Trump: AI Needs No Guardrails, Attacks Anthropic, Defends Data Centers
Trump Says AI Needs “Guardrails,” Cites Anthropic Blacklisting as Proof of Enforcement
US President Donald Trump defended his administration’s approach to artificial intelligence regulation in a FOX News interview published Friday, arguing that the US already has sufficient “guardrails” in place as it competes with China.
Pressed on what guardrails could both help the US “win” the AI race and reassure Americans concerned about the rapid buildout of data centers, Trump pointed to the government’s recent actions against AI company Anthropic. “They did something that was very bad. Three months ago. And we shut them down. We shut them down fast,” he said.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration branded Anthropic a security risk and barred the company from working with the US government. Late last month, a federal judge ruled that the move was illegal, a legal setback that complicates the administration’s claim of swift, durable enforcement authority over AI firms.
Trump also framed AI safety less as a matter of formal rules and more as a matter of expertise inside government. “We have guardrails. The biggest guardrails are having people that are just as smart because nobody understands it except you have to be extremely high IQ,” he said.
In contrasting the US and China, Trump argued that China lacks institutional constraints on AI development. “China doesn’t have guardrails, by the way … President Xi is the guardrail. I mean, you can do anything in China,” he said, referring to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Trump described the technology in sweeping terms, calling AI “bigger than the internet” and “probably” bigger than the Industrial Revolution, while asserting that the US is ahead. “We are winning against China with respect to AI,” he said.
The remarks land as debates intensify over how tightly the US should control advanced AI systems, including models that can be deployed across finance, security, and crypto-adjacent infrastructure such as data centers and cloud computing. Trump dismissed calls for tighter AI controls, as industry leaders push to slow development and address safety failures.
For the crypto and digital-asset sector, the policy direction matters because AI and data-center expansion increasingly intersect with the same underlying infrastructure—high-performance compute, cloud capacity, and energy demand—that also supports major blockchain networks, trading platforms, and compliance tooling. The dispute over Anthropic’s blacklisting underscores how quickly AI oversight can shift from political messaging to court challenges, shaping what enforcement actions can realistically stand.
