Trump was right about the lab leak. He’s right about AI, too

During COVID-19, back when almost everyone still insisted the virus had naturally jumped from a bat in a wet market to humans, President Donald Trump was perhaps the first to state clearly and loudly that it was an engineered virus leaked from a lab. At the time, Trump’s assertions were met with immense contempt from his political rivals and the legacy media. Today, however, we know Trump was right: The lab-leak hypothesis is widely acknowledged as the most plausible origin story.A similarly heated debate is unfolding right now between Trump and the leaders of Big Tech — most notably Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic. Amodei has recently claimed that AI development should be paused or put on hold, demanding sweeping government regulations.Just as he did during the pandemic, Trump is applying simple logic and sound judgment. He insists that robots are not about to take over, enslave, or destroy humanity, and he calls on tech executives to stop the fearmongering. Trump’s argument is straightforward: artificial intelligence is the next frontier — far bigger than the internet itself. In this race, the leader takes all, and China is right around the corner. Beijing will not shackle its own developers with heavy-handed regulations or existential ethics committees. If America slows down to indulge in philosophical panic, the axis of evil will simply pass us by and dominate the future.This isn’t merely a business race; it is a moral imperative. For decades, the United States has served as the world’s democratic force for good. If restricted regulations paralyze American companies while autocratic regimes develop unchecked, superpowerful AI capabilities, the global consequences will be catastrophic. To protect the free world, America — not China — must possess the technological upper hand. It’s basic common sense.Yet, this is far more than a technical or geopolitical disagreement. It is a fundamental ideological battle for the very soul of America.Trump rightly finds it absurd that private companies are actively begging the government to regulate them.Consider the irony: Big Tech companies already enforce massive, aggressive internal regulation. They monitor every post on social media, remove content at will, and shadow-ban users. OpenAI even recently indicated it would share flagged user conversations directly with law enforcement.Anyone who uses social media knows that platform algorithms swiftly scrub violent or inflammatory posts (well, unless those posts happen to be directed against Israel — where the enforcement criteria somehow becomes remarkably flexible, but that is a subject for another column).Given that tech corporations already police their own platforms around the clock, why drag the federal government into the fold?Furthermore, why hand the keys of AI regulation to politicians? Lawmakers are not tech experts. To draft any meaningful policy, they will inevitably have to sit in closed rooms and take cues from the very same tech executives who lobbied for the rules in the first place. What logic is there in creating yet another sluggish, bureaucratic government oversight apparatus that relies entirely on the industry it purports to govern?At its core, the clash between Trump and Anthropic is an ideological collision between free-market capitalism and a dangerous creeping trend toward state-controlled socialism.Trump represents classic American values: individual liberty, capitalism, minimal regulation, and trust in private enterprise to innovate and self-correct. Conversely, Anthropic’s push for state intervention feels less like technological stewardship and more like an attempt to introduce a form of techno-socialism — a system where government control supersedes market dynamics.This isn’t a high-minded debate in an academic lounge; it is a live threat playing out in the streets and at the ballot box. Across the nation — from local races in New York to key midterm contests in states like Michigan — self-proclaimed socialist and communist-aligned candidates are no longer lingering on the political margins. They are running for office, winning primaries, and attempting to drag American governance toward state-planned tyranny.This ideological split is absolute. While the political Left pushes to expand the administrative state — with radicals simultaneously demanding to “abolish ICE” while multiplying federal bureaucracies — conservatives like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) have long pointed out the stark truth: True freedom requires dismantling the overgrown federal machine, starting with abolishing the IRS.When Dario Amodei and Big Tech executives beg for federal regulations, they are willingly handing the keys of America’s most powerful technological engine to this very same political class. Giving an expanding, centralizing government control over AI isn’t “responsible oversight” — it is the Trojan horse of techno-socialism. In a true capitalist system, the response to a perceived technological risk is not state intervention and surrendering power to state bureaucrats; it is market competition. If one company develops AI models in a way that consumers or businesses find unsafe or irresponsible, rival companies will innovate safer, superior products to beat them in the open market.THE DIGITAL HANGING OF DATA CENTERS: BIG TECH’S MOST DANGEROUS PR FAILUREUltimately, this debate is about the core essence of America: Will the nation remain a beacon of individual liberty and free enterprise with limited government, or will it succumb to the rising tide of centralized, socialist control?Trump is standing practically alone at the gate, warning the public against the scare tactics of Amodei and the tech elite. Behind all the high-tech jargon, Trump sees the big picture, the real danger. What the 80-year-old president understands about freedom, power, markets, the human drive, and the socialist threat to America, Anthropic’s young CEO has yet to learn.Mendi Glik is a software engineer, political commentator, and columnist for the Jewish Press. He is also a contributor to JNS, focusing on electoral strategy and political analysis.