- Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton will lead the task force with FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, OPM Director Scott Kupor and Pentagon technology chief Emil Michael.
- Clayton told The Wall Street Journal the group has 120 days to report on the technology’s risks and opportunities.
- Clayton, who chaired the SEC when it sued Ripple in 2020, takes over the AI brief David Sacks held alongside crypto until March.
President Donald Trump on Sunday named Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton to lead a new federal task force he calls the Super Intelligence Force.
Trump said on Truth Social that the group will coordinate federal efforts to keep America ahead in Super Intelligence, the administration’s new name for artificial intelligence.
Clayton will share the lead with Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor and Emil Michael. Michael is the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering.
Trump said the force will handle the government’s dealings with consumers, public interest groups, religious organisations, critical infrastructure providers and Super Intelligence companies. It will report to Trump and his chief of staff, Susie Wiles.
The name comes from an executive order Trump signed on 29 September. It directs agencies to use Super Intelligence and SI in place of artificial intelligence and AI in correspondence, websites, reports and policy documents. The order leaves the legal meaning unchanged, tying SI to the existing statutory definition of artificial intelligence.
Trump signed the order on the day Google, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, xAI and Nvidia signed a White House accord on frontier model safety.
Clayton told The Wall Street Journal, in an interview published on Saturday, that the task force has 120 days to report on the technology’s risks and opportunities. The Journal reported that its charter calls for plans to counter threats from the technology while avoiding overregulation and regulatory capture.
Vice President JD Vance, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will also sit on the force, according to the Journal. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and David Sacks are set to advise it from outside.
“The risk of not being first is high. Not being first increases the identified, and unidentified, risks, particularly from our adversaries”, Clayton told the Journal.
Clayton’s Record on Crypto
The Senate confirmed Clayton as director of national intelligence on 28 July in a 51-47 vote. He chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission from 2017 to 2020 and later served as US attorney for the Southern District of New York.
The SEC sued Ripple and two of its executives on 22 December 2020, a day before Clayton left the agency. It alleged they raised more than US$1.3 billion (AU$1.9 billion) through an unregistered securities offering.
As US attorney, Clayton’s office charged the alleged Uranium Finance hacker in March, with Clayton saying that stealing from a crypto exchange is still stealing.
The Journal reported that Clayton is also Trump’s new AI czar. That title belonged to Sacks, alongside crypto, until March, when his 130 days as a special government employee ran out.
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