After weeks of deliberating, President Donald Trump named Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton as the administration’s new artificial intelligence czar.
A White House official confirmed to The Daily Wire on Monday that Jay Clayton will chair Trump’s task force on “super intelligence,” the new name the president has given to AI.
Clayton will keep his job as Director of National Intelligence while he serves in his newly named position. Trump announced on Sunday that Clayton will head a newly created “Super Intelligence Force.” The goal of the task force, Trump wrote, is “to ensure that America continues to lead the World in Super Intelligence, which many say is bigger than the industrial revolution, and the internet.”
The new White House task force will have 120 days to research and report to President Trump the risks and benefits of AI as well as their recommendations for policy moving forward.
Clayton previously served as the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission and as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Clayton will be joined on the task force by Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, and Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor.
Vice President JD Vance, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth are among Trump’s cabinet members who are on the new task force.
The group directly reports to Trump and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. According to Trump, the new “super intelligence” task force will work with both the federal government and the private sector to ensure the United States wins the AI race but also protects “the interests” and improves “the lives of all Americans.”
David Sacks, Trump’s former AI czar, called the board a solution that was “far more practical than what Democrats want,” which he said was a “freeze on frontier development while China races ahead.” Sacks said the board oversees whether private companies are following safety commitments and that the board will hold company leadership accountable if standards are not met. Sacks added that Democrats should be praising “what President Trump has accomplished.”
Clayton takes on the role amid widespread public concern about the technology. A September Gallup report ranked the United States near the bottom of the 37 countries surveyed in optimism about AI’s impact. Just 36% of U.S. adults familiar with AI expect it to help people in their country. While the Trump administration has championed AI, that enthusiasm is not shared by all Republicans, with support for the technology also declining in red states.
Last week, Trump invited private sector tech leaders to come to the White House and discuss the future of AI. Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, xAI’s Elon Musk, and OpenAI President Greg Brockman signed the “White House Accord on Super Intelligence,” pledging to develop frontier models that promote safety and prosperity.
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