The Trump administration should not seek to nationalize artificial intelligence companies or take a partial government stake in them, a top Pentagon technology official said Wednesday.
“I hope that doesn’t happen,” Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” when asked about the possibility of partial government ownership amid growing concerns about rapid advances in AI.
Despite frequently warning about the dangers of big government socialism, President Donald Trump’s second administration has invested in a growing portfolio of private companies, including intel It acquired the “golden share” of US Steel and is now a subsidiary of US Steel. Nippon Steel.
But when it comes to AI, Michael told CNBC, “I don’t want the government to intervene.”
He noted that the US AI leader is one of the “biggest companies in the history of the world” and said it “doesn’t do very well in terms of nationalization.”
Michael also repeatedly spoke out against increasing government regulatory oversight of these companies, even as AI leaders such as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have warned that the industry needs to slow down its rapidly improving models to reduce risk.
“This is the kind of tension between those who want up-front regulation like in Europe and those who want to hold companies accountable for good, tailored, safe products that are being developed and not release them until those requirements are met,” he said.
Michael acknowledged that the recent example of the Hugging Face AI hack was “concerning”, but added: “I don’t know what regulations will stop something like that.”
At the same time, he said it was “dangerous” to put all trust in the hands of a few people responsible for AI.
“We’re going to try to make sure that all the laws are enforced,” Michael said, noting that there are already “a ton of laws based on directives from the Federal Trade Commission.”
The Trump administration has strongly supported the rapid growth of AI and data centers to contain China, but has angrily pushed back on calls for AI to be slowed or tightened.
The president accused those sounding the alarm of pushing “misinformation” and “fraud.”
Michael agreed with Trump and other administration officials that there is a “coordinated campaign to scare people into making irrational decisions that benefit some incumbents” in the AI field.
Michael suggested that those developing new technologies could voluntarily “just stop doing some of these things until we figure it out.”
“The promoters of these extinction, death cult-like philosophies are part of that effort,” he said.
