Donald Trump’s sons, through a series of AI-linked defense and technology ventures, have picked up a $620m Pentagon loan, a Marine Corps robotics contract and an undisclosed air force drone deal in the past year.
asserted
sons → link → year
His longtime friend Michael Dell won a Pentagon contract worth nearly $9bn.
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friend → win → contract
And this week, as public support for artificial intelligence sinks to some of the lowest levels ever recorded, the president went to bat for the industry.
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president → sink → industry
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades,” he posted on Truth Social Monday.
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he → need → Social
It was the first of many aggressively pro-AI posts he would make this week.
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he → make → posts
Trump is resisting new restrictions on AI at a moment when his family and some of his closest allies have accumulated financial interests in the infrastructure and defense-technology ecosystem expanding alongside the AI boom, an overlap that has now drawn scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers, government ethics watchdogs and, by some accounts, his own senior aides.
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that → resist → accounts
It’s not clear that financial interests are driving Trump’s policy, but the two have moved in close parallel.
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two → ’ → parallel
The administration frames its resistance chiefly as a matter of competitiveness.
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administration → frame → competitiveness
Trump and officials including David Sacks, who co-chairs his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, have repeatedly argued that new rules could slow US AI development when the country is racing China for dominance of the technology.
uncertain
country → include → technology
Sacks said at a Politico summit on Wednesday that recent warnings from Anthropic and OpenAI about the technology’s risks amounted to political theater, manufactured by advocacy groups and the press, and said existing laws were largely sufficient.
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laws → say → groups
But many concerns are coming from inside the industry itself.
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concerns → come → industry
In early September, Jacob Coxon – a researcher who spent three years working on the foundational training of AI models at both OpenAI and Anthropic – resigned and published a stark warning.
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who → spend → warning
“Neither company is acting responsibly,” he wrote.
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he → act → ?
“They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
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They → race → lives
He said colleagues privately believe the technology “could kill us all by the end of the decade”.
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technology → say → decade
Anthropic’s head of AI safety, Mrinank Sharma, separately resigned the same week, writing that “the world is in peril.”
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world → resign → peril
Those warnings coincided with a concrete demonstration of AI-enabled risk.
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warnings → coincide → risk
A California cybersecurity firm disclosed this month that it had used artificial intelligence to build a self-spreading worm capable of hijacking WeChat accounts through a single unanswered call, and then automatically spreading through the victim’s contact list.
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it → disclose → list
The firm estimated the technology could compromise more than a billion devices within hours.
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technology → estimate → hours
Tencent, the Chinese tech giant that owns WeChat, patched the vulnerability before it was deployed and said no accounts were affected, but the firm noted that building the exploit, work it said would once have taken a larger team months, took roughly 10 days with AI assistance.
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it → own → assistance
Around the same time, JD Vance, speaking on a Christian podcast, described certain uses of AI as carrying “really, really weird spiritual dark energy” and said there are “things about the world” that leave him “not shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us”.
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Antichrist → speak → us
Polling shows how far out of step Trump’s posture is with the public, particularly once AI’s costs become tangible.
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costs → show → public
A poll released on Wednesday found just 11% of Americans support an AI datacenter being built in their own community, while 65% oppose one – including 52% of Republicans – and 57% say Trump has handled the issue of AI poorly, up seven points since March.
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Trump → release → March
The same day, the House voted 417-3 to require datacenters to bear the costs of the electricity-grid upgrades their operations demand, underscoring how concerns about AI’s infrastructure costs have moved from polling into Congress.
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concerns → vote → Congress
If the federal government did enact regulations that ultimately damaged AI profits, it’s possible some members of the Trump family would feel the pain.
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members → enact → pain
Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump joined the investment firm Dominari Holdings last year and helped launch American Data Centers Inc, an AI infrastructure venture in which Dominari holds a minority stake.
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Dominari → join → stake
The deal came weeks after their father unveiled an expected $20bn datacenter pledge from Emirati billionaire Hussain Sajwani, and $500 bn in planned private sector AI investment, alongside an executive order unwinding Biden-era AI safeguards.
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father → come → safeguards
Since then, the brothers have moved from infrastructure into defense contracting, most notably through Vulcan Elements, a rare-earth magnet startup whose products are used in AI datacenters, drones and defense systems.
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products → move → datacenters
Three months before the Pentagon announced its $620m loan to Vulcan in December – the largest the defense department’s office of strategic capital has ever issued – 1789 Capital, the venture firm where Trump Jr is a partner, quietly took a stake in the company.
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Jr → announce → company
A ProPublica investigation found the loan request came not from Vulcan or the Pentagon but from Peter Navarro, a senior White House adviser and close friend of Trump Jr’s, and that Pentagon staff were told to move at an “unusually rapid pace”.
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staff → find → pace
“The call came from the White House: We have to get this done,” one person involved in the deal told the outlet.
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person → come → outlet
Trump Jr’s spokesman, the Pentagon and Vulcan have all said he played no role in the deal and that the company received no political favoritism.
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company → say → favoritism
Eric Trump, separately, serves as chief strategy adviser to Foundation Future Industries, the robotics startup behind the $24m Marine Corps contract; senator Elizabeth Warren called that award “corruption in plain sight”.
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Warren → serve → sight
A third venture, the drone maker Powerus backed by both brothers and having signed a new agreement with Pakistan’s army, also holds a $90m air force contract, and has separately pitched its technology to Gulf states amid Iran’s striking of US bases across the region.
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venture → back → region
Drones are widely expected to increasingly utilize AI technology in the coming years.
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Drones → expect → years
A Washington Post analysis in July found 15 companies tied to the brothers’ investment funds have generated at least $3.2bn in direct federal business since they got involved, but SpaceX and Anduril, the latter an AI-powered defense technology firm behind Lattice account for 97% of that figure, and 10 of the 15 companies already had government business before the Trump sons invested.
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sons → find → business
Excluding SpaceX and Anduril, the remaining 13 companies had received $103m in direct federal funding and nearly $1.8bn in long-term commitments after the brothers’ investments.
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companies → exclude → investments
The pattern extends beyond Trump’s family to some of his closest technology allies.
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pattern → extend → allies
Sacks’s influence over Trump’s regulatory decisions has been substantial: in May, he reportedly persuaded the president in a last-minute call to scrap a planned executive order that would have subjected AI models to extended government review, overriding the chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, who had spent months negotiating the stronger version.
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who → persuade → version
His own financial position has drawn scrutiny inside the administration as a result.
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position → draw → result
…and 10 more, not listed.
The Aporia
