2026-09-16T04:01:29.472Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
本周华盛顿最受关注的问题是：为何唐纳德·特朗普总统在一些顶级行业高管发出末日警告后，却如此激烈反对放缓人工智能发展？
答案藏在他用来嘲讽“计算机化智能有朝一日可能试图毁灭人类”的恐慌的一个词里——“骗局”。
每当特朗普搬出这个以“H”开头的词时，通常意味着两件事：他正面临威胁其政治或个人优先级的争议，且他已失去政治主动权。
长期以来，特朗普一直将气候变化称为“骗局”。因此，他在社交媒体上将尽管他予以否认但仍在变暖的地球，与行业领袖呼吁对人工智能进行管控的言论相提并论，这是一个明确信号。
通过篡改现实，特朗普得以摆脱采取行动的义务。在能源政策方面，这意味着“开采吧，宝贝，开采吧”。他的政府大幅削减监管，取悦了石油行业的捐赠者。他对风力发电场的抨击表明，他渴望回到依靠碳能源运转的20世纪经济模式。
在特朗普看来，杰弗里·爱泼斯坦事件是一场“民主党骗局”。这名被控性犯罪者的受害者们的尖锐证词，让这一指控显得荒谬可笑。但特朗普想要平息围绕这位昔日好友的风波，这场风波时不时会给他的政府带来麻烦。
另一个所谓的“骗局”也是如此：针对2021年1月6日国会山骚乱的调查。这场愤怒事件是特朗普希望美国遗忘的另一事件的高潮——他试图推翻2020年大选结果。“骗局”套路奏效了——这帮助他重返白宫，行使广泛的行政权力。
这位总统似乎希望，只要将失控人工智能的恐惧贴上“骗局”的标签，就能让这些担忧烟消云散。
但为什么会这样？
总统的职责之一是安抚心怀恐惧的国民，审视并解释各种威胁，并建议是否需要动员全国力量应对。“我们唯一需要恐惧的就是恐惧本身，”富兰克林·罗斯福在其深陷大萧条的总统任期之初说道。
每位总司令在冷战期间都遵循了这一做法。而在整整25年前的9·11事件后，乔治·W·布什也团结了全国人民。
但特朗普并非如此行事。
即便从政治角度考虑，特朗普也应该认真对待这场人工智能“恐慌”。美国人感到担忧——不一定是担心人类灭绝，而是担心这项新技术会抢走他们的工作。而特朗普拒绝选民对数据中心的担忧，这使他在共和党即将面临艰难的中期选举之际，又一次站在了错误的一方。
不过，总统对人工智能的淡然态度，或许可以追溯到一系列政治、经济和性格特质，这些特质在他的两届总统任期内引发了动荡，并将塑造他的政治遗产。
其中一个原因可能与经济有关。
任何暗示人工智能发展可能放缓的信号，几乎肯定会在市场上引发反应。由于他推行的对伊朗政策导致美国民众承受高油价和创纪录的柴油成本，特朗普承受不起任何会损害401(k)账户并拖累GDP增长的华尔街动荡。
他还表现出对放缓发展的哲学层面反对。他的总统任期一直是为了释放商业活力以赚取利润，而非收紧监管。
前白宫人工智能事务主管戴维·萨克斯上周辩称，行业巨头表达对人工智能潜在破坏性的担忧，是在试图向政客和公众施压，以建立他们“偏好”的监管体系。
特朗普采取了类似的做法。这位总统周一写道：“在商业史上，何时见过行业领袖呼吁实施如果严格执行就会将他们推向毁灭和破产的监管？”
特朗普的执政风格并不适合这个极其复杂的议题。他本周表示自己是人工智能用户，但尚不清楚这是否仅限于发布将自己描绘成各类超级英雄的疯狂表情包。而且他的新闻来源是助手娜塔莉·哈普随身带着的打印机。
与此同时，在第二个特朗普任期混乱不堪的华盛顿，人们常常忽视一种可能性：如果总统逆势而为，是因为他在某些问题上是对的？
这并非首次出现新技术引发末日警告却未成真的情况。一些怀疑论者认为，人工智能巨头的危言耸听并非真心实意，怀疑他们是在为未来几个月的首次公开募股（IPO）间接夸大自身技术的潜力。
特朗普有一个严肃的观点：即便美国放缓人工智能发展，中国可能不会这么做，这将让中国获得超级大国优势。
许多民主党人也持同样看法，包括乔·拜登总统的前国家安全顾问杰克·沙利文，他今年早些时候在《外交事务》杂志上撰文称，华盛顿“必须加紧努力”，在全军范围内整合人工智能，并警告如果美国未能做到这一点，将失去影响力。
但特朗普对自身权力和历史地位的看法，也解释了他的行为。
他周一在社交媒体上发文称，美国会安然无恙，因为它有一位“强大且睿智（高智商！）的总统”。这或许能安抚部分支持者——但即便这是真的，这也绝非可行之策。人工智能将成为一个世代性议题，远超他的任期，而作为现任总统，特朗普有责任尽早设定发展方向。
特朗普的批评者可能会质疑，他的观点是否受到个人因素影响，包括他近期提交的财务申报文件中披露的、持有与人工智能相关的股票。白宫坚称他的账户由第三方机构独立管理。但行政官员监管与其个人财富深度绑定的行业，引发的伦理问题一直笼罩着特朗普的第二任期。
特朗普对令人不快的真相的抗拒也在发挥作用。
他从未将自己的总统任期视为应对遥远威胁或解决复杂问题的工具。他利用总统职位向敌人复仇、嘲讽政治对手、提升自身名气，并影响全球数十亿人的思想。
特朗普绝不会发表其前任总统巴拉克·奥巴马周二发布的那种辩证性声明。这位美国第44任总统表示，十年来他一直在为人工智能的问题苦苦思索，现在是美国高层领导人发起全国性讨论的时候了。
