Trump and Jensen Huang's AI pact is a suicide pact
By Sophie Naimi · Reporting from Paris ·
The phone call was not a conversation; it was a coronation.
# The Coronation of the Machine
The phone call was not a conversation; it was a coronation. On Monday, September 14, 2026, during the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, President Donald Trump called Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and put the world’s most valuable company on speakerphone for thousands to hear. Axios and Fox Business reported that the message was singular: the limits are gone.
Trump called fears of artificial intelligence a "hoax" and said the robots will not take over the world. To Trump, the only risk is a slow pace. He described AI data centers as "the oil of the next two decades," a phrase that should alarm anyone who has watched a Mediterranean coastline erode or a village in Kabylie dry up. By framing AI as a commodity to be mined and hoarded, Trump promotes a new era of digital extraction.
The New Oil is a Fever Dream
When Trump calls data centers "oil," he signals a return to the predatory logic of the 1800s. The pattern repeats: a general-purpose technology creates immense wealth for a few while those at the top dismiss the wreckage as "transient." Early industrialists ignored the blackened lungs of children and the collapse of the commons to fuel the British Empire. Now, the alliance of Trump and Jensen Huang views fired workers and scorched energy grids as a necessary price for "winning."
Jensen Huang played his part, telling Trump that "everybody wins in the AI race of America." It is a lie. In the logic of the first Industrial Revolution, "everyone" winning meant power shifted to those who owned the machines. Huang dismissed end-of-world predictions as "not grounded in science," a convenient shield for a man whose net worth is a fortune that could fund the annual budget of a mid-sized nation. He praised whistleblower Jacob Coxon for his "courage," but that is a gesture of charity from the mountaintop, not a policy of restraint.
Why ignore the warnings?
Trump labels systemic threats as "hoaxes" to clear the rubble of expertise for profit. He used this tactic during the COVID-19 pandemic to dismiss a biological catastrophe and during the 2008 crash when leaders ignored bank failures to protect wealth-generation. Now, he applies the same erasure to AI.
The contrast is sharp. According to Fox Business, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged the industry to "slow the pace," citing risks of bioterrorism and economic collapse—warnings Sam Altman of OpenAI echoed. Trump views these safety measures as vulnerabilities. He said critics are "playing right into the hands" of China, framing caution as a national security weakness. This mirrors the US-China trade war, where "national security" served as a blunt instrument to justify aggressive industrial expansion.
By calling the AI Safety Summit’s goals a "hoax," Trump declares that the U.S. will outpace the world by being more reckless. He bets that the first person to build the most powerful machine wins, regardless of whether that machine is a tool or a torch.
A thirst for power
Trump will likely dismantle safety protocols, framing any regulation as a gift to Xi Jinping. The upcoming summit between Trump and the Chinese President will likely be a contest of technological dominance rather than diplomacy. Meanwhile, Nvidia will likely collect government contracts, its GPUs becoming the skeleton of a state that views electricity as secondary to market cap.
Physics ignores the "race." Data centers require millions of gallons of water and gigawatts of power—resources already vanishing in the Global South. To treat AI as "the new oil" is to commit to a future of siphoning water from drought-stricken farms to cool server racks.
The pact between Donald Trump and Jensen Huang is a suicide pact masquerading as a victory lap. They race toward total automation and environmental collapse, convinced that as long as the wealth is "American," the wreckage does not count. They are not leading a leap forward; they are dragging the country back to the darkest impulses of the 19th century, where the only things that mattered were the speed of the piston and the size of the profit.