Trump says the administration once threatened the leader of a big AI company with jail time

President Donald Trump. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images President Donald Trump said his administration had once threatened the leader of a major AI company with jail time.Speaking on an episode of "60 Minutes" that aired on Sunday night, Trump said that his team encountered "a situation where somebody was reported to us to be doing something bad with AI.""We called them very strongly and said, get ready to go to jail. Please give your wife a kiss goodnight," Trump said.Trump said that he could not reveal who the person or the company was. But when pressed by host Ross Douthat on whether it was "a leader of a major AI company," Trump said the individual was from "one of the big ones."Representatives for the Trump White House and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider."We said, 'Do you like the color orange?'" Trump recounted."We said, 'Go home right now. See your wife and children. Give them a kiss good night,'" Trump added. "Because tomorrow morning, you're going to jail."After saying the unnamed executive had "totally changed everything" after the alleged warning, Trump said he did not believe the conduct had been malicious — though he added that it "coulda been malicious."Trump's comments were part of a broader discussion on "60 Minutes" about whether the US should slow the development of advanced AI. Douthat asked Trump about public unease over data centers, and warnings from some AI leaders that the technology could pose catastrophic risks. Trump said he supported the technology partly because he viewed it as a contest with China.And when asked whether he would support AI-safety guardrails, Trump said he did not mind them, but argued that the US could not place itself in "a deep second position" versus China."We're leading number one. And China has no guardrails, by the way," Trump said.Trump added that the US would be at an "unbelievable disadvantage" if it did not continue developing the technology.Trump has spent much of his second term meeting with AI leaders and extracting commitments from them. In January 2025, he announced the Stargate infrastructure venture alongside OpenAI's Sam Altman, Oracle's Larry Ellison, and SoftBank's Masayoshi Son. In March, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI signed his White House data-center power pledge.More recently, Trump hosted a September White House gathering with Google's Sundar Pichai, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI's Greg Brockman, xAI's Elon Musk, and Nvidia's Jensen Huang. They signed a voluntary safety accord calling for internal controls, outside evaluations, and board oversight. Trump described it as "morally binding." Read next Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Cheryl is the senior news editor for Business Insider’s Asia bureau in Singapore. She and her team cover global business and tech news, including AI, consumer and workplace trends, and military technology. She frequently speaks to international media about top news stories — please email her for bookings.As a writer, Cheryl's interests include the business of nerdworld and K-pop. She covers crews such as Critical Role and Dimension 20, new releases in mobile and video gaming, and the artists, fandoms, and business trends shaping the K-pop industry. Trump AI