“这项技术是会在医学、能源和教育领域带来惊人突破，还是会引发巨大的经济动荡、加剧不平等和潜在灾难，将取决于我们现在做出的选择——这些选择不应仅由相关公司做出，而应由我们所有人共同决定，”奥巴马写道。
一些美国人可能也曾对特朗普抱有类似期待。但他是一个叛逆者，一个反抗体制的总统。他的反建制资历取决于他作为局外人的身份，而非作为团结者的角色。
而奥巴马的路径最终指向了美国主导的国际联盟。特朗普厌恶多边利他主义。“美国优先”的核心是强化美国权力，而非削弱它。
如果特朗普拒绝牵头，国会会介入吗？
在中期选举前，没时间采取严肃行动。但如果人工智能成为顶级竞选议题，那么无论明年参众两院由哪个政党掌控，这都可能推动立法议程。如果共和党因为特朗普拒绝倾听选民意见而遭遇惨败，他们可能会有动机与总统决裂。
但他们将只能靠自己。
“我是骗局克星，我现在正在揭穿另一个骗局——即人工智能将接管、吞噬并毁灭世界，机器人将开进我们的城市，将我们全部消灭！”特朗普周一在Truth Social平台上写道。
One word that explains Trump’s AI denialism
2026-09-16T04:01:29.472Z / CNN
Washington’s biggest question this week: Why is President Donald Trump so furiously against an AI slowdown in the wake of apocalyptic warnings from some top industry executives?
The clue is in one word — “hoax” — that he’s using to ridicule fears that computerized agents could one day seek to destroy humanity.
When Trump reaches for the H-word, two things are usually happening: He’s facing a controversy threatening his political or personal priorities, and he’s lost control of the politics.
Trump has long dismissed climate change as a “hoax.” So it was a tell that he went on social media to specifically draw an analogy between a planet that is warming despite his denials and the calls for AI controls expressed by leaders in the industry.
By changing reality, Trump frees himself from an obligation to act. In energy policy, that means “drill, baby, drill.” His administration has slashed regulation, pleasing oil industry donors. His rants against wind farms suggest he hankers for a 20th-century economy running on carbon.
The Jeffrey Epstein saga is a “Democratic hoax,” according to Trump. Searing testimonies from the accused sex offender’s victims make this a ridiculous charge. But Trump wants to end the storm over his onetime friend that periodically trips up his administration.
The same is true of another supposed “hoax”: the investigations into the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. The outrage was the culmination of another event Trump wants America to forget: his bid to overturn the 2020 election. The hoax routine worked — it got him back to the White House to wield expansive executive power.
The president seems to hope that by simply branding fears of runaway AI as a hoax, he can make them go away.
But why?
