Trump names Jay Clayton to chair new Super Intelligence Force

President Donald Trump announced the creation of a new Super Intelligence Force in a Sunday morning post on Truth Social, his own social media platform, saying the body would coordinate the federal government’s push to keep the United States ahead in artificial intelligence — which his administration has taken to branding as “super intelligence.” Trump said the task force would serve the interests of, and improve the lives of, all Americans, and declared that the effort would ensure “America continues to lead the World in Super Intelligence,” which he said many consider bigger than the Industrial Revolution or the internet.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Jay Clayton — the director of national intelligence, the official who oversees the US intelligence community — will chair the task force, effectively becoming the administration’s AI czar. Andrew Ferguson, chair of the Federal Trade Commission (the US antitrust regulator); Emil Michael, undersecretary of war for research and engineering, a Pentagon post overseeing defense R&D; and Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, the federal agency that oversees the US civil service, will serve as vice chairs.

The announcement follows through on a pledge Trump made in September. Dismissing AI-safety concerns as a hoax manufactured by his political opponents, he said he would nonetheless form an AI task force and name an AI czar. Since then, Trump has signed an executive order seeking to rebrand artificial intelligence as “super intelligence,” language that tech executives at the White House this week seemingly embraced, with some stumbles, when they signed a non-binding AI-safety pledge that reportedly included a typo. The new task force’s name follows directly from that rebranding push.

The task force reportedly has 120 days to produce a report on AI’s risks and opportunities. Clayton, who has previously said it would be reckless for the United States to retreat from AI while countries like China advance, told the WSJ that the biggest risk is falling behind. Its charter reportedly directs the group to prepare for AI-driven threats to society while avoiding overregulation and regulatory capture that could hold back innovation and competition.

Why it matters

The charter’s explicit push to guard against “overregulation” signals that the Trump administration intends to keep US AI policy oriented toward outcompeting China rather than imposing new restrictions — a stance global tech firms operating in the US market will need to track closely.