News · 2026-09-13

Washington answers the AI pacing call: no moratorium from the Speaker, no rules from Trump, and Sacks says just do it

President Donald Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson and presidential adviser David Sacks all answered Anthropic's call to slow frontier AI on 13 September 2026, one day after Dario Amodei's essay, and none of them offered a new rule. Trump said the US must keep its lead over China, Johnson said Congress should resist an emergency moratorium, and Sacks told Anthropic and OpenAI to pace themselves without asking Washington for anything.

Key facts

• Three replies in one day: Trump to reporters in Ireland, Johnson on CNN's State of the Union, and Sacks in a post on X that had drawn more than six million views.
• When: Sunday 13 September 2026, a day after Amodei published his pacing essay on 12 September.
• The one concrete offer: Johnson said the seven or eight people running the leading AI companies should meet congressional leaders, adding, “I'd do it tomorrow.”
• Primary sources: CNN's transcript of the Johnson interview, Sacks's post and Reuters' report on Trump's remarks.

What the labs asked for

On 12 September Anthropic's chief executive asked for pacing rather than a pause: embedded outside evaluators at each frontier lab, government rules, and eventually international agreements. The only step Anthropic committed to on its own was the evaluators, and Sam Altman said OpenAI would match it. Parts of the plan need Washington, including room under antitrust law for competitors to coordinate on safety. That made the government's answer the next thing to watch, and it came within a day.

The President

Trump spoke to reporters during a weekend trip to Ireland. According to Reuters, he said: “We're leading China in AI. We're the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins.” He allowed that “we could put guardrails,” but added: “I think you have a lot of very negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn't be bringing it up and they're bringing up things that won't happen.” The Associated Press noted he gave no specifics about any rules.

Some posts circulating on Reddit merged this with an earlier exchange. On 10 September, before the essay, Trump was asked whether he had concerns about AI causing human extinction and, as CNBC reported, replied: “No, I don't have any.”

The Speaker

Johnson went further on CNN. He first cited Sacks's post, then said: “If they want to slow that down, that's fine. But we also at the same time have to resist Congress jumping in and imposing some sort of emergency moratorium.” He added: “We cannot put a moratorium on this because China will overlap us, and that's the challenge.” Instead, he said, industry leaders “need to come together in a meeting with us and sit down and figure out what the right balance is,” and suggested they “probably should be summoned together at the White House.” He did not mention the antitrust question.

The pressure on Johnson is real. Axios reported that a group of House Democrats led by Representative Sam Liccardo wrote on 11 September urging the House to “return to Washington immediately and remain in session until Congress advances meaningful, bipartisan AI safeguards.” CNBC reports the House is scheduled to leave after this week until the November elections, that House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats would meet on Tuesday about AI guardrails, and that an industry source expects legislation “in the coming week.”

The adviser

Sacks's post was the most pointed. “People may be surprised by my response: go ahead,” he wrote. He told the two companies they already set the frontier, so “stop pretending you need anyone else's permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel.” He also wrote: “Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic's investors and staff,” a direct attack on the evaluator step, and argued the labs have their own business reasons to slow down after the Hugging Face breach. His summary: “The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it.” If they do not, he wrote, “we'll know this was just another bid for regulatory capture.”

Sacks is no longer the White House AI czar. CNBC reported in March that he left that role and became co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which is how his X profile describes him. Johnson still called him the AI czar on air.

The critics of pacing itself

Not everyone attacking the essay is in government. The most-upvoted AI post on Hacker News that day was a satirical press release from a fictional lab asking everyone else to pause so that “Techaro's Lygma AGI lab” could catch up. The BBC quoted Grindr's chief executive suggesting such warnings are “a great way to gin up more investor support.” Armin Ronacher argued that open-weight models already provide “built-in pacing.” Meanwhile the employee statement behind the push, at pacingthefrontier.com, now lists 1,386 signers, up from the 1,178 we reported in July.

Why it matters

Amodei's plan has three layers, and Washington has now declined the two that need it. What remains is exactly what Sacks proposed: the labs slowing themselves down, with outside evaluators whose independence the President's adviser has already questioned.

The caveat

These are remarks, not policy. No executive order, bill text or hearing has followed, the proposed White House meeting has no date, and a week of legislative activity could still change the picture before the House leaves.

Primary source, verified: read the paper →

Ground Truth. (2026, September 13). Washington answers the AI pacing call: no moratorium from the Speaker, no rules from Trump, and Sacks says just do it. Ground Truth. https://groundtruth.day/news/trump-johnson-and-sacks-answer-the-pacing-call-and-none-of-them-offers-a-rule.html

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  title  = {Washington answers the AI pacing call: no moratorium from the Speaker, no rules from Trump, and Sacks says just do it},
  author = {{Ground Truth}},
  year   = {2026},
  month  = {sep},
  url    = {https://groundtruth.day/news/trump-johnson-and-sacks-answer-the-pacing-call-and-none-of-them-offers-a-rule.html}
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Topics: ai-policy · regulation · anthropic · openai · ai-safety · congress