Mark Zuckerberg Challenged White House AI Proposal During Private Call With Donald Trump: Report

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg challenged a White House proposal for a new national AI regulator during a private phone call with President Donald Trump.

The exchange took place during the week of August 17, after Trump called Zuckerberg directly.

The Trump administration has actively facilitated Meta’s massive AI investments, expediting permit approvals for Meta’s data center projects and opposing European tech regulations that would hurt American companies.

According to a Politico report, the discussion centered on a highly debated framework modeled after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). The independent watchdog would have evaluated and safety-tested advanced, frontier AI models before their release to the public.

Zuckerberg firmly opposed the creation of a centralized watchdog. He argued that adding heavy pre-market safety checks and delaying AI deployment could inadvertently give China a competitive edge.

While Zuckerberg did not outright demand that Trump reverse his plans, he urged the president to ensure that any future appointees to the regulatory body share Trump's own preferred "light-touch" approach to technology.

The FINRA-style independent watchdog model has been championed in the White House by tech figures such as Google DeepMind's Nobel Prize-winning scientist Demis Hassabis.

However, Silicon Valley is deeply divided; other prominent figures, such as Elon Musk and Trump's AI advisor David Sacks, have advocated for a lighter, industry-led alternative.

The White House stated that the administration remains focused on balancing market innovation with national security as it weighs the future of U.S. artificial intelligence policy.

"The Trump Administration is committed to balancing innovation and security in AI policymaking,” the White House said in a statement.

The Facebook mogul has publicly and privately defied Trump multiple times, particularly during Trump's first presidency regarding content moderation, election policies, and corporate immigration.

While the two tech and political figures have maintained a complex, sometimes pragmatic relationship, their interactions have frequently led to direct clashes.

Zuckerberg's most significant and direct defiance occurred following the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Zuckerberg announced that Facebook and Instagram would indefinitely suspend Trump's accounts, stating that the risks of allowing the then-President to use the platform were "simply too great."

Since Trump took office for his second term in January 2025, Zuckerberg has staged a dramatic political pivot, aligning himself closely with Trump and reshaping Meta’s policies to mirror the administration's goals.

Zuckerberg's approach to Trump's second term has been a mix of personal courtship, corporate restructuring, and policy concessions designed to protect Meta and gain a competitive edge.

Even before the second term officially began, Zuckerberg flew to Mar-a-Lago in November 2024 to dine with the President-elect, promising to support Trump’s national economic plans. Zuckerberg began rebuilding the relationship by publicly praising Trump. He famously described Trump's reaction to his 2024 assassination attempt as "bada--.”

Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund. He and his wife, Priscilla Chan, attended the inauguration and inaugural ball in Washington, celebrating the event on social media.

In March, Trump tapped Zuckerberg to serve on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. This move gave the Meta CEO direct influence over White House AI policies.

To appease the administration and right-wing critics who accused Facebook of anti-conservative bias during Trump's first term, Zuckerberg dramatically altered Meta's internal structures, rolling back its outside content moderation and stopping the use of traditional third-party fact-checkers, leaning heavily into a stance on free expression that favors conservative users.