Trump hands AI policy to his spy chief with a 120-day deadline

President Donald Trump announced a task force called the Super Intelligence Force, headed by the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission¹. Jay Clayton, the intelligence director, will chair it among the four names^3,6. FTC chair Andrew Ferguson, Emil Michael, the undersecretary for research and engineering, and Office of Personnel Management director Scott Kupor make up the rest of the leadership^2,3,4.

The quartet will report directly to Trump and to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles¹⁰. Clayton has 120 days to report on the technology’s risks⁷. The name is itself a policy choice: the group uses Trump’s new term for AI, super intelligence, or SI⁷. The launch followed calls for an AI slowdown, and the president declined to act on them⁴. Trump had previewed the czar role before filling it¹⁰.

Why it matters to investors

The composition is the message. AI policy now sits with the intelligence community, the antitrust regulator, the Pentagon’s research and engineering office and the agency that manages the federal workforce^2,3,4. Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, is set to advise from outside government, as is David Sacks⁶. The group’s stated job is coordination: it was launched to lead federal AI coordination⁸, and the announcement, made on Sunday, put the intelligence chief in charge of the US AI drive^1,5.

Sacks is the precedent. He held the AI and crypto czar role at the start of Trump’s second term and left in March on reaching the 130-day limit for special government employees^5,8. Clayton, by contrast, holds a confirmed job with no such clock, and Trump had previewed the czar role before naming him^9,10.

What to watch

The 120-day report is the first hard date⁷. Its framing will matter as much as its findings, because the president has publicly called AI fears a hoax and blamed what he termed radical left opponents⁹, while the task force itself was created after calls to slow the technology down⁴. The second thing to track is Ferguson’s dual role, since the antitrust regulator now sits inside the body coordinating federal AI policy^1,2. The third is procurement, given that the Pentagon’s research and engineering chief is among the leaders and is described in one account as leading the task force outright^2,4.