--- title: "Trump Says He Secretly Threatened to Arrest the Head of a Top AI Lab" description: "Donald Trump claims that his team was gearing up to arrest the head of a top AI lab, though it remains to be seen if he's telling the truth." date: "2026-11-09" modified: "2026-11-09" authors: - name: "Joe Wilkins" job_title: "Correspondent" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jwilkins.md" url: "https://futurism.com/future-society/donald-trump-arrest-top-ai-lab-executive" categories: - "Future Society" - "The Industrialists" --- # Trump Says He Secretly Threatened to Arrest the Head of a Top AI Lab ![President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks on defense manufacturing investments by Anduril Industries.]() *Rawpixel.com / Shutterstock* By now, it's obvious that Donald Trump has never had a secret he couldn't resist blurting out on television. His latest slip-up — if we can really [call it that]() — happened during an [interview]() with *CBS*' [new and improved]() *60 Minutes* program on Sunday evening. During the interview, Trump took a bizarre left-turn in the conversation to share news that the White House almost moved to arrest a top tech executive over some vague problems with AI safety. It was a "situation where somebody was reported to us to be doing something bad with AI," Trump explained, using the [original term]() that he later claimed to be officially replacing with "super intelligence." That "somebody" is apparently an executive at one of the country's top AI labs, or as Trump put it, "one of the big ones." Any more details were scarce, other than the fact that person in question has a wife and kids. "We called them very strongly and said, get ready to go to jail. Please give your wife a kiss goodnight," Trump said. "We said, 'go home right now. See your wife and children. Give them a kiss good night. Because tomorrow morning, you're going to jail.'" That would seem to rule out tech figures like Apple's Tim Cook, who has no children of his own, and OpenAI's Sam Altman, who has a husband and one son. Elon Musk is divorced, so he doesn't quite fit either, and it might also rule out Anthropic's Dario Amodei, who [may or may not]() have children. But narrowing Trump's target down any further would be pure guesswork — figures like Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and the [now-embattled]() Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang do have wives and children, facts which have netizens divided on who Trump is ultimately referring to. "It has to be Dario, everyone else has bent the knee," [one poster suggested]() on Reddit. "Dario doesn't have kids right?" [another user]() chimed in. "Has to be Zuck." Others made it clear they don't trust a word that comes out of Trump's mouth. "It doesn't have to be anyone," a [Redditor said](), receiving over 400 upvotes. "Trump lies." **More on AI:** *[Trump Living in Alternate World of AI Slop, Insiders Say]()* ## Author At Futurism, I focus on the intersection of technology and power — examining the economics, history, and politics behind today’s dystopian headlines. As a writer, I’m interested in topics ranging from AI’s impact on labor to startups nobody asked for. My prior work includes bylines in Jacobin, Verso, and Blue Labyrinths. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Forbes, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Time, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Verge, and Wired. I grew up in Michigan, attending Central Michigan University as well as Ball State University, where I earned a master of music. I now live in Brooklyn with my girlfriend and our cat Ziti. On weekends, you can find me hunched over a cold pint arguing geopolitics with the other transplants. ### Author social links [Bluesky]() ## More - [Elon Musk Says He Is So Sorry for His Horrible Behavior]() - [Elon Musk Is Doing Business With Actual Terrorists, Nonprofit Finds]() - [Furious Former Twitter Advertisers Tell Elon Musk They’ve Had Enough of His Tantrums]() - [Elon Musk Lost It on a Call With the Government After Autopilot Killed a Tesla Driver]() - [Elon Musk Tried Desperately to Keep This Information Secret]() - [Elon Musk Secretly Working to Rewrite the Social Security Codebase Using AI]() - [Bill Gates Admits to Multiple Affairs in Epstein Fallout]() - [Elon Musk Is Not Beating the Allegations: Grokipedia Cites a Hardcore Nazi Website 42 Times]()