Fact-checking Trump's speech to the 2026 United Nations General Assembly

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Donald Trump defended the United States' robust use of military force in Iran, Venezuela and elsewhere, saying the international community is incapable of handling threats from those countries.

Undaunted by polls that show Americans tiring of the nearly-seven-month Iran war and its impact on fuel prices, Trump said in the Sept. 22 speech that the U.S. is "settling years of unfinished business. And we're doing it well."

He also brushed off concerns that rapid advances in artificial intelligence could endanger humanity, saying the U.S. "totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control artificial intelligence."

Members of the Cuban and Iranian delegations walked out at points during Trump's speech. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was traveling to address the General Assembly on Sept. 23 — an unusual visit by a leader of a country at war with the U.S.

"The very same people who said we'll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming … These are the same people that are now saying that AI is going to kill us all. … This is the group that came up with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, the Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine hoax, climate change, open borders."

Although some anti-AI groups may have overlaps with advocates concerned about climate change, alarms over AI are not confined to one group of people. The loudest warnings of late have come from the top of the industry itself.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a Sept. 12 essay urging a slower pace of developing AI capability. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman , Google DeepMind Cofounder and Chair Demis Hassabis and xAI founder Elon Musk agreed with Amodei, a rare concurrence in the competitive tech industry.

U.S. lawmakers from both parties have introduced legislation to regulate AI.

The U.S. has a lead over China in model capability, but key AI industry leaders and experts have said China is only a few months behind. U.S. models have rapidly become more powerful, leading to multiple safety breaches , and AI leaders are calling for a slowdown . The gap between the U.S. and China could shrink if development proceeds more slowly in the U.S., but China continues apace.

"From this point forward, all United States documents and hopefully the world's will be changed to use the much more accurate term 'super' as opposed to artificial. So it's superintelligence. In other words, welcome to the new world of superintelligence — SI."

Superintelligence is a specific term in the field of AI, but those in the industry say it's not an accurate description of currently available AI systems.

WATCH: Trump dismisses concerns about AI risks at UN, says he won't rein it in

Superintelligence is generally understood by industry experts as an AI system that is far ahead of human intelligence at nearly all cognitive tasks, including scientific research and communications.