No one can stop it. Now what?

AI 2026-09-19 · Satsuma Creative · 5 min read

Jensen Huang took a call from Trump on speakerphone onstage and said they won't let AI slow down. I agree it can't be stopped. But the atomic bomb story has a second half: development couldn't be blocked, yet proliferation and use were largely contained. "It can't be stopped" doesn't lead to "so leave it alone."

September 14, All-In Summit, Los Angeles. Jensen Huang was being interviewed onstage when Trump called. He put it on speakerphone so the whole room could listen. Trump opened by teasing him: he can design the most complex chips in the world but can't work a speakerphone. The room burst out laughing. For the next five minutes or so, Trump said AI doomerism is a hoax, robots won't take over the world, critics are doing the bidding of "politicians, and maybe China," and data centers are the oil of the next 20 to 25 years. Huang replied: you're right, we won't let that happen. The room applauded.

I've spent thirty years in advertising and thirty years directing theater. Whether the call was staged, I don't know. As stagecraft, it was flawless: two of the hosts onstage are White House advisors, and Huang himself sits on the President's council of technology advisors. The moment the phone rang, an industry panel became a declaration of national policy.

First, where I agree.

The panel was sparked the previous weekend, when Anthropic CEO Amodei argued for slowing the pace of AI capability development. Musk and Altman both publicly agreed; Huang did not. I also think it can't be stopped.

In 1945, dozens of Manhattan Project scientists signed a petition urging that the atomic bomb not be dropped on Japan. They understood its power better than anyone on earth, and the petition changed nothing. If the people who knew exactly what it could do couldn't stop it, asking everyone to halt now because "we don't know what AI will become" is even less likely to work. And nuclear weapons were something only nations could build, with no commercial use. AI is something every company is building and making money from every day.

But the atomic bomb story has a second half. Eighty years on, nine countries have nuclear weapons. In between came the test ban treaty, the non-proliferation treaty, and international inspections. No one could block development, yet proliferation and use were largely contained. So the analogy leads to "it can't be stopped, so let's talk about how to govern it," not "it can't be stopped, so leave it alone."

Now, where I have reservations.

Amodei talked about slowing down. No one said stop. Recast "slow down" as "stop," label the other side doomers, and you never have to answer how fast is too fast, who does the checking, or who's accountable when things go wrong.

Then look at who's standing where. The three who favor slowing down all build models; when a model goes wrong, the responsibility is theirs. Huang, who opposes slowing down, is the one selling chips to all three. For model companies, slowing down means launching a few months later. For NVIDIA, it means shipping fewer batches. His support for open source follows the same math: the more widespread models become, the more people need GPUs. In a gold rush, the people selling shovels naturally want everyone to keep digging.

Having a stake doesn't make him wrong. He said AI already surpasses humans in certain professional skills; I use it every day, and I agree. He also praised Anthropic whistleblower Coxon for his courage, and said a company that feels it has lost control should pause, a far more nuanced take than Trump's. But when someone tells you whether AI should slow down, first remember which answer his revenue is tied to.

As for "critics are helping China": Gallup polling shows 70% of Americans oppose building data centers near where they live, and more than half cite environmental and resource concerns. Water and power bills have nothing to do with China.

On the call, Trump also said this: we still need to be a little careful, and do things prudently. Even the loudest voice calling it a hoax left that line in. The fights of the next few years will be over what that line means: how careful, who defines it, who checks. "If we don't, our rivals will" is the standard script of an arms race. The US and the Soviet Union said it for decades, and in the end they still sat down and signed treaties.

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