White House AI czar David Sacks got President Trump to scrap a planned executive order on AI oversight in a last-minute phone call in May—and the billionaires whispering in Trump's ear want to keep it that way.
The move blindsided Trump's own chief of staff and treasury secretary and exposed a raw divide inside the administration over the most consequential technology of the century. While Sacks and tech oligarchs like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Nvidia's Jensen Huang lobby for a hands-off approach, senior officials including Susie Wiles and Scott Bessent have been meeting almost daily trying to figure out how to put guardrails on AI. The American public isn't at the table.
According to Europe Says, Wiles told others that Sacks persuaded Trump to kill the May executive order in a last-minute call, catching off guard officials who had spent months negotiating the order and consulting industry executives. Treasury Secretary Bessent worried that AI-led cyberattacks could hit the banking system. Trump eventually signed a slimmed-down version after Wiles and Bessent pushed back.
Since then, the internal fight has only intensified. Wiles, Bessent, and National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross have been meeting almost daily to discuss AI risks and potential guardrails, both outlets report. They've held calls with executives including OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic leadership.
On the other side: Sacks, Zuckerberg, Huang, and Musk. The three billionaires recently spoke to Trump about their concerns with a plan for an industry-funded regulator and successfully stalled it, according to Europe Says. Musk, who poured at least $250 million into Trump's 2024 campaign and briefly ran DOGE, has lobbied against the regulator, the Daily Beast reported.
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Sacks served as AI and crypto czar as a special government employee, meaning his venture firm had to divest some—but not all—of its AI holdings. His firm's multibillion-dollar portfolio includes stakes in SpaceX, AI startups, and previously included investments in Meta, Palantir, and Airbnb. Some administration officials privately researched whether Sacks could personally profit from blocking regulations, Europe Says reported. Sacks left the czar role in March to co-chair a White House tech advisory council.
Trump appears to be siding with the deregulation camp for now. On Truth Social Monday, he declared that "the only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT," having previously called warnings about unregulated development a "HOAX."
The Daily Beast framed the dispute as a "civil war" driven by "mounting fears over what unregulated artificial intelligence could mean for humanity's future." Europe Says kept the focus on the power dynamics and policy mechanics. What neither outlet disputes: the decisions are being made behind closed doors, and the people whose jobs, savings, and security hang in the balance have zero seat at the table.
Sacks's camp is winning for now. But the question isn't whether AI gets regulated—it's who writes the rules, and whose interests those rules serve. Right now, it's billionaires writing them for themselves.
