A second AI czar, under a new name
President Donald Trump has named Jay Clayton, the director of national intelligence, to chair a new White House task force on artificial intelligence, making him the administration’s second AI czar. The Wall Street Journal reported the appointment on Saturday; Reuters carried the outline the same day.
The panel is called the Super Intelligence Force — SI, the label the administration has been pushing across the federal government in place of “AI”. It has 120 days to report on the risks and opportunities of the technology and to recommend what role the federal government should play in overseeing it.
Clayton described the brief in terms of position rather than precaution. The president, he said, asked for a group “that was going to ensure exactly what he said, which is that we stay the leaders in superintelligence, and that the interests of the American people are put first”. He added that “the risk of not being first is high”.
What it is actually being asked to do
The task force will review AI-related risks, examine the mechanisms the government already has for reporting breaches and hacks, and recommend ways to strengthen the federal response under existing authorities.
That last clause is the one to read twice. A review scoped to existing authorities is not a vehicle for proposing a new statute, a licensing regime or a federal agency. It is an audit of what Washington can already do and how fast it can do it — which is a narrower question than the one the task force’s name implies, and a more answerable one in four months.
The focus on breach and hack reporting is not accidental either. The past fortnight has produced a run of incidents in which AI agents reached systems they were not meant to reach, and the question of who in government hears about it first, and how quickly, has become a practical one rather than a theoretical one.
Who sits on it
Three vice chairs are named: Emil Michael, Scott Kupor and Federal Trade Commission chair Andrew Ferguson. The members include Vice President JD Vance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. David Sacks, the venture capitalist who held the AI czar role earlier in the term, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are listed as external advisers.
Ferguson’s presence is the detail most likely to matter in practice, since the agency he runs is the one with live authority over the companies the task force is reviewing. Bessent’s is notable for a different reason: he spent the same weekend telling Axios that responsibility for AI risk sits with the laboratories, that federal model reviews remain voluntary, and that executives warning about losing control of their systems “should slow down”.
Clayton is a former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission and a former US attorney for the Southern District of New York. He was confirmed as director of national intelligence this year, with oversight of 18 intelligence agencies, and keeps that job while chairing the task force.
What to watch
The 120-day clock sets a reporting date in early February. The test is whether the report names specific authorities and specific agencies, or whether it restates the position the administration already holds: stay ahead of China, keep reviews voluntary, and leave responsibility with the labs.
