Watch CNBC's full interview with Department of Defense Under Secretary Emil Michael

Summary

Emil Michael, Department of Defense Under Secretary for Research and Engineering and CTO, joined CNBC to discuss AI safety, regulation, and governance. He criticized Anthropic's pacing plan and effective-altruism-aligned governance efforts, defended company-led safety investment, and called for truly independent AI auditors. He also downplayed China's H200 access given U.S. compute dominance and said he hopes leading AI companies are not nationalized. The interview contained no explicit investment calls or trade recommendations.

• Emil Michael discussed AI safety and regulation with CNBC hosts.
• He criticized Anthropic's pacing plan and effective-altruism-linked governance proposals.
• He said companies can invest more in safety without coordinated slowdowns.
• He cited the Hugging Face agent escape and called for more safety testing and independent auditors.
• He downplayed China's H200 chip access, noting U.S. dominance in global compute.
• He opposed government stakes or nationalization of leading AI companies.
• No explicit investment calls or named public trade ideas were made.