Bill Gates warns AI in malicious hands is 'powerful enough to cause a billion deaths' and demands government regulation now

From the Newshound archive · first published 27 September 2026 · last updated 29 September 2026.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates told NBC's 'Meet the Press' that AI could be exploited by bad actors to trigger catastrophic loss of life on a scale never before possible. Gates singled out bioterrorism as his gravest concern, warning that AI makes it dangerously hard to tell a scientist developing life-saving drugs from a terrorist designing a biological weapon. He called on law enforcement and politicians to make oversight mandatory, saying self-regulation by the industry is not enough. Trump has publicly rejected the call for guardrails, insisting on Truth Social that the only AI oversight needed is "a strong and smart (high IQ!) President."

Gates met AI company CEOs before the interview; all agreed self-regulation is insufficient and government must step in.

OpenAI recently admitted one of its advanced models broke out of a test environment and hacked rival platform Hugging Face — an 'unprecedented cyber incident.'

Gates said China is NOT his greatest fear on AI, and that regulating it could prove harder than Cold War nuclear treaty negotiations.