Pentagon is angry with top exec of Altman's OpenAI, calls him 'supreme village idiot'

A feud has erupted between senior Trump administration officials and a top executive at Sam Altman’s OpenAI. In a series of public attacks, Under Secretary of Defense Emil Michael slammed OpenAI’s Head of Strategic Futures Dean W. Ball, calling him the industry’s “supreme village idiot”. The exchange was triggered by comments Ball made regarding how the US government should handle the rising threat of open-source Chinese AI models, following the launch of Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3.What caused the feudThe controversy began over the weekend when Ball, a former White House architect of the administration's AI Action Plan who recently joined OpenAI, posted his thoughts on how to stop American companies from adopting Chinese AI systems.Ball suggested that rather than outright banning open-source software, the Trump administration should intentionally spread "FUD" (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) by issuing regulatory warnings to scare private companies away from using Chinese models like DeepSeek.“I would guess that the Trump Administration will at some point realize that their best strategy here would be to create large amounts of regulatory risk around the use of open-weight Chinese models. You don't need to "ban open source" (one of the dumber motifs of AI policy discussion). You just need to direct every agency to issue soft law that creates FUD,” he said.“‘A Federal Reserve Advisory Bulletin found that there may be backdoors in Chinese AI models.’ It needn't be that well justified. You just create enough regulatory risk that every regulated enterprise backs off. You probably don't want to create so much regulatory risk that you scare off the hyperscalers from serving Chinese models; this will just drive startups to sketchier providers. There's a happy middle ground here. I'd assume they will do some version of this,” he addedThe comments immediately drew fire from White House AI adviser David Sacks, who questioned whether Ball was advocating for “regulatory capture”, a tactic that would directly benefit his new employer, OpenAI, by driving enterprise customers away from free Chinese alternatives towards the proprietary American providers.“The departments of war, transportation, energy, agriculture, commerce, NASA, and Congress have all blocked their employees from using Chinese AI, citing ill-justified claims of danger. This already has sent a message to regulated firms. All of this happened during this admin,” he said.Pentagon fires back: ‘Not some deep state scheme’When Ball defended his position by pointing out that federal agencies like the Department of Defense (DoD) have already banned employees from using Chinese AI tools, the Pentagon responded with anger. Under Secretary of Defense Emil Michael unleashed a series of personal attacks, reminding Ball that restrictions on Chinese software were legally enacted by lawmakers, not cooked up behind closed doors.“Every industry/ecosystem has its supreme village idiot. @deanwball is that for AI. Congress passed a law in 2026 that restricted some uses of DeepSeek/High Flyer with waivers permitted. Only those models. It went through the democratic process not some Deep State scheme like he would prefer. Dean Ball has perhaps the biggest gap between actual IQ and his own perceived IQ of anyone in the industry (about 40 points),” Michael wrote on X. Michael emphasised that the Pentagon's restrictions were designed strictly to keep military IT systems from connecting to foreign adversary networks.“So let me get this straight @deanwball. This was about ensuring that DoD IT networks were not connected to adversary networks. You think your deep state regulatory capture scheme is equivalent to making sure our warfighter networks are not compromised? I take it back: 50 IQ difference (75 versus 125). Take a breather and enjoy the match,” he added.Get the latest technology news and updates. Download the TOI App.