On Saturday the president announced a federal AI Force on Truth Social, likening it to the Space Force, and said he’s recruiting an AI czar. The Monday before, on speakerphone at an All-In Podcast event, he’d called the fears about AI a hoax, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, holding the phone, agreed. The market took the week as good news: on Monday the Nasdaq closed at a record 27,122.09, its first since June, and the PHLX semiconductor index rose 4.3%, per market reports. Somewhere in there is a policy. Nobody’s sure what it is.
The Journal reports the announcement followed warnings from leading industry figures — Anthropic’s Dario Amodei chief among them — and that it’s the first time Trump has floated a federal body dedicated solely to AI. OSTP director Michael Kratsios said Sunday the unit would coordinate agencies. Advisers are split — one camp worried about model and cyber risks, one led by David Sacks wanting minimal regulation — and the president has swung between them. “Nobody knows what this means,” said Adam Kovacevich of the Chamber of Progress. Trump is expected to meet tech CEOs in the coming days. The politics are live: Barack Obama, at Colgate University on Friday, backed calls for checks on AI and more oversight.
The 63-year-old who says relax, the 43-year-old who says slow down
Tim Higgins’s column frames the split as Huang versus Amodei. Huang, 63, has become the most prominent voice against AI alarm — at Salesforce’s (CRM) Dreamforce, Marc Benioff joked that everyone’s following him — while Amodei, 43, urged the industry to slow advanced AI work. Higgins notes the obvious: Nvidia (NVDA) sells the picks and shovels, and Huang says it expects to sell twice as many chips next year. The two are entangled, too: Anthropic needs Nvidia’s chips, and Reuters reports Nvidia is in talks to invest in Anthropic’s coming IPO.
Then there’s what the people closest to the winners are doing. The Journal’s Insider-Trading Spotlight (LSEG data, Sept. 18) lists Seagate Technology (STX) CEO Dave Mosley selling $75.6 million of stock (shares up 211.8% this year); Sandisk’s (SNDK) CEO $51.7 million (up 654.8%); Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) CEO Lisa Su $48.1 million (up 161.4%); and Microsoft (MSFT) CFO Amy Hood $20.8 million. Across the technology sector, insiders bought about $1.5 million and sold about $1.04 billion. On Monday AMD rose 10.0% to $615.52, roughly a $1 trillion market value, Intel (INTC) gained 12.1% and Nvidia added 2.3%, according to market reports.
Our read
Investments/Risk (IN04): the desk owns the build-out through the spenders and the makers — Microsoft, Meta Platforms (META), Alphabet (GOOGL), Nvidia, Micron (MU) and Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) — and holds them at weight, not added into a 4% chip rally; the published rule for new money still isn’t met. The policy picture is why: an AI Force that coordinates and a president who calls regulation a hoax are two different governments in one week, and that whiplash is a concentration risk wherever one theme has quietly become the plan. Most index investors already own a lot of AI through the S&P 500 whether they chose it or not.
The insider table is worth reading, not obeying. Executives sell for taxes, diversification and houses, and they sell more when the stock is up 200% or 650%. Trimming a winner is normal, not a betrayal: a stock that triples takes more of the plan than anyone chose. So ask the question a diversifying insider asks: how much of your net worth rides on one story staying true, and if it went the way of every earlier miracle — cheaper, more crowded, more regulated — would the plan still work? If the honest answer is a shrug, that’s the fifteen minutes. Bring the statement, not the conviction.