Thank you for the kind introduction. I want to start by thanking President Macron for hosting this event and, of course, for the lovely dinner last night. During the dinner, President Macron looked at me and asked if I would like to speak. I said, “Mr. President, I’m here for the good company and free wine, but I have to earn my keep today.”

I also want to thank Prime Minister Modi for being here and for co-hosting the summit, and all of you for participating. I’m not here this morning to talk about AI safety, which was the title of the conference a couple of years ago. I’m here to talk about AI opportunity. When conferences like this convene to discuss cutting-edge technology, often our response is to be too self-conscious and too risk-averse. But never have I encountered a breakthrough in tech that so clearly calls us to do precisely the opposite.

Our administration, the Trump Administration, believes that AI will have countless revolutionary applications in economic innovation, job creation, national security, healthcare, free expression, and beyond. To restrict its development now, when it is just beginning to take off, would not only unfairly benefit incumbents in the space but would mean paralyzing one of the most promising technologies we have seen in generations.

With that in mind, I’d like to make four main points today:

This administration will ensure that American AI technology continues to be the gold standard worldwide and that we are the partner of choice for other foreign countries and businesses as they expand their own use of AI.

We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off. We will make every effort to encourage pragmatic growth and AI policies.

We feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship.

The Trump Administration will maintain a pro-worker growth path for AI so that it can be a potent tool for job creation in the United States.

I appreciate Prime Minister Modi’s point. I really believe that AI will not replace human beings. It will make people more productive, more prosperous, and more free. The United States of America is the leader in AI, and our administration plans to keep it that way. The US possesses all components of the full AI stack, including advanced semiconductor design, frontier algorithms, and transformational applications.

The computing power this stack requires is integral to advancing AI technology and safeguarding America’s advantage. The Trump Administration will ensure that the most powerful AI systems are built in the US with American-designed and manufactured chips.

Just because we’re the leader doesn’t mean we want or need to go it alone. America wants to partner with all of you, and we want to embark on the AI revolution before us with a spirit of openness and collaboration. But to create that kind of trust, we need international regulatory regimes that foster the creation of AI technology rather than strangle it. We need our European friends, in particular, to look to this new frontier with optimism rather than trepidation.

The development of cutting-edge AI in the US is no accident. By preserving an open regulatory environment, we’ve encouraged American innovators to experiment and make unparalleled R&D investments. Of the $700 billion estimated to be spent on AI in 2028, over half will likely be invested in the United States of America.

This administration will not be the one to snuff out the startups and grad students producing some of the most groundbreaking applications of artificial intelligence. Instead, our laws will keep big tech, small tech, and all other developers on a level playing field.

The president’s recent executive order on AI is developing an AI action plan that avoids an overly precautionary regulatory regime while ensuring that all Americans benefit from the technology and its transformative potential. We invite your countries to work with us and to follow that model if it makes sense for your nations.

However, the Trump Administration is troubled by reports that some foreign governments are considering tightening the screws on US tech companies with international footprints. America cannot and will not accept that, and we think it’s a terrible mistake not just for the United States of America but for your own countries.

US innovators of all sizes already know what it’s like to deal with onerous international rules. Many of our most productive tech companies are forced to deal with the EU’s Digital Services Act and the massive regulations it created about taking down content and policing so-called misinformation. Of course, we want to ensure the internet is a safe place, but it is one thing to prevent a predator from preying on a child on the internet and quite another to prevent a grown man or woman from accessing an opinion that the government thinks is misinformation.

Meanwhile, for smaller firms, navigating the GDPR means paying endless legal compliance costs or otherwise risking massive fines. For some, the easiest way to avoid the dilemma has been to simply block EU users in the first place. Is this really the future that we want? I think the answer for all of us should be no.

There’s no issue where we worry about more than regulation when it comes to energy. We stand now at the frontier of an AI industry that is hungry for reliable power and high-quality semiconductors. Yet too many of our friends are deindustrializing on one hand and chasing reliable power out of their nations and off their grids with the other. The AI future will not be won by hand-wringing about safety; it will be won by building—from reliable power plants to the manufacturing facilities that can produce the chips of the future.

On a personal level, what excites me most about AI is that it is grounded in the real and physical economy. The success of the sector isn’t just a matter of smart people sitting in front of a computer screen and coding. It depends on those who will change our factories and make our healthcare providers better at treating diseases. But it will also depend on the data produced by those healthcare providers—by those doctors and nurses. I believe it will help us create and store new modes of power in the future. But right now, AI cannot take off unless the world builds the energy infrastructure to support it.

