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Trump puts spy chief Clayton on Super Intelligence Force

DNI Jay Clayton chairs a four-person White House body with a 120-day report clock — and a charter, per the WSJ via TechCrunch, that pairs SI threat plans with a mandate to prevent overregulation.

Joshua Thillens
5 minutes
Jay Clayton, in a navy suit and blue tie, smiles in front of a U.S. flag and the seal of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Photo: Office of the Director of National Intelligence (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons — source. Jay Clayton in his official portrait as director of national intelligence, August 2026 (file photo, cropped).

President Donald Trump on Sunday, Oct. 4, announced a new White House body called the Super Intelligence Force and put Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton at its head, according to his Truth Social post, published at 8:23 a.m. ET. Motion Media News Staff covered the straight announcement here.

Trump wrote that the force is “tasked with coordinating the effort of the Federal Government to ensure that America continues to lead the World in Super Intelligence.” He named Clayton alongside Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson; Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s under secretary for research and engineering and its chief technology officer; and Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management. The group will report to Trump and to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, the post said.

According to the same post, the body will handle the government’s dealings with “Consumers, Public Interest Groups, Religious Organizations, Critical Infrastructure Providers, and Super Intelligence Companies.”

Who is in charge

NPR reported that the announcement makes Clayton the White House’s new AI czar. The Hill said it was not clear whether the post formally names him to that title. NBC News had reported on Friday that Trump was expected to give Clayton the role. The previous AI czar, venture capitalist David Sacks, left when his stint as a special government employee ended, NBC said.

Clayton chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission and later served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York before he was confirmed as director of national intelligence this year, NPR reported. In a CNBC interview last month he described super intelligence as a “national security issue” and argued against calls to pause development, saying, “I don’t think any American should think that that’s a good strategy,” according to NPR.

Citing The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch reported that Clayton will chair the force with Ferguson, Michael, and Kupor as vice chairs. The group’s charter tells it to “develop plans for responding to SI-enabled threats to our society, while preventing overregulation and regulatory capture that would stifle innovation and competition,” TechCrunch said, citing the Journal. Clayton told the Journal that one of the biggest risks is “not being first,” TechCrunch reported.

How it got here

The announcement follows a Sept. 29 White House gathering at which executives from companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX, and Google signed a voluntary AI safety pact, BBC News reported. The same day, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to use “Super Intelligence” in place of “artificial intelligence” in official communications, the BBC said.

Trump has framed the race in blunt terms. The BBC quoted him saying the United States is leading ahead of China and adding, “And, frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins.” He has ruled out a joint U.S.-China venture to develop the technology, saying it would hand over secrets Beijing and others would want, per the BBC.

Critics want binding rules instead of another coordinating body. When Trump first floated the task force in September, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said, “Congress cannot meet the pressing threat of AI by just forming another committee,” according to the BBC. Congress has not passed a federal law broadly regulating how AI is built or used, NPR noted. Some states, including California, have enacted their own transparency measures, NPR reported.

What’s next

The force will have 120 days to produce a report on the risks and opportunities of advanced AI, TechCrunch reported, citing the Journal. The White House has not released the charter publicly. Its four principals span intelligence, competition enforcement, Pentagon research and engineering, and the federal workforce.

MOTION MEDIA TAKE

Super intelligence is not a branding exercise. It is an industrial race with a national-security clock. Putting the director of national intelligence in the chair — with the FTC, the Pentagon’s technology office, and OPM at the table — is the right shape for a country that still remembers how it won the last industrial contests: protect the strategic sectors, clear the path for builders, and refuse to pause while a peer competitor sprints.

Hamiltonian economics does not treat AI as a lifestyle debate. It treats compute, chips, power, data centers, and the talent pipeline as American System infrastructure — the same way it treats shipyards, steel, and critical minerals. The charter language TechCrunch attributes to the Wall Street Journal — plans for SI-enabled threats paired with a hard line against overregulation and regulatory capture — is the American System in one sentence. You do not win a power race by inviting every state legislature and every advocacy shop to write a different rulebook while China scales fabs and models.

Clayton’s CNBC line is the operational doctrine: a pause is not a strategy any American should accept. The biggest risk, he told the Journal, is not being first. That is not recklessness. That is recognizing that the country that owns the frontier models, the domestic compute stack, and the energy to run them sets the terms for everyone else. Voluntary company accords buy time; industrial capacity buys the lead.

Build the data centers. Keep the chips and the power American. Write federal rules that clear builders instead of choking them. The Super Intelligence Force has 120 days to put that on paper. The scoreboard is simpler: American compute, American jobs, American lead — or someone else’s.

Sources

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Joshua Thillens's avatar

Written by

Joshua Thillens

Joshua Thillens is the founder of Motion Media and a research analyst covering defense, artificial intelligence, robotics, geopolitics, and American reindustrialization. With eight years of experience across finance, trading, and tokenized markets, his work has spanned blockchain infrastructure, Bitcoin mining, data centers, and emerging technologies. He has worked on political campaigns across party lines, with a focus on advancing digital-asset policy and legislation in the United States, and has traveled internationally hosting competitive trading and esports events. At Motion Media, Thillens combines independent reporting with economic, financial, and quantitative analysis to examine the technologies, industrial capacity, and policies reshaping the United States and the global economy.

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