Trump creates national Super Intelligence Force led by Jay Clayton

President Donald Trump announced on Sunday via Truth Social the creation of a "Super Intelligence Force," a new federal coordination body intended to secure continued American leadership in the field. The move follows an executive order that attempted to rebrand artificial intelligence as "super intelligence," a term adopted — with some hesitation — by technology executives gathered at the White House to sign a non-binding safety pledge that also contained a conspicuous typo.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the force will be headed by Jay Clayton, described by the president as the director of national intelligence. Serving as vice chairs will be Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Andrew Ferguson, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, and Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Scott Kupor. The formal mandate calls for a risk-and-opportunity report within 120 days and the development of response plans for "super-intelligence-directed" threats, while guarding against "over-regulation" and "regulatory capture" that could choke off innovation.

Clayton, who has previously argued it would be irresponsible for the United States to cede the race while countries such as China advance, sharpened the point to the Journal: the greatest risk is "not being first." That posture stands in sharp contrast to the position Trump articulated only in September, when he dismissed the AI safety debate as a hoax perpetrated by "radical Dumocrats" and promised to appoint an "AI czar" recruited exclusively from "high IQ individuals only."

In practice, the new body centralizes oversight under a single roof with cross-agency authority spanning trade, personnel and defense research, signaling that the administration views the domain as strategic infrastructure rather than merely a consumer product. The emphasis on preventing "regulatory capture" suggests an intent to ease the burden on companies large and small alike. But the absence of quantitative metrics in the forthcoming report and the non-binding nature of this week's pledge leave the degree of enforcement an open question.