Trump makes it clear his power is becoming entwined with AI

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New alliances between the White House, the Pentagon, US intelligence and AI companies are looming ominously

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, writing to you as I sit under yellowing leaves in New York. Today in tech, we’re discussing technocracy.

Donald Trump made a series of moves over the past week that make it clear his power is becoming synonymous with artificial intelligence.

The new tight alliances between the White House, the Pentagon, US intelligence agencies and AI companies loom ominously over governments and companies, particularly in Europe, that rely on American AI.

Last Tuesday, Trump and six AI CEOs signed what he called a “morally binding” agreement to put controls on artificial intelligence. The vague agreement stipulates a framework for what Trump called “tremendous self-policing”, reiterating his point that AI companies can act as their own watchmen. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, and Dario Amodei signed.

Zuckerberg hand-guided the writing of that agreement, Semafor reported. The pact reportedly arose from a conversation between the Meta CEO and House speaker Mike Johnson at the US state dinner for Xi Jinping, which preceded the conclave of the tech CEOs. Zuckerberg circulated a draft of the agreement in advance of the convening, and Huang threw his support behind it, per Semafor.

It is one thing for tech executives to dine at the White House to curry favor with the president; it is like entirely another to have them draft the terms of executive orders. Silicon Valley’s CEOs are writing contracts that bear the White House letterhead, entrenching their interests and their power.