At a moment when some of the architects of artificial intelligence are themselves urging restraint, President Trump has moved in the opposite direction, dismissing safety concerns as the work of 'negative forces' rather than legitimate technical reckoning. The divergence between the White House and segments of the industry it might otherwise call allies reveals something older than any algorithm: the perennial contest between the impulse to build without pause and the wisdom to ask what we are building toward. How that tension resolves will quietly shape the rules—or absence of rules—governing