Trump Announces 'AI Force,' Vows to Appoint AI Czar

President Donald Trump announced Saturday that he intends to establish an "AI Force" and name a new artificial intelligence czar, brushing aside calls from technology researchers and certain lawmakers to pump the brakes on AI development.

Trump unveiled the plan through a string of posts on his Truth Social platform, dismissing concerns that AI could pose an existential danger to humanity as a "hoax" and pledging that his administration would not stand in the way of the industry's expansion.

"AI 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," Trump wrote, casting American dominance in the field as indispensable to outcompeting China in a consequential technological race.

Trump said the AI Force would be modeled on Space Force, the military branch Congress brought into existence in 2020 during his first term, making it the nation's sixth armed services branch. He also maintained that existing criminal and civil legal frameworks were adequate to handle any misuse of AI. No timeline, budget, organizational chart or specific mission was laid out for the proposed entity, and the White House offered no immediate elaboration.

Forming any new branch of the military would require congressional action. Trump said he would designate an AI czar "in the near future," adding a sardonic qualification for applicants: "Only High I.Q. individuals need apply." He stopped short of naming anyone for the post.

David Sacks had filled the role of the administration's AI and crypto czar before departing in March, when he hit the service limit applicable to special government employees. Since leaving, Sacks has moved into an advisory capacity and is expected to join Trump at an upcoming state dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping. In a CBS News interview last week, Sacks said he believed fears about AI's dangers to humanity were exaggerated, though he allowed that some degree of caution was reasonable.

Trump's posts came on the heels of a two-week wave of anxiety within the AI sector itself. Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon issued a public warning that top AI companies were "gambling with our lives" by pushing forward with self-improving systems. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei responded by urging the industry to slow down and calling for independent oversight of AI model development. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who leads the AI startup xAI, both voiced support for decelerating progress until safety measures can keep up with capability advances.

On the same day Trump made his announcement, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order directing a state task force to craft AI safety rules, including examining the feasibility of a "kill switch" for systems that go rogue. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has pushed for federal regulation, and Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger has launched her own AI task force at the state level.

Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, widely regarded in the field as the "godfather of AI," told lawmakers at a closed-door congressional briefing this week that Congress may have roughly a year to put meaningful guardrails in place before the technology moves beyond regulators' reach.

Trump also posted a poll on Truth Social inviting followers to choose a new name for artificial intelligence, presenting three options: Superior Intelligence, Supreme Intelligence or Extreme Intelligence. He has previously described the term "artificial intelligence" as ineloquent. The poll had not closed as of Saturday afternoon.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, speaking at an industry summit, sided with Trump's view that AI safety alarms were overblown, stating he would not support any slowdown in the technology's advancement.