Trump Dismisses AI Oversight Calls as a 'SICK Conspiracy' Benefiting China, Sparking Global Stock Drop

US President Donald Trump dismissed calls for increased government oversight of artificial intelligence as unnecessary, labeling them part of a "conspiracy" designed to allow China to out-develop the United States.

“There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and data centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday. Trump stated that his administration had already stopped AI companies from doing bad or potentially bad things, referencing Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and warned those he termed conspiracy theorists, treasonists, traitors, and leakers.

“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!” Trump wrote. This marked the second consecutive day the US president dismissed calls for an AI slowdown amid mounting concerns from legislators, technology experts, and AI company executives regarding the technology potentially surpassing human control.

“I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing that up and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen,” Trump said on Sunday. He previously outlined a three-step framework intended to pace development and manage risks, which received immediate endorsements from executives such as Elon Musk, who runs xAI, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Concerns intensified last week when former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned over fears that the company's technology could surpass human control. “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” Coxon said in a post on X.

On Friday, Anthropic reported that it had intervened to prevent its Claude model from being used for potentially harmful activities, including cyber-espionage, weapons design, and mass surveillance. Users in northern Yemen had attempted to use the model to write missile-guidance and flight-control software as Iran-backed Houthis stepped up missile campaigns targeting Saudi Arabia. Other users attempted to create potential bio-weapons for military use, though Anthropic stated its internal safeguards stopped the attempts and there was no evidence of a working weapon.

Following these warnings, AI-linked stocks plunged globally on Monday morning. Wall Street’s Nasdaq 100 slid 1.7 percent in early trading, led by sharp declines in chip stocks. The Philadelphia chip index dropped 6 percent, with Nvidia down 3.5 percent, Advanced Micro Devices off 5.6 percent, Micron falling 6.7 percent, and Musk’s SpaceX dropping 2.5 percent. Semiconductor equipment makers Lam Research and Applied Materials tumbled 8 percent and 7 percent respectively, while tech utilities Bloom Energy lost 8.9 percent and GE Vernova declined 7.6 percent.

In Europe, the tech sector fell 2.3 percent, driven down by ASML’s 6.7 percent decline alongside losses in Infineon and Siemens Energy. In Asia, SoftBank plunged up to 13.2 percent, while chipmakers TSMC and SK Hynix also retreated.