Trump says White House threatened major AI leader with jail

President Donald Trump said on a Sunday night “60 Minutes” broadcast that his administration once threatened the leader of a major AI company with jail time.

Trump said he could not reveal the executive’s identity or the company. Host Ross Douthat pressed him on whether the person was “a leader of a major AI company,” and Trump answered that the individual came from “one of the big ones.”

What did the White House threaten?

Trump said his team encountered “a situation where somebody was reported to us to be doing something bad with AI.” He then described the warning: “We called them very strongly and said, get ready to go to jail. Please give your wife a kiss goodnight,” Trump said.

“We said, ‘Do you like the color orange?’” Trump recounted. He added: “We said, ‘Go home right now. See your wife and children. Give them a kiss good night,’” and, separately, “Because tomorrow morning, you’re going to jail.”

Trump said the unnamed executive had “totally changed everything” after the alleged warning. He said he did not believe the conduct had been malicious, though it “coulda been malicious.”

The distinction between a threat and enforcement remains unclear. Trump described an immediate warning and a later change in behavior, but the interview did not specify any charge, investigation, sanction or court action.

Neither the Trump White House nor the Department of Justice immediately responded to Business Insider’s request for comment, leaving the episode unverified because Trump named neither the executive nor the company.

Why did Trump favor continued AI development?

Trump’s comments formed part of a broader “60 Minutes” discussion about whether the United States should slow the development of advanced AI. Douthat asked 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. Asked whether he would support AI-safety guardrails, he said he did not mind them but argued the United States 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. He added that the United States would be at an “unbelievable disadvantage” if it did not continue developing the technology.

Trump’s position ties guardrails to the race with China, while his jail-warning account leaves the reported misconduct without a defined enforcement rule.

Which companies and executives backed the administration?

Trump has spent much of his second term meeting with AI leaders and extracting commitments from them. The “60 Minutes” account laid out three policy steps:

• January 2025: Trump announced the Stargate infrastructure venture alongside OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son.
• March: Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI signed the White House data-center power pledge.

At a September White House gathering, Trump hosted:

• Google’s Sundar Pichai
• Anthropic’s Dario Amodei
• Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg
• OpenAI’s Greg Brockman
• xAI’s Elon Musk
• Nvidia’s Jensen Huang

The gathering produced a voluntary safety accord. The agreement called for internal controls, outside evaluations and board oversight. Trump described it as “morally binding.”

The sequence moved from a January infrastructure launch to a March power pledge and then a September safety accord, while Trump pressed AI companies for commitments. The measures pair data-center power with safety controls, but the safety accord was voluntary.

The next test is whether the White House or Justice Department identifies the executive or explains the reported conduct; until then, Trump’s jail-warning account remains unverified.