Microsoft's Nadella bows to Trump's language diktat on "Super Intelligence" and uses it to attack OpenAI and Anthropic

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is adopting President Trump's preferred terminology while continuing to undermine OpenAI and Anthropic.

In his latest blog post, Nadella uses "Super Intelligence" instead of Artificial Intelligence. Trump had previously posted that anyone who keeps saying "Artificial Intelligence" should be considered an enemy. The rebranding of "Super Intelligence" to describe today's language models breaks with decades of scientific meaning behind the term, but the US tech elite doesn't seem to care as long as Trump gets what he wants.

Nadella keeps taking shots at OpenAI and Anthropic

On substance, Nadella's latest piece goes after the supposed risks posed by model makers Anthropic and OpenAI, risks that primarily threaten Microsoft's own business.

This time, he argues that companies should treat AI models like insider security threats, something Google Deepmind suggested before. "Not because they are necessarily malicious, but because any sufficiently capable actor with access to important systems can make mistakes or be compromised, and the architecture of containment and control must account for that," Nadella writes.

He claims that today's AI systems offer no way to understand why they produce a given answer or decision. Yet these same systems get deployed "with access to our most sensitive data and giving them the ability to take mission-critical actions on our behalf!"

His proposed fix is to separate intelligence from control over that intelligence. He calls for model diversity instead of dependence on a single model, complete logging of all actions, independent auditing, and the ability for humans to shut things down at any time. The most trustworthy system, he argues, isn't the one with the best model but the one where you have to trust the model the least.

Microsoft's business model is what's really at stake

Nadella frames this latest argument through a cybersecurity lens, but he's running the same playbook as his recent posts. He wants to erode trust in OpenAI and Anthropic.

Previously, he tried the data-theft angle, accused AI companies of hypocrisy when they crack down on distillation, and said AI models are becoming interchangeable commodities anyway. Microsoft, a company famous for its closed ecosystem and aggressive bundling and upselling, has been lobbying for an open AI ecosystem while quietly swapping out more capable OpenAI and Anthropic models in its Office products for cheaper in-house alternatives to protect margins.

Now, Nadella goes a step further and attacks the technology itself. That move looks even more desperate given the billions Microsoft has invested and continues to invest in AI. Whether Nadella's concerns hold up is beside the point. They may or may not, and some of them are certainly valid. But what's driving his arguments is business strategy. The big AI labs are on the verge of turning their models into the primary computer interface. You tell the computer what to do, and it does it.

Microsoft has long been that default computer interface, but it's badly behind with its own products stuck in legacy software already sold and installed on millions of machines. Like Google with search, it has a heavyweight business model that can't pivot to a new paradigm overnight. And it doesn't have its own frontier models. Even if Microsoft managed to position itself as a distributor of this AI interface, it would end up dependent on the AI companies, and its margins would take a hit.

Put simply, things are moving too fast for Microsoft's business, and Nadella is pumping the brakes with a bit of fearmongering. It won't change much.