Trump
facing AI backlash in Congress as push for guardrails intensifies
President
has dismissed anxieties over AI’s dangerous potential even as Democrats and
some Republicans acknowledge risks
David Smith and Chris Stein in Washington and Nick Robins-Early in New York
Tue 15
Sep 2026 07.39 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/15/trump-ai-guardrails-democrats-republicans
Donald Trump is
facing a rare backlash from the US Congress as Democrats and some Republicans
push for guardrails on the world’s most powerful AI companies.
Concerns
over the dangerous potential of AI reached fever pitch this week after tech
leaders sounded the alarm over the rapid advancement of the technology and its
potential threat to humanity.
Trump
dismissed the anxieties on Monday, describing them as a “HOAX” and “conspiracy”
and insisting on social media: “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs
is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in
spades!”
But the
80-year-old president, who has sidelined Congress on numerous issues during his
second term, looks increasingly isolated as members of both major parties
acknowledged the risks and expressed a desire to act before it was too late.
Don Beyer, a Democratic congressman from
Virginia, said: “History will look very poorly on that tweet. He’s not paying
attention – or he’s paying attention to the wrong people. He’s being
really foolish: not the first time he’s been really foolish but perhaps
catastrophically foolish in this case.”
Recent
surveys by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation
found 85% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans want a new federal agency to
monitor and regulate AI; and 82% of Democrats and 78% of Republicans favour
government safety tests for AI making critical decisions.
While
many politicians agree on the need to act, they are divided on what government
intervention should look like and how far it should go. Some fear a pause on AI
development could allow China to take the lead in the AI race and undermine
national security.
Beyer
called for Congress to stay in session instead of breaking for the midterm
elections to work on AI legislation that has already been introduced. “The
first thing that I’m very certain of is that the industry shouldn’t be allowed
to regulate themselves; history doesn’t support that at all,” he said.
“Especially
when they’re making so much money, there will be absolutely no incentive to
regulate themselves at a less profit. If we look at medicines or childcare
workers or automobile emissions and safety, all throughout our economy, we have
regulatory bodies that keep us safe and promote the common good and allow
businesses to be profitable. We need something like that.”
Protesters
in San Francisco call on AI companies to pause development. Photograph: Manuel
Orbegozo/Reuters
The
flurry of debate follows warnings
last week from three Anthropic researchers that AI could destroy humanity
within the next decade. Recent disclosures from several AI companies that their
models hacked into outside organizations during botched safety tests have also
raised alarm about potential cybersecurity risks, with Dario Amodei, the chief
executive of Anthropic, claiming in an essay that in six to 12 months a “swarm”
of AI agents could attack the entire internet and cause hundreds of billions of
dollars in damage.
While AI
executives have issued their own warnings about the risks from their products,
public backlash against the industry and pressure on lawmakers to rein in AI
firms have also been mounting throughout the year. The rapid build out of data
centers has generated nationwide protests and become a
prominent midterm elections issue, while the tech lobby has spent millions
in an attempt to influence political campaigns and shape proposed legislation.
The viral
panic over AI’s potential existential threat this past week has intensified the
longstanding debate over the technology, which so far has resulted in much
political handwringing but only a patchwork of attempts at regulation. Many AI
experts, regardless of whether they agree on the merits of the Anthropic
researchers’ warnings, see this moment as a unique opportunity.
Amba Kak,
co-executive director of the AI Now Institute and a former senior adviser on AI
for the Federal Trade Commission, said: “You never waste a crisis is an old and
well-worn adage in policy land. We’re looking at a really important policy
opportunity and a policy window.”
AI
industry leaders have also suggested that they are open to increased oversight
and the formation of some kind of standards body, while Amodei’s letter
advocated for international cooperation with states like China akin to cold
war-era arms limitation treaties. Many AI regulation advocates are skeptical
of industry proposals, however, arguing that AI companies are attempting to
undercut strict government oversight and set their own terms.
