The second meeting of the White House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence Education took place Thursday, presented by the administration as a turning point for America’s public schools. First Lady Melania Trump presided over the session, created under President Trump’s April executive order on AI education.
The gathering brought together senior administration officials and some of the most powerful figures in technology. Mrs. Trump introduced the participants as “visionaries” and “the brightest minds of our time.” At the table sat Sundar Pichai of Google and Arvind Krishna of IBM, alongside Education Secretary Linda McMahon and AI czar David Sacks. Task force chair Michael Kratsios joined them, along with Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Sam Altman of OpenAI was also in attendance.
In the evening, the Trumps hosted a private dinner at the White House attended by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Tim Cook of Apple, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, and Palantir executive Shyam Sankar, among many other titans of global technology and finance. The lineup underscored how closely the administration is binding itself to the architects of the digital economy.
Melania Trump’s remarks were sweeping and oddly grandiose. She cast AI not as a tool, but as a national destiny.
“We are living in a moment of wonder, and it is our responsibility to prepare America’s children,” she began.
The framing reached for grandeur, but her examples fell flat. She cited self-driving cars, military drones, robots assisting surgeries, humanoids in factories — all pitched as AI triumphs fueled by private investment. None of these technologies are widespread, affordable, or obviously serving the public good. Still, she pressed forward with the line that would dominate coverage:
The robots are here. Our future is no longer science fiction.
Mrs. Trump then cited official data claiming AI innovation is “clearly boosting America’s GDP growth,” as if Gross Domestic Product were a serious proxy for human well-being. From there she shifted into forecasts:
AI will serve as an underpinning of every business sector of our nation.
The crescendo came with another grand declaration:
I predict AI will represent the single largest growth category in our nation during this administration, and I won’t be surprised if AI becomes known as the greatest engine of progress in the history of the United States of America.
To soften the rhetoric, she added a parental metaphor:
But, as leaders and parents, we must manage AI’s growth responsibly. It is our duty to treat AI as we would our own children — empowering, but with watchful guidance.
She then outlined three “strategic priorities” for the so-called AI ecosystem: infrastructure and energy, national security, and “talent” — a workforce capable of sustaining the industry’s momentum.
Mrs. Trump urged the executives in the room to invest in the initiative — an appeal that barely disguised the obvious. These were the very people shaping the program already, and they stand to profit handsomely from the techno-future they are scripting.
Predictably, industry leaders responded with pledges measured in dollars and programs. Google redirected $150 million from an earlier $1 billion education pledge to “support AI education and digital wellbeing.” Microsoft offered free access to Copilot for students, LinkedIn Learning courses for educators, and $1.25 million in awards tied to the AI Challenge. Amazon announced training for four million people by 2028, support for 10,000 educators, and $30 million in AWS credits for schools. Code.org and others promised to reach millions of learners. IBM committed to training at least two million workers in AI skills.
In total, more than 135 corporate pledges flooded the White House. These were not just gestures of generosity. Each dollar pledged was also an investment in classrooms and workforce pipelines — markets these corporations are eager to dominate. Beneath the rhetoric of philanthropy lay something far more strategic: a direct line from boardroom to classroom.
Far from dismantling an unconstitutional Department of Education, the Trump administration has recast the department’s mission: to train American children for the corporate-built machines that Melania Trump insists the nation must “treat like our own children.”
On April 23, President Donald Trump signed the Executive Order “Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth,” establishing the White House Task Force on AI Education. It mandated AI curricula in schools, new teacher-training programs, and the Presidential AI Challenge. The stated aim is to “equip our students with the foundational knowledge and skills necessary to adapt to and thrive in an increasingly digital society.”
In June, the White House unveiled the “Pledge to Support America’s Youth and Invest in AI Education,” with more than 60 corporate giants committing resources to build what the administration calls an “AI-enabled economy.”
The AI Challenge gave the policy a public face. Launched in late August and promoted on AI.gov, it invites students and educators to design AI-based solutions to local problems, culminating in finalists presenting their work at the White House.
Notably, Trump — once an AI skeptic — has since shown a full embrace of the industry. On his first day in office, he moved to shred the AI guardrails put in place under the Biden administration, dismantling reporting requirements and ethical review processes meant to slow the unchecked corporate deployment of generative AI.
The White House event served to promote an idea too often taken as fact: that AI is inevitable, destined to permeate every aspect of life. That story line carries weight, but inevitability is not truth. It is a narrative constructed by those who stand to profit, repeated until it feels natural. Technologies do not spread on their own. They are built, financed, marketed, and imposed.
Equally misleading is the assumption that AI is “just a tool.” A hammer waits for the hand that swings it. AI does not. These systems generate outputs even their architects cannot predict, driven by statistical patterns buried in oceans of data. Their decisions are shaped by logic too complex to trace, which makes them resistant to explanation and accountability. They are not neutral devices but opaque agents — black boxes whose influence expands even as their workings remain beyond reach.
One may believe sincerely in AI’s potential as a driver of progress. But optimism should not obscure the question of who is steering it. The people around Melania Trump that day were not well-meaning engineers and educators. They were globalists and technocrats with a transhumanist worldview. Each of them has a vested interest in guiding AI toward outcomes that suit their own vision of the dystopian future. And in this context, “education” is not education at all. It is mere training to sustain the very machines that these same elites are building.
Mrs. Trump called AI “the greatest engine of progress.” Perhaps it will be. But the larger truth is simpler and starker. AI itself is neither destiny nor danger. The true issue is power — who holds it, who directs it, and what they intend to do with it.
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