Trump Names Jay Clayton to Lead AI ‘Superintelligence’ Force
President Donald Trump announced the formation of a “Super Intelligence Force” on Sunday, tapping Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton to serve simultaneously as the White House’s AI czar. The new task force, unveiled in a post on Truth Social, is charged with coordinating the federal government’s approach to artificial intelligence and has 120 days to report on the technology’s risks and opportunities, according to CNBC.
“Following the Historic White House Accord on Super Intelligence, where the World’s most important Technology Companies came together, and confirmed their responsibilities to the American People, I am announcing the formation of the Super Intelligence Force (SIF),” Trump wrote. The president has directed the federal government to use the term “Super Intelligence” in place of “artificial intelligence.”
A Familiar Face, a New Role
Clayton is a lawyer who previously served as the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan and chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term. The Senate confirmed him as director of national intelligence in July 2026, giving him authority over the country’s 18 intelligence agencies, as The Guardian reported.
CBS News first reported on Oct. 1 that Clayton was the likely pick for AI czar, and reporting indicated the administration had discussed having him remain in his intelligence role while taking on the new portfolio. Whether Clayton will continue as DNI while serving as czar remains an open question.
Joining Clayton on the task force are FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Pentagon Under Secretary for Research and Engineering and CTO Emil Michael, and OPM Director Scott Kupor. The group reports to Trump and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
Trump’s choice to place the nation’s top intelligence official at the helm of AI policy fuses the technology squarely with national security. Clayton himself has framed it that way, telling CNBC’s “Squawk Box” days before the announcement that “super intelligence is a national security issue, and that was something that was recognized yesterday by not just the industry leaders but everybody in the room,” CNBC reported.
During his Senate confirmation hearing, Clayton described AI as a “gamechanger” that also posed “a threat,” adding: “When something’s both an opportunity and a threat, you better get your arms around it.”
The White House Accord
The announcement follows a White House summit on Tuesday, Sept. 29, at which Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson met with the leaders of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Nvidia and Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI. The executives signed a one-page agreement of voluntary safety standards that Trump called “morally binding” and “almost like a constitution,” according to CBS News.
Under the accord, the companies committed to “four layers of controls and audits” — internal evaluations, audits by an external firm and reviews by each company’s board of directors — and agreed to “meet regularly to establish standards and best practices.”
“I think I’m seeing tremendous self-policing, and they understand that they have to self-police,” Trump said shortly after the meeting.
The self-regulation model has drawn sharp criticism. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, called Trump’s suggestion of industry self-regulation “a recipe for disaster.” Clayton pushed back, pointing to existing enforcement agencies: “My response to the American people on that front is we have a Federal Trade Commission, we have a Department of Justice… I know the leaders of both those organizations, and they’re committed to protecting the American people in this regard.”
The core policy tension the new force must navigate is between voluntary industry self-policing — favored by Trump and much of the industry — and mandatory legal guardrails sought by figures such as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who have backed the idea of “pacing the frontier” of AI development to better manage its risks.
A Federal Push, and Its Predecessor
The new czar role revives a position first created in January 2025, when Trump named venture capitalist David Sacks as his AI and cryptocurrency czar. Sacks stepped down in March 2026 when his term as a “special government employee” ended, though he still co-chairs the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Trump has long been skeptical of tighter AI regulation, touting the technology’s economic benefits and arguing that a slowdown could hand an edge to Chinese AI labs. In a September post, he suggested some AI fears were a “hoax” and blamed “Radical Left Dumocrats.” He has instead framed continued development as essential to defeating China in the global AI race.
That posture has put the administration at odds with parts of the industry it is now courting. Clayton has argued firmly against pausing U.S. development, saying he doesn’t “even know what a pause is” and warning against letting “the rest of the world develop these models and implement these models.” “I don’t think anybody in that room, and I don’t think any American, should think that’s a good strategy,” he said.
Analysis: Elevating AI to an Intelligence Concern
By installing the director of national intelligence as AI czar, the administration signals that it views frontier AI not merely as an economic or regulatory matter but as a security one — a framing that could reshape how the federal government approaches oversight, procurement and international competition.
The 120-day reporting window gives the force a defined mandate to recommend the federal government’s role in oversight. Yet the structure it announced leans heavily on coordination and existing enforcement rather than new law: the FTC and DOJ are cast as the primary watchdogs, while the industry polices itself under a voluntary accord. That approach faces a durability question — voluntary standards are only as strong as the companies that adopt them, and the leading firms that signed the accord simultaneously remain divided over how aggressively to pace their own development.
The dual-hatting of Clayton also raises practical questions. Running 18 intelligence agencies while coordinating an ambitious AI portfolio may stretch the attention of a single official, and the administration has not resolved whether he will shed the DNI role.
What to Watch
The Super Intelligence Force now has 120 days to produce its findings, which could shape the federal government’s posture toward AI for years. Key questions to watch: whether the task force recommends any binding rules, how the FTC and DOJ translate their existing authority into AI enforcement, and whether the voluntary accord holds as competition among the signatory firms intensifies.
Also unresolved is whether Clayton will formally retain his DNI post, and how other nations — particularly China — respond to a U.S. AI strategy now explicitly organized around national security. For an industry that has spent a year debating whether to slow down, the answer from Washington is clear: the race, in the administration’s view, is one the United States intends to win.