U.S. President Donald Trump has sharply rejected calls to slow the development of frontier AI models, dismissing fears around the technology as a “hoax.” His remarks came after Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and other industry leaders argued for additional safeguards and tighter controls.
In a series of Truth Social posts, Trump said concerns about AI taking over were overstated and argued that only China would benefit from slowing development. CNBC reported that at the All-in Summit in Los Angeles, he even called Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and reiterated his position over speakerphone, saying data centers make both people and states wealthier.
China also pushed back against calls to curb AI development. A foreign ministry spokesperson said fearmongering, confrontation and rivalry would disrupt the process of global AI governance. At the same time, Beijing supported faster construction of systems to prevent and control security risks. Minister of State Security Chen Yixin said the technology needed “healthy and orderly” development.
Despite those political messages, warnings from the industry have continued. Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez told CNBC’s The Tech Download podcast that AI models are becoming the most powerful cyber weapon ever created because they can identify and exploit vulnerabilities at scale.
That backdrop weighed on AI-linked stocks. Shares of Micron, Intel, Marvell Technology and Applied Materials each fell more than 4%, Nvidia lost about 3%, and the U.S.-listed shares of South Korean memory maker SK Hynix dropped 7%.
Oil and yields
Markets were also pressured by higher energy prices. With traders reacting to the closure of Saudi Arabia’s critical East-West pipeline, West Texas Intermediate crude futures rose 1.34% to $101.39 a barrel, while Brent gained 1.02% to $105.68. Both benchmarks were still higher in early Asian trading.
At the same time, U.S. Treasury yields moved up. The 10-year Treasury yield hit 5.014% on Monday, its highest since October 2023, before easing back to 4.987%. It remained close to 5% on Tuesday.
The move in yields reflects growing confidence that the Federal Reserve will tighten policy again. According to CME’s FedWatch tool, futures markets are pricing in about a 92% chance of a rate hike on Wednesday. It remains unclear, however, whether that would be a one-off move or the start of additional increases.
Separately, Mondelez International said a new $22 million facility in Shah Alam, Malaysia, will cut at least two months from the supply-chain lead time for a key Cadbury chocolate ingredient. The company will produce chocolate crumb locally instead of importing it from Australia and South Africa, a move aimed at lowering import and transport costs and supporting volume growth across Southeast Asia.
