An 'AI Force' and an AI Czar: Trump Dismisses Superintelligence Fears as a 'Hoax' While Pledging to Watch the Industry Grow

On Saturday afternoon, September 19, 2026, President Donald Trump used his Truth Social account to announce two things at once: the creation of an “AI Force” — a new federal initiative he explicitly compared to the Space Force he stood up in his first term — and his intention to appoint a new “AI czar” to take point on artificial intelligence policy. No appointee was named. The White House did not immediately provide further details on the initiative’s structure, budget, or legal authority.

The announcement landed at a peculiar moment in the AI policy debate. Over the past two weeks, the industry’s own researchers have been sounding increasingly urgent alarms — Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned and warned the technology “could kill us all by the end of the decade,” and Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton told lawmakers at a closed-door briefing this week that Congress has “maybe a year” to regulate before the window closes. Trump’s response, in effect, was to run the other way: he framed apocalyptic AI fears as the latest in a long line of political “hoaxes.”

What Trump Actually Said

The full Truth Social post is worth reading closely, because it bundles together several distinct claims that will shape how the administration approaches AI for the rest of the term.

“Over the years, there have been many Hoaxes, all generated by the Radical Left Dumocrats, for purposes of destroying our Country,” Trump wrote, listing “RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA,” impeachment proceedings, and now “the decimation, or destruction, of AI, commonly known as Artificial Intelligence — And I, as President of the United States, will not stand by and let this happen.”

The most operationally significant passage followed: “We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry. Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows! However, we will also be looking for BAD, and we can do that, very easily, with our already existing Criminal and Civil Justice System. For this purpose, I am forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force, which has been a tremendous SUCCESS, in my First Term.”

In other words: no new regulatory apparatus, no new statutes, no pre-deployment testing regime. Oversight of AI harms — when they occur — will run through the existing criminal and civil justice system. The “AI Force” appears to be the institutional expression of that posture: monitor, prosecute if needed, but above all do not slow the industry down.

Trump added that he is screening “High I.Q. individuals” for the AI czar role, and posted an online poll asking followers whether to rebrand AI as “Super Intelligence, Extreme Intelligence, or Supreme Intelligence.”

The Space Force Precedent

The comparison to Space Force is more loaded than it might first appear. When Trump first floated a Space Force in 2017, it drew open ridicule — a punchline about militarizing orbit. Eight years later, it stands as an established military branch with a pending $71 billion administration budget request. The implicit message in Saturday’s post is that the “AI Force” should be taken seriously on the same trajectory: start with a name that sounds like a joke, end up as permanent federal infrastructure.

What an “AI Force” would actually do remains undefined. NBC News notes the White House did not immediately provide more details. It could be a coordinating body inside the executive branch, a stood-up federal agency, or something closer to a task force with a mandate to promote US AI dominance while watching for abuses. The absence of detail is itself the story: the announcement is a posture, not a policy.

A Deliberate Rejection of the Pacing Agenda

Context matters here. Trump’s post comes exactly one week after the most extraordinary week of AI safety advocacy the industry has ever produced. On September 12, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published his “We Must Pace the Frontier” essay; within a day, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Demis Hassabis had publicly endorsed a slowdown framework. A class action antitrust suit filed September 13 and disclosed Friday now accuses Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google of Sherman Act violations for exactly that coordination.

Trump’s Saturday post is a pointed rejection of both sides of that fight. He dismissed the safety warnings as a hoax — declining to legitimize the researchers’ urgency — while simultaneously pledging that his administration “will not in any way hinder” the industry, which forecloses the regulatory path the labs’ CEOs appeared to be inviting. And his promise to look for “BAD” through existing criminal and civil law signals that if there is to be accountability, it will come ex post through prosecutors and courts, not ex ante through mandates.

The Counter-Momentum in the States

The federal posture now diverges sharply from what Democratic governors are doing. On Friday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order increasing state oversight of the industry and directed a task force to consider requiring an AI “kill switch.” Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has called on the federal government to regulate. Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger launched an AI task force and a data center accountability plan. Former President Barack Obama advised Democrats at a fundraiser last week to prioritize the issue, saying he would make it central to a 2028 campaign.

Trump also mentioned what he termed the “crazed Data Center attack” — the swelling political opposition to the physical infrastructure of AI, driven by concerns about water, electricity, land use, and grid strain. Protesters demonstrated outside an Austin, Texas summit in early September. By naming this opposition and vowing to counter it, the president put the weight of the White House behind the buildout side of the argument.

What Happens Next Week

The announcement sets up a frenetic diplomatic and domestic calendar. Trump has invited a roster of tech chiefs to the White House next week — Sam Altman (OpenAI), Jensen Huang (Nvidia), Elon Musk (Tesla), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), and Sundar Pichai (Google) — and is reportedly planning an AI event at the United Nations. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is set to meet Chinese Premier Li Qiang in New York on Sunday, with tariffs and AI on the agenda, ahead of President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington.

The AI czar position, meanwhile, has a specific history: Trump’s first AI and crypto czar, David Sacks, stepped down earlier this year due to term limits on his status as a special government employee and now holds an advisory role. Sacks has been a vocal critic of pre-release testing regimes, calling them a “Trojan horse” against open models — so whoever fills the new role inherits a posture already skeptical of formal regulation.

The Bottom Line

Saturday’s announcement is best read as the executive branch planting a flag: the United States will treat AI as an asset to be protected from political opposition, not a risk to be governed by new law. Whether that posture survives contact with an increasingly alarmed Congress — where figures from Bernie Sanders (proposing a 50% AI tax and partial bans) to Josh Hawley (probing lab security incidents) are circling — will define the next year of US AI policy. For now, the message to the industry is unambiguous: full speed, federal backup, and no new rules.