In a rare
intervention on Monday night, former president Barack Obama welcomed the
current debate but warned that “at the end of the day, voluntary standards made
by a handful of tech companies won’t be enough”.
Writing on X,
Obama added: “We need government – and specifically our leaders in Washington –
to get proactive in coming up with concrete proposals, laws and regulations
that deal with serious safety concerns, anticipate AI’s impact on jobs and our
kids, and make sure that AI’s benefits are widely spread.”
Members
of Congress are holding a series of meetings this week with AI researchers and
safety advocates as Congress tries to address the growing alarm. The Senate
Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, urged the Trump
administration to provide a classified briefing to senators on AI and work
with members of Congress and industry leaders to implement guardrails and block
China from accessing the US’s advanced AI chips.
Bernie
Sanders, who announced a bill last week aimed at banning “artificial
superintelligence,” is holding a private briefing this week for other senators.
The briefing will include co-founder of the Future of Life Institute co-founder
Max Tegmark, whose organization has become one of the most well-funded
and politically connected voices in warning about AI’s alleged existential
risks.
Tegmark
said: “Every other industry in the US used to be unregulated. There used to be
soothing syrup fed to infants with opioids in it. Then the FDA was created, now
stuff like that doesn’t reach the market. Eventually safety standards came in.
That hasn’t happened with AI companies.”
Congressman
Greg Casar, a Democrat who will speak
with Sanders at the Future of Life Institute’s “Pro-Human Assembly” on Tuesday,
dismissed the notion that big tech companies should be responsible for AI
safety. “That’s like saying it should be bank robbers that are responsible for
bank safety,” he said. “The American people are waking up to the dangers of
unregulated artificial intelligence.
“You have
these AI CEOs coming to take away people’s jobs, to surveil people and attack
our freedoms, and now you have all of these whistleblowers talking about
potential mass casualty events. So Congress should be cracking down on these
big tech companies and on these AI CEOs, not like what Republican Speaker Mike
Johnson and Donald
Trump go and do. They go to these AI CEOs and ask for Super Pac checks for
their candidates.”
Former
president Barack Obama has warned that ‘voluntary standards made by a handful
of tech companies won’t be enough’ to protect society. Photograph: Scott
Olson/Getty Images
Republicans
broke from Trump in acknowledging the potential perils of AI but came up with a
variety of different fixes for the problem. Congressman Jay Obernolte of
California, the lead Republican negotiating a
bipartisan bill to govern AI, said: “We need to avoid overregulation, so we
need to achieve these two conflicting goals … of protecting Americans against
very real risks of AI in the hands of malicious human actors, while at the same
time balancing the need to have a light-touch regulatory environment that
allows the positive benefits of AI to improve our economy and our society. So
that’s that’s the difficult part is getting that balance right.”
John Kennedy, a Republican senator for Louisiana, said he
would propose a bill on Wednesday to require all AI companies build a kill
switch into their models. “It’s not going to put the federal government in
charge of the kill switch. They would be in charge of their own kill switch,
but they all have to have a kill switch, and I’m going to put that on the
floor.”
But despite the growing urgency and public pressure, some
members suspect that the bitterly polarised Congress will not be able to meet
the moment.
Congressman Jared
Moskowitz, a Democrat from Florida, was sceptical about the possibility of
passing an AI regulation bill. “I think Congress has already shown they don’t
have the capacity,” he said. “The speaker has said, ‘we’re not going to do
anything’. In fact, he has said ‘we don’t know enough to do it’. I think that’s
not what the American people are looking for. The American people are looking
for leadership.”
Rick Scott,
a Republican senator for Florida, added: “Did we balance the budget? Oh, did we
pass a budget? See, what have we gotten done? So you think we’re going to get
AI done?
“By the way, these companies that create a product that they
think can destroy mankind – they have a responsibility to do it themselves.
They shouldn’t be relying on us. I mean, it’s disgusting. I saw this as
governor. People come, ‘go regulate me’. Yeah, we know what they want is they
don’t want to be responsible for their actions.”
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