sounded the mildest note of caution over the weekend, while effectively shrugging off his own role, urging the companies to self-regulate.

Democrats, meanwhile, are noting voters’ concern about this topic, though they, too, are not yet speaking in one voice. Barack Obama, at a fundraiser, urged congressional Democrats to present a clear message on the dangers of the technology.

“If I were running for president next year, this would be one of my central agendas, and I would have a very clear plan, and I would talk about this, and I would say, ‘Here’s our plan for safety, here’s our plan for making sure our kids are not corrupted by this,’” he said, per NBC News. “‘I would be thinking about the economic impacts in very concrete ways and understanding what does it mean if there’s going to be job displacement.’”

AI is often compared to nuclear proliferation, but in Congress’ reluctance to grapple with it, I find comparisons to climate change — a more recent abject failure by the U.S. government — more useful. Oil and coal companies were able to defuse political action in the U.S. with similar talking points — if the U.S. didn’t burn fossil fuels, other countries would, they claimed. Climate change was a fringe issue pushed by activist groups, not a topic for serious-minded politicians, they said.

By the time the U.S. government did take action, it faced structural impediments, with support for regulation of greenhouse gas emissions only rarely having majority support in Congress. Obama’s Clean Power Plan — implemented through executive action — was struck down by the courts. The Democratic-supported climate provisions in the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act — arduously passed through the budget reconciliation process to avoid the filibuster — were immediately scrapped by a new, Republican Congress once Trump retook control of the White House. Nearly 40 years after Congress was first warned about climate change, it has done virtually nothing on the topic.

Now, too, there’s a new dynamic in the mix — a Republican-controlled legislative branch that views itself, from issues of war to spending, as subordinate to the executive branch, and, specifically, to Trump. That, coupled with Trump’s dismissiveness toward those who urge caution around the new technology, does not bode well for the U.S. government leading the way on reining in AI.

Bo French’s Latest Anti-Immigrant Post Gets Some Mild GOP Pushback

During a reporting trip to Texas earlier this year, TPM’s Josh Kovensky took note of the tremendously toxic force that is Bo French, now the Republican nominee for the state’s railroad commission, which, in Texas, is an important office, regulating the state’s oil and gas industry and pipelines.

• To give just a taste of who this guy is, last year he posted a poll asking his X audience, “Who is a bigger threat to America?” The options were “Jews” and “Muslims.”
• On Sunday, he posted a picture that appears to show young people of South Asian descent celebrating in a stadium. “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this,” he wrote. “I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”
• Texas Republicans, as Josh Kovensky saw during his trip, have leaned hard into demonizing both Muslim Texans and South Asian Texans, apparently calculating that doing so will help get xenophobes amped to vote in the midterms.
• French’s post prompted some pushback from elected Republicans in Texas, though Governor Greg Abbott qualified his criticism of French by stating that Texas should have the “toughest immigration laws of any state in America” and to call for “freezing H1B visas at our universities.”
• Attorney General Ken Paxton, asked by Politico for comment on French’s post, did not mention French but attacked James Talarico, his opponent in the Senate race, per Politico.

Tabs

• The political director for Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) left his reelection campaign after the Washington Post reported that he had posted pictures of Nazi soldiers to his Facebook and participated in the creation of a public playlist that celebrated Rhodesia, a white-governed breakaway state in Africa admired by white supremacists.
• Trump does not yet appear to be spending money to defend Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, the Washington Sun reports.

Man of the Hour

It’s Donald Trump Jr., whose wedding was, reportedly, “heavily funded” by a Russian oligarch close to Putin.

Are We at War?

Militias in Iraq allied with Iran have struck Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline as the not-war expands in the Middle-East.