Trump names Jay Clayton to lead new Super Intelligence Force on AI

President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social on Sunday, Oct. 4, that he was creating a Super Intelligence Force to coordinate federal artificial-intelligence policy, naming Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton as its head, Decrypt reported. Clayton, the former Securities and Exchange Commission chair who sued Ripple in December 2020, has been described across Washington coverage as the administration's new AI czar.

The force will coordinate federal engagement with consumers, public-interest groups, religious organizations, critical-infrastructure providers and AI companies, Trump wrote in the post, according to the same report. Serving alongside Clayton are Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson, Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering Emil Michael and Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor, and the group will report to Trump and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

Trump said the effort would ensure America keeps leading the world in super intelligence, which he called bigger than the Industrial Revolution and the Internet, in language relayed by an Associated Press account carried by Fortune. The AP noted that Trump has tried to rebrand AI as super intelligence, and that the announcement came days after he hosted AI company chiefs at the White House for a voluntary accord meant to have the industry police itself.

CBS News broke the news of the appointment before the post, according to the Guardian's Oct. 4 story, which added that Trump had floated the idea publicly in September, calling Clayton a good man and the prospect a good idea in an interview with Axios. The same story traced the force to a September promise of an AI czar and an advisory setup, made after executives warned the technology was advancing faster than safeguards could contain it.

Clayton was sworn in as intelligence chief in August and leads the country's 18 intelligence agencies, the Guardian reported. At his Senate confirmation hearing he called AI both a major opportunity and a threat, telling lawmakers that when something is both, leaders had better get their arms around it.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the vice chair of the Senate intelligence committee, gave the appointment a guarded welcome while faulting the administration for resisting binding safeguards, that report said. Warner added that he looked forward to working with Clayton on staying ahead of China, hardening advanced AI systems and keeping powerful models secure, reliable and under human control.

For crypto observers, Clayton's name carries a long record. As SEC chair during Trump's first term he brought 57 cases against crypto firms and projects, a tally he cited on his departure, Decrypt wrote. His most lasting move came at the very end, when his agency sued Ripple for 1.3 billion dollars over XRP sales it called unregistered securities, a case that later became a template for suits filed under his successor Gary Gensler.

Clayton's path since has crossed both sides of the industry's legal lines. After leaving the SEC he advised One River Asset Management on crypto in 2021 and sat on custodian Fireblocks' advisory board, one crypto-industry timeline recalled. Trump had earlier tried to install him as Manhattan's top federal prosecutor in 2020, and in 2025 placed him as interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, where his office pressed ahead with the prosecution of Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm.

The new force follows what Trump called the Historic White House Accord on Super Intelligence, in which leading tech firms confirmed their responsibilities to the American public, the same timeline explained. Six executives signed that accord at the White House, promising internal and external monitors to check how the technology is used and to catch safety failures, a second account of the week detailed.

Reaction arrived fast from one of those executives. Elon Musk wrote on X that SI was better than AI and said he was renaming his aerospace firm's AI unit from SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI, that coverage noted. Trump had previously created a combined AI and cryptocurrency czar post when he returned to office in January 2025, installing venture capitalist David Sacks, who held it until March 2026, when his time as a special government employee ran out, and Sacks still co-chairs the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Fortune's version of the story listed the same force membership and reporting lines, describing Ferguson as the FTC chairman, Michael as the Pentagon's technology chief and Kupor as the personnel chief, its AP-sourced item put it. That lineup places intelligence, competition, defense research and the federal workforce under one coordinating roof.

What the force will actually do remains undefined. Trump's post gave no mandate or timeline for the group's work, Decrypt observed, leaving open how a body built for coordination will divide duties with the accord's company-level monitors and the existing advisory structures around it.