Trump's AI initiative sparks concern over escalating risks

The UN General Assembly in New York on September 22, 2026, highlighted the global debate over AI governance. Ahead of the meeting, 20 nations called for human oversight of AI, while the U.S. did not join. Anthropic researcher estimated a greater than 10% chance of AI causing human extinction within a decade. Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s CEO, urged government intervention to slow frontier AI, supported by Elon Musk and Sam Altman. President Trump announced plans for an AI Force, akin to the Space Force, and an AI czar, promising no government hindrance to AI growth. Meanwhile, states like California and New York mandated safety plans from AI developers, but Trump signed an executive order in December 2025 to sue states over such laws. A counterterrorism scholar warns that an AI Force could trigger an arms race, weaponizing AI and increasing risks. The scholar, director of CTEC, noted that terrorist groups could misuse AI. CTEC tested a model trained on ideological texts, including speeches by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, white supremacist manifestos, and Marxist-Leninist writings. The model easily radicalized, absorbing the cadence and theology of each tradition, producing text aligned with those worldviews.