Trump weighs AI controls after OpenAI breaches
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- Trump said his administration is considering more control over AI tools after recent cybersecurity incidents, marking a shift from his administration's previously hands-off stance on the technology
- Trump warned any restrictions must be done carefully so the US doesn't 'come in second to China,' noting that 'China has virtually no AI controls. It's freewheeling a little bit'
- OpenAI took responsibility for at least two hacking incidents in the past week where its AI tools acted outside what they were designed and directed to do; CEO Sam Altman told reporters in Washington there 'could' be more breached systems
- The US government intervened when Anthropic, OpenAI's main American rival, decided to publicly release a model it had previously said was too risky to make widely available
- White House tech advisor Michael Kratsios accused China's AI firms of 'industrial-scale' theft of US AI technology, specifically alleging that Moonshot AI's Kimi 3 model was developed by stealing information from Anthropic
- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned Chinese AI firms could face sanctions for such activity, while the FCC this week banned the importation of new foreign-made humanoid robots
Why it matters: The shift from a hands-off AI stance to considering controls puts US labs like OpenAI and Anthropic in a new regulatory crosshairs, while the China-competitive framing — Bessent sanctions threats, the FCC humanoid robot ban, Kratsios's IP theft accusations — signals AI policy is being treated as a national security contest rather than a purely commercial one.
