The reason Trump may be the worst-ever President – and it’s not what you think

When the time comes to render a verdict on Donald Trump’s second presidency, there are plenty of crises that could damage his score. Having promised to solve Russia’s war on Ukraine on “day one” of his presidency, Trump’s actions have only led to escalations from both sides of the conflict. In the Middle East, Trump took more than a year to secure an uneasy ceasefire in Gaza, only to ignite the whole region with a fresh war against Iran, for which he seems to have no exit strategy. Meanwhile, Trump’s outright hostility to anything resembling green technology means the world is paralysed into inaction on the climate crisis. Trump’s failures in these areas, though, might not be what he is remembered for. Instead, it could be the handling of another looming crisis that defines his presidency: what did Trump do about the rise of artificial intelligence? Headlines over the last week have been dominated by the possibility of super-intelligent AI posing an existential threat to humanity, prompted by alarming self-directed cyber-attacks carried out by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and by warnings from an AI “whistleblower” who dramatically resigned from its rival, Anthropic. The leaders of the big AI companies have, unusually, been falling over themselves to agree that their technology is incredibly dangerous, and should be regulated. This is raising alarm in some quarters. Why, if tech leaders believe AI is so high risk, are they building it so fast? It’s also led to scepticism, with some suggesting it may all be a ploy to boost the stock price of AI companies. Saying your product might wipe out humanity – which is what both AI bosses and whistleblowers are effectively saying – might seem like a strange way to promote it. But talking about an existential threat can sidetrack efforts to regulate the everyday impacts of AI, while perversely boosting the product: if it’s potentially so powerful that it could endanger humanity, it must be pretty good, right? Trump, though, is completely dismissive of any concerns about AI. It’s fine, he says, because he’s in charge. In the first of a repetitive series of more than a dozen posts overnight, Trump said: “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!” Later, he added: “The only reason the AI/Data Center outburst is happening is because the United States is leading, by a lot, every other country”, that the “AI Hoax” was being “perpetrated by the Radical Left Dumocrats”, and repeatedly likened it to the climate change “HOAX”. Despite his relentless posting to social media, Trump is not a tech-savvy president. His close aide Natalie Harp prints out online posts for him to see, and his own posts are often sent by others, after he approves them on paper. The 80-year-old President has never shown any detailed interest in or understanding of the technology underpinning AI. Trump has, however, received substantial financial and political support from the tech industry – and his family’s financial interests are tied up with the sector, too. More than that, Trump often judges his own success by the US stock market, which is now almost entirely propped up by the AI bubble. On some level, Trump seems aware that his own political fortunes are tied up with artificial intelligence. If there was an AI crash, it would cause a global recession on the scale of the 2008 financial crisis – and wipe out the one success story of his second term. Trump’s political legacy is already dependent on AI being a success, and working out for the best without any major consequences for society. That’s such a desperately upbeat view that even those who take AI deeply seriously struggle to share it. Amandeep Singh Gill, the UN Special Envoy for Digital and Emerging Technologies, warns of the need to avoid an AI race for dominance – instead calling for cooperation and regulation. “There is no choice but to collaborate across borders – if countries pursue dominance, they might end up making the whole international relations system more complicated, more dangerous,” he told The i Paper. “I think the most important point today is not to miss this opportunity for better coordination.” Cooperation, though, has never been Trump’s strong suit. He is a president who sees everything as winner-takes-all, even thinking of trade as a zero-sum game, and one the US – despite being the world’s richest nation – has somehow been losing. Depending on who you believe, AI is either the most significant new technology since the internet, or since the industrial revolution. Even if concerns about its potential to end humanity are overblown, it will transform the nature of work, and could leave millions unemployed. Its environmental impacts are massive. And the trillions of dollars of high-risk AI investment could risk a global financial crisis. Trump is dealing with all of those potential problems by ignoring them, or outright calling them a “hoax”. The fallout of his failure to tackle AI could easily define the legacy of his presidency for decades to come. Key context 8 September: Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon announces his resignation, warning that leading AI companies are racing towards self-improving superintelligence and gambling with human lives. 12–13 September: Anthropic chief Dario Amodei calls for slower AI development and stronger safeguards, winning support from Sam Altman and Elon Musk. The five largest tech companies are expected to spend more than $1tn on AI-related capital investment across 2025–26. The “Magnificent Seven” of tech companies (including firms like Google) command nearly a third of the S&P 500’s total value. On his first day back in office in January 2025, Trump revoked his predecessor’s executive order, “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence”.