Donald Trump's sons have secured a $620 million Pentagon loan, a Marine Corps robotics contract, and an undisclosed Air Force drone deal through a series of artificial intelligence (AI)-linked defense and technology ventures in the past year. His longtime friend and tech billionaire Michael Dell also won a Pentagon contract worth nearly $9 billion. As public support for AI sinks to some of the lowest levels ever recorded, Trump has publicly advocated for the industry, stating on his social media platform, Truth Social, 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,” and claiming “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers.” At the same time, Trump is resisting new restrictions on AI, even as his family and allies have built financial interests in the AI infrastructure and defense-technology sectors. This overlap has drawn scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers, government ethics watchdogs, and, by some accounts, even from his own senior aides. The administration frames its opposition to new AI regulations as a matter of national competitiveness. Trump and officials like David Sacks, who co-chairs his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, argue that new rules could slow U.S. AI development as the country races China for dominance in the technology. Sacks recently dismissed warnings from AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI about the technology’s risks as “political theater,” claiming that existing laws are sufficient. However, concerns about AI’s risks are not limited to the public or lawmakers. In early September, Jacob Coxon, a researcher who worked on AI model training at both OpenAI and Anthropic, resigned and warned that “Neither company is acting responsibly” and that the pursuit of self-improving AI could “kill us all by the end of the decade.” Around the same time, Anthropic’s head of AI safety, Mrinank Sharma, also resigned, stating that “the world is in peril.” These concerns were underscored by a real-world demonstration of AI’s risks. A California cybersecurity firm recently revealed it used AI to build a self-spreading worm capable of hijacking WeChat accounts through a single unanswered call and then spreading rapidly through the victim’s contact list. The firm estimated the technology could compromise over a billion devices within hours. Tencent, the Chinese company that owns WeChat, patched the vulnerability before it was deployed, but the firm noted that the exploit, which once would have taken months to develop, was created in just 10 days with AI assistance. Meanwhile, JD Vance, a Republican vice presidential candidate, described certain AI uses as carrying “really, really weird spiritual dark energy” and said he wouldn’t be shocked if the “Antichrist was walking among us.” Public opinion has increasingly diverged from Trump’s stance on AI. A recent poll found that just 11% of Americans support an AI data center being built in their community, with 65% opposing such projects—including 52% of Republicans. The same poll showed that 57% of Americans believe Trump has handled the AI issue poorly, a significant increase from earlier this year. These concerns have even reached Congress, where the House recently passed a bill requiring data centers to pay for electricity-grid upgrades needed to support their operations. Meanwhile, members of Trump’s family, including Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, have invested in AI infrastructure and defense technology ventures. Their investments have grown since Trump unveiled a $20 billion data center pledge from an Emirati billionaire and a $500 billion AI investment plan, while also moving to unwind Biden-era AI safeguards. Some of these ventures have secured major government contracts, prompting scrutiny from lawmakers like Elizabeth Warren, who called one such deal “corruption in plain sight.”