In a new interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, President Donald Trump said the dangers of artificial intelligence "can be managed" and credited the Justice Department with doing the managing. To prove his point, he described a case in which someone was reported to the administration for doing something bad with AI. He said officials called that person very strongly and told them to "get ready to go to jail," even telling them to give their wife a kiss goodnight. Pressed on who it was, Trump said he couldn't say, though he indicated it was a leader at "one of the big" AI companies. He gave no details about what the person allegedly did, and the story comes only from Trump himself, so it hasn't been independently verified.

The president also said he doesn't mind guardrails on AI, but he doesn't want to put the United States in a "deep second position" to China, which he claims has none. The interviewer countered that China has its own kind of control as a totalitarian state, and Trump replied that his own authority is strong but not quite that strong. The remarks come during a heated national debate, with some tech leaders calling for tougher rules while the administration leans on existing legal tools. That leaves a pile of unanswered questions: who was threatened, what exactly was reported, and did the Justice Department ever open a case. Until Trump or the department says more, the jail warning remains one of the most talked-about stories in the AI policy fight with no name attached.