President Donald Trump announced on Sunday the creation of a federal task force called the 'Super Intelligence Force' (SIF), naming Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton as its chair and effective AI czar. Trump made the announcement via a post on Truth Social, following meetings with leaders of major artificial intelligence companies the prior week. The task force will report directly to Trump and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and has been charged with coordinating federal engagement with consumers, public interest groups, religious organisations, infrastructure providers and AI companies.
Clayton will serve as chair among four named leaders, with FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, and Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor serving as vice chairs [Source: Wall Street Journal]. Additional members of the task force include Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and deputy chief of staff Richard Walters. Former AI czar David Sacks and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will serve as outside advisers. The task force has 120 days to deliver a report on the technology's risks and benefits and to define the government's role [Source: Wall Street Journal]. Clayton told the Wall Street Journal that 'the risk of not being first is high' and that falling behind increases risks, particularly from adversaries [Source: Wall Street Journal].
The SIF announcement follows a cluster of related policy actions taken the prior week. On September 29, 2026, the White House published the White House Accord on Super Intelligence, a voluntary agreement signed by Trump alongside representatives of six major AI companies: Google's Sundar Pichai, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Elon Musk for xAI, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. The accord establishes four layers of controls for companies that train and deploy frontier AI models — internal controls, internal team monitoring, independent external auditors, and an independent board committee. The companies involved include publicly traded firms Nvidia (NVDA), Meta Platforms (META) and Alphabet (GOOGL), alongside private entities OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI. On the same day as the accord, Trump also signed an executive order directing executive-branch agencies to use the terms 'Super Intelligence' and 'SI' in place of 'artificial intelligence' and 'AI' in official documents.
Clayton brings a background in financial regulation and law enforcement to the role. He previously chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission and served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York before the Senate confirmed him as Director of National Intelligence. He inherits the AI portfolio from David Sacks, who held the position earlier in Trump's term. Trump had previously outlined plans on September 19, 2026 for an 'AI Force' and an 'AI czar,' with Sunday's announcement formalising that structure. Separately, the FTC — whose chairman Andrew Ferguson is a named vice chair of the SIF — recently launched a broad investigation into the safety of systems developed by Anthropic and OpenAI. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei earlier in October published an essay calling on the federal government to facilitate an industry-wide slowdown of AI development.
Sources: CBS News, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Fox News, DataGuidance, Al Jazeera, BBC, Daily Caller, Gizmodo