In my view, tech innovation over the last 20 years has often conjured images of smart people staring at computer screens, engineering in the world of bits. But the AI economy will promote, primarily depend on, and transform the world of atoms.

At this moment, we face the extraordinary prospect of a new industrial revolution—one on par with the invention of the steam engine or Bessemer steel. But it will never come to pass if overregulation deters innovators from taking the risks necessary to advance the ball. Nor will it occur if we allow AI to become dominated by massive players looking to use the tech to censor or control users’ thoughts.

I’d ask you to step back a moment and ask yourself: Meaning, political leaders gathered here today to do the most aggressive regulation—it is very often the people who already have an incumbent advantage in the market. When a massive incumbent comes to us asking for safety regulations, we ought to ask whether that safety regulation is for the benefit of our people or for the benefit of the incumbent.

Over the last few years, we’ve watched as this government, businesses, and nonprofit organizations have advanced unpopular and, I believe, downright ahistorical social agendas through AI. In the US, we had AI image generators trying to tell us that George Washington was Black or that America’s Doughboys in World War I were, in fact, women. Now, we laugh at this now, and of course, it was ridiculous, but we have to remember the lessons from that ridiculous moment. What we take from it is that the Trump Administration will ensure the AI systems developed in America are free from ideological bias and never restrict our citizens’ right to free speech. We can trust our people to think, to consume information, to develop their own ideas, and to debate with one another in the open marketplace of ideas.

We’ve also watched as hostile foreign adversaries have weaponized AI software to rewrite history, surveil users, and censor speech. This is hardly new, of course, as they do with other tech. Some authoritarian regimes have stolen and used AI to strengthen their military intelligence and surveillance capabilities, capture personal data, and create propaganda to undermine other nations’ national security.

I want to be clear: This administration will block such efforts, full stop. We will safeguard American AI and chip technologies from theft and misuse, work with our allies and partners to strengthen and extend these protections, and close pathways to adversaries attaining AI capabilities that threaten all of our people.

I would also remind our international friends here today that partnering with such regimes never pays off in the long term. From CCTV to 5G equipment, we’re all familiar with cheap tech in the marketplace that’s been heavily subsidized and exported by authoritarian regimes. But as I know, and I think some of us in this room have learned from experience, partnering with them means chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in, and seize your information infrastructure. Should a deal seem too good to be true, just remember the old adage we learned in Silicon Valley: If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product.

Finally, this administration wants to be very clear about one last point: We will always center American workers in our AI policy. We refuse to view AI as a purely disruptive technology that will inevitably automate away our labor force. We believe, and we will fight for policies that ensure AI will make our workers more productive. We expect that they will reap the rewards with higher wages, better benefits, and safer and more prosperous communities.

From law to medicine to manufacturing, the most immediate applications of AI almost all envision supplementing, not replacing, the work being done by Americans. Combined with this administration’s worker-first approach to immigration, we believe that a US labor force prepared to use AI to its fullest extent will instead attract the attention of businesses that have offshored some of these roles.

To accomplish this, the administration will make sure that America has the best-trained workforce in the world. Our schools will teach students how to manage, supervise, and interact with AI and other tools as they become more and more a part of our everyday lives. As AI creates new jobs and industries, our government, businesses, and labor organizations have an obligation to work together to empower the workers not just of the United States but all over the world.

To that end, for all major AI policy decisions coming from the federal government, the Trump Administration will guarantee American workers a seat at the table, and we’re very proud of that.

I’ve taken up enough of your time, so I’d like to close with just a quick story. This is a beautiful country, President McCrone, and I know that you’re proud of it, and you should be. Yesterday, as I was touring the area with General Graet and my three kids, he was kind enough to show me the sword that belonged to America’s dearest international friend from our own revolution—of course, the Marquis de Lafayette. He let me hold the sword but, of course, made me put on the white gloves beforehand.

It got me thinking of this country, France, and of course, my own country, and of the beautiful civilization that we have built together with weapons like that saber—weapons that are dangerous in the wrong hands but incredible tools for liberty and prosperity in the right hands. I couldn’t help but think of the conference today. If we choose the wrong approach on other things that could be conceived of as dangerous, things like AI, and choose to hold ourselves back, it will alter not only our GDP or the stock market but the very future of the project that Lafayette and the American Founders set off to create.

This doesn’t mean that all concerns about safety go out the window, but focus matters, and we must focus now on the opportunity to catch lightning in a bottle, unleash our most brilliant innovators, and use AI to improve the well-being of our nations and their peoples. With great confidence, I can say it is an opportunity that the Trump Administration will not squander, and we hope everyone convened here today feels exactly the same.

Thank you, and God bless you all.

Grammar corrected by Mistral Le Chat

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