President Trump pushed back on the need for tighter federal regulations on artificial intelligence and dismissed safety concerns as a hoax that would leave the industry in financial ruin and hand China a competitive edge.

The president's forceful messaging on AI comes as industry leaders sound increasingly urgent warnings about the need for regulation to guard against potential dangers from their own technology, while public backlash builds to the construction of the data centers needed to power it.

"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 on Truth Social on Monday. "There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China."

In a separate post, he later questioned why industry leaders were calling for regulation, which he said could "drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy." He likened worries about AI's safety risks to the allegations that underpinned impeachment proceedings during his first term, "and all of the other HOAXES and SCAMS that America was forced to endure through the Destructions' and Deviants' foul play and illegal conduct."

Trump's position on AI and data centers contrasts with how many voters feel about the issue heading into the midterms. A March Gallup poll showed that nearly half of those surveyed "strongly oppose" the construction of local AI data centers. And the opposition isn't just coming from Democrats-just under 40% of Republicans polled by Gallup are strongly against the creation of data centers. The outcry has become a mounting political liability for Republicans and some Democrats ahead of the election in November.

During a call with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Monday, Trump defended AI and data centers as an economic boon for the country, dismissing safety concerns as overblown while predicting that artificial intelligence would be "the oil of the next 20-25 years-it's bigger than the internet."

Huang, who has said that alarms over AI acceleration are meant to generate business for cybersecurity firms, was on stage at a Los Angeles tech summit hosted by the influential "All In" podcast when he put the president on speakerphone.

"The robots will not be taking over. The AI will not be taking over the rest of the world. The whole thing is a hoax," Trump said of recent warnings from tech leaders. The crowd cheered. The president cautioned "we have to be a little careful," but added "that doesn't mean we are going to stop an industry."

Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei has been among the most prominent voices in AI industry leadership calling to slow down development. Trump said in his post that the administration has taken issue with and moved to stop select AI companies and their leaders from certain actions in the past-singling out Amodei as an example-and would continue to do so.

In a recent post to his personal blog, Amodei called for the AI industry to pace development of cutting-edge tools, suggesting new measures including more global coordination among democratic countries and the introduction of embedded third-party safety evaluators.

"I believe that if slowing down bought us even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability, and we used that time to advance alignment, we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong," he wrote.

An Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, recently said he was quitting the artificial-intelligence industry over fears that the lab and its competitors are racing to build systems they won't be able to control, a sign of mounting safety concerns within top AI companies.

Anthropic and the Trump administration have been clashing for months. Anthropic sued the administration after the Pentagon marked the company as a supply-chain risk, and argued the Pentagon illegally retaliated against the company for its standing on artificial-intelligence safety. A federal judge recently ruled in favor of Anthropic and found the administration's actions were unlawful.

Other tech companies have also signaled a need for caution. Microsoft published a provisional code of conduct that it aims to apply when training new AI models. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also warned that the dizzying pace of progress could go "very badly" and that humans could lose "control of the future to AI."

"We welcome a federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements for frontier AI," Altman said in a post on X. "No amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness."

Vice President JD Vance told reporters on Monday the administration needs to "regulate smartly" but that he was skeptical of companies requesting additional safeguards.

"I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them," Vance said. "It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse."

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) told reporters Monday he expected Trump to convene a meeting with AI companies, possibly at the White House, as soon as this week to discuss a path forward.

Lawmakers are considering numerous legislative proposals to address AI models and their potential harms. "You need to strike a balance, light touch, you don't want to stifle innovation, but I think you also want to make sure that the more advanced threats can be mitigated," Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) said Monday.

He said that he had spoken to Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) about a bipartisan AI regulation bill he hopes to introduce soon that would aim to prevent catastrophic risks caused by AI such as nuclear disasters or biological weapons.

The Thune-Klobuchar measure is seen as one of the most promising of the proposals in Congress, but the rapidly approaching midterm elections, Trump's industry-friendly stance and the inability of AI companies to agree on potential legislative approaches remain challenges.