Not Rules but a Force: Trump Announces 'AI Force' and a New AI Czar While Calling Safety Fears a Hoax

In a lengthy Truth Social post on Saturday, September 19, President Donald Trump announced two things at once: the creation of an “AI Force” modeled on the Space Force he stood up in his first term, and the imminent appointment of a new “AI Czar” to steer it. The announcement arrived less than two months before midterm elections that will decide control of Congress — and just days after the president dismissed warnings from frontier-lab safety researchers as a “hoax.”

What Trump Actually Said

The post was characteristic Trump: sweeping, superlative, and light on machinery. “We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry,” the president wrote. “Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows!”

“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,” he continued. “To that end, I will be announcing, in the near future, the AI ‘Czar’ — Only High I.Q. individuals need apply!”

He put a number on the stakes: AI, he argued, is “the next Industrial Revolution, or Internet, but will be even larger and more impactful, possibly as much as 25% of our Country’s GDP. We are leading China, and the rest of the World, and I intend to keep it that way!”

Notably absent: any detail on what the AI Force actually is. The White House has not said whether it would be a military branch, a civilian agency, a task force inside the Executive Office of the President, or something else entirely. Reuters, reporting the announcement, noted only that Trump said he would appoint a new AI adviser “without providing details.” NBC News characterized it as an AI task force paired with a czar. Trump himself has not said it would be part of the military — the Space Force comparison is so far an analogy, not a blueprint.

The David Sacks Backstory

The new czar will be the administration’s second. Venture capitalist David Sacks served as Trump’s AI and crypto czar until March, when he told Bloomberg he had “used up” his 130 days as a special government employee and moved to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which he now chairs.

Sacks has been anything but neutral in this fight. He cheered Trump’s Saturday post, telling followers that “President Trump understands the media hoax cycle” — and in a recent CBS News interview he suggested fears that AI could harm people are overblown. The betting, in Washington and in tech policy circles, is that whoever Trump taps next will share that deregulatory instinct.

A Deliberate Answer to a Very Different Demand

The timing is the story. The announcement came the same week that leaders of the world’s largest AI companies publicly called for a slowdown in development, after warnings that rapid advances could outpace the ability to build the technology safely. The trigger: an Anthropic safety researcher’s warning that there is a greater than 10 percent chance the technology “could kill all humans” within the next decade. Trump’s response, delivered by phone to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at the All-In Summit: “The robots will not be taking over. The AI will not be taking over the rest of the world.”

The New York Times framed the split plainly: with A.I. seemingly gone rogue in the public imagination, Trump is proposing not new rules but an “AI Force.”

The data explains the political calculus. A YouGov survey on Tuesday found 55 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of AI, including 44 percent who disapprove “strongly.” A University of Massachusetts Amherst poll released Monday found 57 percent saying he hasn’t handled the issue well, with 43 percent saying he’s doing “not well at all” — up from 36 percent in March. A few days earlier, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed, 417 to 3, a bill aimed at minimizing the impact of AI data centers’ electricity use on residents’ utility bills.

In that environment, “AI Force” reads less as a governance proposal and more as a brand — a way to appear active on AI without regulating it.

Data Centers, Renames, and the Midterm Backdrop

Two other threads from the week add context. First, Trump on Saturday also defended AI data centers against mounting local pushback, calling them “prestigious” and crediting them with “Higher Salaries, Lower Taxes, and Safer Streets” — echoing his remark last month that communities refusing them would “end up being backwards and poor.” That puts him directly against a bipartisan coalition of communities fighting the facilities’ energy and water demands, in a year when those fights are showing up in campaign ads.

Second, earlier the same day, Trump floated renaming artificial intelligence altogether. “Many people think that the words ‘Artificial Intelligence’ are inaccurate, and very ineloquent,” he wrote, proposing “Superior Intelligence (SI),” “Extreme Intelligence (EI),” or “Supreme Intelligence (SI)” — and asking his 13.1 million followers to vote in a poll. (One widely shared reply suggested “Trump Think,” then noted it would be an oxymoron.)

The AI agenda is also entangled with foreign policy: the issue is expected to be front and center at Trump’s summit next week in Washington with Chinese President Xi Jinping — a meeting that follows the recent US–China agreement on AI dialogue and notification protocols.

Reaction: Warren vs. the Industry Shrug

Senator Elizabeth Warren responded within hours. “Congress cannot meet the pressing threat of AI by just forming another committee or continuing to have drawn-out discussions about it,” she said on social media. “Let’s actually pass some meaningful regulations on AI to protect people.”

Tech-sector reaction, by contrast, was quizzical rather than alarmed. Yahoo News reported that industry representatives view the announcement as a response to growing public concern over AI’s risks — a gesture at oversight rather than oversight itself. The Guardian noted the AI Force would “help monitor the technology,” though no monitoring mandate has been articulated.

Analysis: A Force Without a Mission Statement

Three open questions will determine whether the AI Force matters:

1. Military or civilian? The Space Force analogy suggests defense, but the Pentagon already runs AI programs, and creating a sixth military branch for software would be a legal and budgetary marathon. If it is civilian, it collides with existing turf at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Department of Commerce, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

2. Who is the czar? “Only High I.Q. individuals need apply” is a memorable recruiting slogan, but the administration’s first pick — Sacks — left under term limits and was skeptical of regulation. The second pick’s mandate will signal whether this is a safety role, a competitiveness role, or a messaging one.

3. What about the 25% GDP claim? AI contributing a quarter of US GDP is an extraordinary figure with no independent economic basis currently published. It echoes the administration’s earlier “winning the AI race” rhetoric, and it frames the AI Force’s implicit mission: acceleration, not restraint — directly opposite to what the week’s safety warnings demanded.

For now, the AI Force exists mostly as a post. But as a signal of where the world’s largest AI power intends to steer — growth-first, regulation-light, China-focused — it could hardly be clearer. The midterms in November, and the Xi summit before them, will show whether “watch over it, as it grows” becomes policy or stays a slogan.