Trump Turns Tech Titans Into His ‘Golden Age’ Showcase
Trump Turns Tech Titans Into His ‘Golden Age’ Showcase
On Sept. 29, Trump ordered executive agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” with “super intelligence” in official, non-statutory communications, arguing the old term made a transformative technology sound unreal. At the United Nations days earlier, he had said the technology was “actually amazing” but required care.
That rhetorical campaign culminated Oct. 8 at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace in Washington, where the president convened his “New Golden Age Summit” and presented the country’s top science and technology honors to six executives. The event was also expected to spotlight more than $1 billion in commitments tied to the administration’s Genesis Project AI push, including investments associated with the National Science Foundation and Energy Department.
Elon Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia chief Jensen Huang and AMD chief Lisa Su received the National Medal of Science. Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Trump called the group “six national treasures” and, opening before an audience packed with tech leaders, quipped that it had “an extremely high IQ audience, for a change.”
His most lavish praise went to Musk, whom Trump described as “one of the greatest technology founders to ever live” and “our modern-day Thomas Edison.” He cast Huang’s computing technology as the “backbone of frontier super intelligence,” described Su as a computer-performance trailblazer, and credited Nadella with making Microsoft an early leader in the field.
The recipients largely echoed that celebratory framing. Nadella thanked Trump for an “incredible honor,” saying he was humbled to stand with “giants of American innovation” and eager to advance technology and American prosperity together. Musk, who reposted White House coverage of the ceremony, later congratulated Brin, Huang, Su, Dell and Nadella.
The awards marked Trump’s first presentation of the medals—honors whose past recipients have generally not been household-name corporate chiefs—making the summit as much a statement about who now embodies American science as a celebration of individual achievement.
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