Trump AI Force: What the New Plan Actually Says

President Donald Trump said on Saturday he is creating an "AI Force," a new government unit focused on artificial intelligence. The Trump AI Force announcement, posted on Truth Social, also said he would soon name a new AI "czar," according to reporting by Reuters.

It is the first time Trump has proposed a federal entity dedicated solely to AI, according to the Wall Street Journal. In the post, Trump said he is forming the AI Force on the model of the Space Force, which he described as a tremendous success of his first term.

The post argued against heavy regulation. Trump wrote that his administration would not "hinder or stifle" the industry, but would "cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows." He also wrote that AI could eventually amount to 25 percent of the country's GDP, a claim he made in the same message, according to PYMNTS.

The Trump AI Force arrives after the White House spent months without a dedicated AI point person. Trump had earlier named investor David Sacks as his combined AI and cryptocurrency czar, but Sacks stepped down from that role and now serves as co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, the Journal reported. Sacks remains one of Trump's top advisers on AI policy.

Nobody outside the White House seems to know what the AI Force would actually do. The Journal notes that several parts of the government already work on tech policy, including the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Commerce Department, and the Defense Department. It is unclear how much funding the new initiative would get or who would lead it.

Michael Kratsios, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, offered the administration's account of what the AI Force would do on Sunday. Speaking on Fox News, he said the unit would coordinate agencies working on AI, and he dismissed industry calls to slow development as "hysterics" and "fearmongering," the Journal reported. Kratsios said the White House position is that a company building technology it considers unsafe can simply stop, adding that "you don't need someone to force you to do that."

Why the timing matters

The announcement lands in the middle of a real argument about how fast AI should move. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has been the most prominent industry voice calling for the industry to pace its development, writing on his personal blog that slowing down could buy time to solve alignment and reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong, according to the Journal. Companies including Google, OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic have all admitted to instances where their AI agents hacked into other companies, PYMNTS reported.

That slowdown push has turned into legal trouble. A recent lawsuit accuses Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google of violating antitrust law by coordinating to decelerate AI development, per the Associated Press. A GenZ NewZ report on the AI slowdown lawsuit breaks down the complaint, which argues the labs colluded to substitute collective restraint for individual accountability.

Inside Anthropic, the tension is visible. An Anthropic researcher named Jacob Coxon recently said he was quitting the AI industry because he believes companies are racing to build systems they will soon be unable to control, the Journal reported. Anthropic and the Trump administration have also been clashing for months: the company sued after the Pentagon flagged it as a supply-chain risk, and a federal judge recently ruled the administration's actions were unlawful.

Trump has faced competing pressures on the issue. The Journal reports he has been torn between advisers worried about advancing AI capabilities and cyber risks, and a camp led by Sacks that wants minimal regulation. That split helps explain why his stance has shifted: he recently dismissed efforts to regulate AI and fears about out-of-control models as a "hoax," even as polls suggest voters are uneasy. A Gallup poll taken in March found that nearly half of respondents "strongly oppose" the construction of local AI data centers, which are needed to run the models millions of people use every day. The contrast shows up in state politics too: a GenZ NewZ opinion piece argues that California's AI kill switch regulation is pure security theater, a reminder that "regulation" means very different things depending on who writes it.

Former President Barack Obama weighed in on Friday evening in a speech at Colgate University, backing companies that have called for a check on AI development and endorsing greater government oversight. Obama said it was good that some leading companies had called for slowing development, adding that "government has to be regulating this," the Journal reported.

What to watch next

The most concrete next step is the czar appointment, which Trump said would happen soon, according to Reuters. Tech industry executives told the Journal it is not clear who would get the job. Trump is also expected to meet with tech CEOs in the coming days to discuss AI policy.

Kratsios also said AI would be on the agenda when Trump meets Chinese President Xi Jinping at a summit in Washington this week. For his part, Adam Kovacevich, head of the center-left tech group Chamber of Progress, put the skepticism bluntly: "Nobody knows what this means." Kovacevich added that the last six months of AI policymaking without an AI czar have been "chaos."

Separately, Trump spent part of the weekend polling his Truth Social followers on what AI should be called. He suggested "Superior Intelligence (SI)" or "Extreme Intelligence (EI)" as replacements, and on Sunday he dropped "Supreme Intelligence" from the running, writing that it was "losing badly to both 'Superior' and 'Extreme Intelligence,'" the Journal reported.

For Gen Z, the stakes are more concrete than the naming debate. The AI Force is supposed to watch over an industry that already runs the apps, search tools, and chatbots young people use daily. Whether it ends up as a real agency or a headline will depend on details nobody has seen yet: funding, leadership, and whether Congress gets involved at all. The czar announcement, expected soon, will be the first real test of what this actually is.