The White House has an AI problem and it may worry Wall Street even more than Iran

Selling the Iran war to American voters has been an uphill battle for the Trump administration, but Wall Street executives fear there’s an even bigger battle it’s losing: the pitch for artificial intelligence, On the Money has learned.Making sure that the AI buildout forges ahead has become somewhat of an obsession among Trump officials, particularly those whose job it is to make sure the economic growth of the past two years keeps its momentum. You can argue about elevated prices, inflation, and spotty wage growth, but it’s hard to dispute that AI is a clear bright spot in the economy.It has expanded blue-collar jobs and created productivity gains that are leading to more jobs than AI commoditizes, most economists believe.And yet the White House is still scrambling to come up with a coherent message – stoking fears that Democrats could capitalize on AI hysteria as the midterms approach.The problem is that the naysayers go beyond the usual lefty tree huggers.

The growing legions of AI skeptics now include swaths of Trump’s rural MAGA base.They live where data centers are being built, many of them shouldering the net negatives of the AI buildout such as increased water and energy usage.The White House, I am told, understands all of the above, though the message is something “they have not figured out,” said one senior Wall Street executive with ties to the administration. This executive, who works in government affairs, agrees that AI is existential to the Trump economy: Without the buildout and the productivity gains, we might be in a recession.

A rollback could doom the president’s last two years in office and make a 2028 GOP presidential victory as difficult as keeping the House in the midterms.So, as he put it, “the need for action is urgent.”Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently pointed the finger at the AI industry itself, saying its top executives have “done a terrible job, terrible job of explaining themselves.” True, but tech ...