Trump Will Oppose Heavy AI Regulation and Centralised Regulator, Outgoing White House Adviser Says

President Donald Trump is opposed to heavy regulation of artificial intelligence in the United States and will resist any move toward a centralised AI regulator, Sriram Krishnan, the departing White House tech adviser, told the Financial Times. The remarks come as political and public backlash against AI systems continues to grow.

Krishnan's Account of the President's Position

Krishnan, who is leaving his role as the administration's senior technology policy adviser, used his departure to give the Financial Times a clear read on where Trump stands. The president's objection, as Krishnan frames it, is specifically to a centralised regulator — a dedicated federal authority with consolidated oversight of the artificial intelligence sector. That institutional form is off the table.

The Regulatory Architecture That Is Not Coming

Ruling out a centralised body describes what the administration will not build, not what it will permit. Oversight authority, to whatever extent it persists, would presumably remain distributed across agencies with existing mandates rather than consolidated in a purpose-built AI regulator. Krishnan's remarks to the Financial Times do not detail what lighter-touch federal structures, if any, the White House would accept.

AI Backlash as the Political Backdrop

Krishnan explicitly acknowledged to the Financial Times that AI backlash is growing. The president's posture — resisting a centralised regulator despite that backlash — is a deliberate policy choice, not a vacuum. The White House, on this account, is absorbing the political pressure rather than converting it into new regulatory architecture.

What the Buy Side Is Watching

The absence of a centralised US AI regulator is a meaningful input for portfolios with meaningful AI exposure. A dedicated federal body would carry compliance costs and product-timeline risk; Trump's stated opposition removes that specific overhang from the near-term horizon. Whether Congress moves independently on AI governance is a separate question — one Krishnan's account does not address.