One of a president’s jobs is to counsel a fearful nation, to examine and explain threats, and to advise whether a national effort must be summoned. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” Franklin Roosevelt said at the start of a presidency deep in the Great Depression.
Every commander in chief followed suit in the Cold War. And George W. Bush corralled the country after 9/11, almost exactly 25 years ago.
That’s not Trump’s way.
But even as a political matter, Trump might be advised to take the AI freakout seriously. Americans are worried — not necessarily about extinction, but that the new technology will take their jobs. And by rejecting voter concerns about data centers, the president is leaping onto the wrong side of yet another issue as the GOP braces for tough midterm elections.
But the president’s blasé attitude to AI may be traced to a host of political, economic and personality traits that have unleashed turmoil across his two presidencies and that will shape his legacy.
One reason may be economic.
Any signal that AI development may slow would almost certainly trigger a reaction on the markets. As his Iran war sticks Americans with high gas prices and record diesel costs, Trump can’t afford any Wall Street turbulence that would hurt 401k accounts and check GDP growth.
He’s also showing philosophical objections to a slowdown. His presidency has been about unleashing business to make money, not dialing it back.
Former White House AI czar David Sacks argued over the weekend that by expressing concerns about AI’s destructive potential, industry titans were trying to pressure politicians and the public into creating their own “preferred” regulatory system.
Trump is taking a similar approach. “When, in the History of Business, did anyone see the Leaders of an Industry call for Regulation that, if strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy?” the president wrote Monday.
Trump’s governing style isn’t a good fit for this deeply complex issue. He said this week that he’s an AI user, but whether that goes beyond posting wild memes depicting himself as various superheroes is unclear. And he gets his news from the traveling printer of his aide Natalie Harp.
At the same time, there’s a possibility that’s often overlooked in the riotous Washington of the second Trump era: What if the president is going against the tide because he’s right about a few things?
This would not be the first time that a new technology has triggered warnings of doom that don’t play out. And some skeptics doubt alarmist talk from AI chiefs is genuine, suspecting that they are obliquely talking up the potential of their technology ahead of initial public offerings in the coming months.
And Trump has a serious point that even if the US slows AI development, China probably won’t, which would give it a superpower advantage.
Plenty of Democrats feel the same way, including President Joe Biden’s former national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who wrote in Foreign Affairs earlier this year that Washington “must up its game” in integrating AI across the military, warning that the US would lose leverage if it failed.
But Trump’s vision of his own power and place in history also explain his behavior.
He posted on Monday that America would be fine because it had a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT.” This might placate some supporters — but even if it’s true, it’s hardly a viable position. AI will be a generational issue long after he’s left office, and Trump, as the incumbent president, has a responsibility to set an early course.
Trump critics might wonder whether his views are shaped by personal considerations, including his ownership of stocks exposed to AI, as disclosed in a recent financial filing. The White House insists his accounts are independently managed by third-party institutions. But ethical questions raised by administration officials regulating industries in which their personal wealth is deeply invested has been a constant shadow over the president’s second term.
Trump’s resistance to unpleasant truths is also at work.
He’s never presented his presidency as a vehicle for confronting far-off threats or to tackle complex problems. He’s used it to enact revenge against his enemies, to troll his political foes, to boost his own fame and to invade the psyches of billions of people across the globe.
Trump would never issue the kind of dialectical statement that his first predecessor, President Barack Obama, released on Tuesday. The 44th president said he’d been agonizing over AI for a decade and that it was time for top US leaders to convene a national conversation.
“Whether this technology results in amazing breakthroughs in medicine, energy and education or unleashes huge economic disruptions, greater inequality, and potential catastrophe will depend on the choices that we make right now – choices that should be made not just by the companies involved, but by all of us,” Obama wrote.
Some Americans might have hoped from similar from Trump. But he’s a rebel and a backlash president. His anti-establishment credentials depend on being an outsider, not a unifier.
And Obama’s path ultimately points to a US-led international coalition. Trump hates multinational altruism. “America First” is about doubling down on US power, not watering it down.
If Trump refuses to lead, will Congress step in?
There’s no time for serious action before the midterms. But if AI explodes as a top campaign theme, it’s likely to drive the legislative agenda of whoever controls the House and Senate next year. And if Republicans suffer a wipeout because of Trump’s refusal to listen to voters, they may have an incentive to break with the president.
But they will be on their own.
“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!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday.