President Donald Trump has put his top intelligence official in charge of AI. In an Oct. 4 post on Truth Social, Trump named National Intelligence Director Jay Clayton to lead a new “super intelligence force” tasked with protecting American interests when it comes to artificial intelligence.

Clayton won’t be alone. Joining him are Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor, and Pentagon research and technology official Emil Michael. It’s a heavyweight roster: the nation’s spy chief, its top consumer-protection cop, the head of the federal workforce, and a Pentagon tech official, all now formally yoked to the AI race.

The announcement caps a fortnight of escalating White House activity around AI. Just five days earlier, Trump convened Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, SpaceX chief Elon Musk, and other tech leaders at the White House, where they signed a joint commitment to internal safety controls. Speaking to reporters Sept. 29, Trump backed a light regulatory touch, saying of the technology: “It’s going to be very, very safe. And there’s a self-policing, and there’s also a group-policing, and it’s going to be great.”

A week before that, Trump had floated the idea on social media, saying he would form an AI force and appoint an AI czar, describing AI as “the next Industrial Revolution, or Internet.”

Who’s actually on the force

The four appointees cover the waterfront of federal power over technology. Clayton, as DNI, brings the intelligence community’s view of AI as a national-security contest. Ferguson runs the FTC, the agency now probing how AI firms handle product risks and consumer harms. Kupor oversees the 2-million-plus federal workforce that Washington wants to equip with AI tools. And Emil Michael handles research and technology at the Pentagon, where AI is increasingly wired into weapons systems and logistics.

The mix signals how Washington now sees the technology: not as a consumer-products issue or a research curiosity, but as infrastructure on the order of the power grid or the interstate highway system — something the intelligence, regulatory, personnel, and military arms of the state each need a hand on.

The rebrand nobody asked for

Trump’s AI push comes with a linguistic quirk: he wants the whole field renamed. This week he signed an executive order directing the federal government to swap “artificial intelligence” for “super intelligence” in official use.

“The other word is a fake word,” Trump told reporters outside the West Wing on Tuesday. “Whoever wins SI is going to win.”

Here’s the awkward part. The tech industry is politely declining to play along.

Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, SpaceXAI, and Nvidia all refused to tell the Washington Examiner whether they plan to rename companies or products or otherwise adopt Trump’s preferred terminology. There’s a decent reason for the hesitation: “superintelligence” already means something specific in the tech world — hypothetical AI systems that surpass human capabilities. Slapping the label on everything from chatbots to data centers muddles a term researchers have used for decades.

Silicon Valley nods, smiles, says nothing

To be fair, not everyone is ignoring the new vocabulary. Meta’s Zuckerberg has been using “superintelligence” since last year, when he created Meta Superintelligence Labs, and this week he posted on X: “We believe superintelligence will create significant new opportunities for all people and businesses.” Musk quipped at the White House: “I think it is worth highlighting the positive benefits of AI — pardon me, super intelligence.” Neither company has changed its actual branding.

Nvidia President Jensen Huang leaned in hardest, posting after the summit: “Super Intelligence offers an extraordinary opportunity to advance discovery, productivity, security, health, and prosperity.”

But OpenAI CEO Sam Altman keeps saying plain old “AI” — his company literally has AI in its name — and Google CEO Sundar Pichai worded his post-summit statement to avoid naming the technology at all.

The bigger picture

Behind the naming theater, the politics are darker. A Quinnipiac University poll released last week found 73% of Americans are concerned AI could threaten human survival, and 81% say safety matters more than innovation. A CNN poll last month found 71% believe the federal government isn’t doing enough to regulate AI.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, in an Oct. 1 interview with USA Today, said: “We’ve got to be concerned that guardrails that are rigid are put into place so that we don’t see rogue AI agents behaving in a manner inconsistent with human values.”

The data center fight is a preview of what’s coming. A late-August University of Massachusetts Amherst poll found only 11% of Americans would support building a data center in their community, while 65% would oppose it. Trump, asked Sept. 29, framed opposition as surrender: China, he said, “will take every data center that we don’t want… because that’s great for China.”

The force Trump just assembled will operate in that tension — an administration betting on “self-policing” by the industry, a public that mostly doesn’t trust it, and a national-security establishment that increasingly treats AI the way it once treated nuclear physics. Clayton’s dual role, intelligence chief and now AI overseer, tells you which frame is winning.

FAQ

Who is leading Trump’s new “super intelligence force”? National Intelligence Director Jay Clayton will lead it, joined by FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, OPM Director Scott Kupor, and Pentagon research and technology official Emil Michael. Trump announced the four appointments in an Oct. 4 Truth Social post.

Why does Trump want to call AI “super intelligence”? Trump signed an executive order this week directing the federal government to replace “artificial intelligence” with “super intelligence,” telling reporters the old term “is a fake word.” He has also said winning on AI will decide the future: “Whoever wins SI is going to win.”

Have tech companies adopted the “super intelligence” name? Not really. Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, SpaceXAI, and Nvidia all declined to say whether they’d adopt the term. Elon Musk uses it casually in person, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has used “superintelligence” for Meta’s research labs, but none of the companies have renamed products or corporate brands.

What will the super intelligence force actually do? The White House describes its mission as protecting American interests in AI. Beyond the appointments, no detailed mandate has been published, and Trump has signaled he favors a light regulatory touch with industry “self-policing.”

Sources: USA Today, Washington Examiner