Trump Loves a Populist Crusade. Why Does He Hate This One?

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If there was but one thing that happened this week, it was politics. New Hampshire, sulky and brooding, thinks it’s too “cool” to participate in a Democratic-wave election. Did Pete Hegseth almost get impeached this week? A Texas Republican candidate caused a proper foofaraw after getting deeply upset by a photo of brown people enjoying a football game.

But first: How much are these killer robots paying Donald Trump to like them? (Actually, that’s probably discoverable in public filings …)

Last week’s calls from inside the house that A.I. companies are at risk of losing control of their monsters and killing everyone— true or not! —have continued to sweep the news. Congress rolled up its sleeves and got to work devising plans for slow-moving task forces that may or may not ever materialize, before leaving D.C. until November. The salience of A.I. concerns has skyrocketed overnight . Polls show deep concerns among the electorate about A.I. advances. This isn’t going to abate as an issue over time, either. With each passing day, A.I. will become a bigger and bigger part of everyone’s lives. Soon, you won’t be able to spit without hitting an A.I. agent coming at you with a knife. (Or, well, showing you a helpful recipe using ingredients you have sitting around the house.)

In short, we’ve never seen a bigger layup issue for populists, left and right, heading down the stretch of an election season. Which makes it all the stranger that the guy who ushered in the new populist era, Donald Trump, doesn’t have it in him to say a cross word about these machines at all. He’ll only chastise those who do.

“I am the Hoax Buster, and I’m right now breaking another Hoax—That AI is going to take over, consume, and destroy the World, and that Robots will be marching into our Cities, and getting rid of us all!” He posted this week . “This is even wilder than the RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX, or the Global Warming Scam.” In a separate screed regarding the need to regulate A.I., Trump posted that 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!” He called the A.I. warnings a “SICK conspiracy” and warned “Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!” All of this follows a late-August post responding to the data center backlash when Trump chastised voters for their concerns. “If we kill the Golden Goose,” he wrote then, “you will only have yourselves to blame.”

Why can’t Trump just ride the wave here, when he’s usually so good at co-opting shrieking public panics? A few thoughts come to mind.

You could say he’s genuinely concerned about being outmaneuvered by China on A.I. and that this is informed by classified briefings he gets on the matter. But he just doodles pictures of hamburgers during those. More important to him is that the tech people are nice to him, always bringing him gifts and purchasing protection by donating to his political action committees. What’s also important to him is that A.I.