Trump announces 'Super Intelligence Force' to oversee AI policy

Donald Trump has created a "Super Intelligence Force", which is what you call a task force when the word "committee" has tested badly with focus groups. It will be led by Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, with FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson and Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael along for the ride. Three nouns, one capital letter, zero verbs — the branding department has clearly been told to make it sound like a 1987 cartoon in which the heroes own a helicopter. Naming a policy coordination body after a technology nobody has built yet is either optimism or a cry for help, and the Force will not be telling us which.

Consider the actual job description. The Force exists to ensure the US "continues to lead" in AI development and to "coordinate the government's engagement with the public" — and the official handed the public-facing half is the Director of National Intelligence, the one man in Washington whose entire professional instinct is to say less. Add the country's chief antitrust enforcer and the Pentagon's research chief, and you have assembled the three people least likely to be booked on a podcast about AI safety to discuss AI safety with the public. It is like forming a transparency squad and putting the man who runs the filing cabinet at the front of it.

What the announcement does not contain is a budget, a deadline, a statute, or a single named deliverable — which is roughly the going rate. Malaysia is drafting an actual AI law arriving early 2027; Washington has produced a Force. The public engagement will presumably consist of a statement about how much public engagement there is going to be. But the leadership objective is already met, and handsomely. America leads the world in announcing that it leads the world.