Trump Taps Intelligence Chief Jay Clayton to Lead His New AI Task Force

Jay Clayton, the director of national intelligence, will lead the White House task force reviewing artificial intelligence risks and deliver a report on the government's recommended role within 120 days, according to The Wall Street Journal as reported by Reuters. Clayton told the Journal that new government mechanisms for managing AI risk would likely grow out of regulator-industry talks modeled on the Federal Reserve and Securities and Exchange Commission risk frameworks rather than a fresh layer of federal rules. The task force, which the administration calls the "Super Intelligence Force," follows Trump's September 19 Truth Social post announcing an "AI Force" and a September 29 executive order directing agencies to adopt the "Super Intelligence" terminology and giving the assistant to the president for science and technology 60 days to submit proposed legislative language defining the term.

A former Wall Street lawyer who once ran the SEC is now the man Trump wants writing the federal government's AI rulebook, and the clock on that job started ticking before most of Washington even noticed. Jay Clayton, the director of national intelligence, is set to lead the White House task force reviewing artificial intelligence risks. He will deliver a report on the government's recommended role within 120 days, according to The Wall Street Journal, as reported by Reuters. The task force, which the administration has taken to calling the "Super Intelligence Force," is tasked with weighing where Washington should step in on AI oversight and where it should stay out of the way. Clayton told the Journal that any new government mechanisms for managing AI risk would likely grow out of talks between regulators and industry, not a fresh layer of federal rules. He pointed specifically to the risk frameworks used in finance, the kind built jointly by the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission, as the model he has in mind. That reference isn't incidental. Clayton ran the SEC from 2017 to 2020 under Trump's first term. Before that, he spent more than two decades at Sullivan & Cromwell, where he co-headed the firm's cybersecurity practice and worked on M&A and capital-markets deals across the financial, telecom and energy sectors. That background tells you almost everything about the posture this task force is likely to take. Clayton is not a technologist and he is not an AI safety researcher. He's a securities lawyer who spent a career inside the exact kind of principles-based, industry-consulted regulatory process he's now describing as the template for AI. If you want a one-line preview of the report due in 120 days, it's this: expect something that looks more like SEC guidance than the EU's AI Act. The task force didn't emerge in isolation. On September 19, Trump posted on Truth Social that he was forming an "AI Force," comparing it explicitly to Space Force, which he called a "tremendous SUCCESS" from his first term. He floated "Superior Intelligence," "Extreme Intelligence" and "Supreme Intelligence" in a poll, before later settling on "Super Intelligence." An executive order followed on September 29. It directs federal agencies to adopt the "Super Intelligence" terminology, and gives the assistant to the president for science and technology 60 days to submit proposed legislative language for a federal definition of the term. Trump Plans an AI Force and an AI Czar While Calling Safety Fears a Hoax https://startupfortune.com/trump-plans-an-ai-force-and-an-ai-czar-while-calling-safety-fears-a-hoax/ Trump says he's creating a federal 'AI Force' modeled on the Space Force and will name an AI czar who must be 'High I.Q.,' dismissing AI safety warnings as a hoax. The move comes days after Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio told Congress lawmakers may have only a year to regulate AI before it slips beyond human control. - trump forming federal AI force and czar https://startupfortune.com/trump-plans-an-ai-force-and-an-ai-czar-while-calling-safety-fears-a-hoax/ - AI safety concerns dismissed by Trump administration https://startupfortune.com/trump-plans-an-ai-force-and-an-ai-czar-while-calling-safety-fears-a-hoax/ Renaming a technology by executive order sounds like theater, and in part it is. But it signals something else too: where the administration wants the conversation to start. Not from fear of AI, but from branding it as a national strength worth building an agency around - the same framing Trump used for Space Force in 2019. Clayton wasn't the administration's first choice floated publicly. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor and White House chief design officer Joe Gebbia had all been named in earlier reporting as contenders for an AI czar role. Trump himself shot down the Bessent speculation, saying he wanted to keep him at Treasury. Clayton's name gained traction after Trump told Axios on September 29 that Clayton "would be a good AI czar," a notable shift given that Clayton already holds one of the most demanding jobs in government. As director of national intelligence, Clayton oversees the 18-agency U.S. intelligence community, a post the Senate confirmed him to earlier this year after he had served as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Running a 120-day AI task force on top of that portfolio is not a light lift. It says something about how much personal trust the administration is putting in him, rather than in a dedicated AI appointee. Here's the real tension. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been pushing bills aimed at AI liability and mandatory safety disclosures, arguing that voluntary industry commitments haven't been enough to catch problems before they reach consumers. Clayton's own description of the task force's likely approach points the other way: mechanisms built through "discussions between government and industry." That suggests the report due in roughly four months will favor exactly the voluntary, consultative model those lawmakers have been trying to move past. Frankly, nobody serious expects this task force to produce binding rules in four months. What it will produce is the administration's opening framework: the document every AI company's policy team will be lobbying against or building around well before the 120 days are up. For an industry that has spent two years asking for regulatory clarity more than for lighter rules, getting an answer from a former SEC chairman is at least a specific kind of clarity. Whether it's the kind they wanted is the part nobody can answer yet. Also read: How to Price an AI Coding Agent Subscription Without Losing Money https://startupfortune.com/how-to-price-an-ai-coding-agent-subscription-without-losing-money/ • Bessent Compares AI Safety-Warning CEOs to Hannibal Lecter https://startupfortune.com/bessent-compares-ai-safety-warning-ceos-to-hannibal-lecter/ • Claude Opus 5.5 is beating OpenAI's Astra on coding benchmarks and price https://startupfortune.com/claude-opus-55-is-beating-openais-astra-on-coding-benchmarks-and-price/ Todd Blanche Says the DOJ Won't Regulate AI Companies Through Prosecution https://startupfortune.com/todd-blanche-says-the-doj-wont-regulate-ai-companies-through-prosecution/ Attorney General Todd Blanche is extending the crypto-era 'ending regulation by prosecution' doctrine to AI companies through a DOJ task force built to challenge state AI laws. A bipartisan bloc of 36 state attorneys general and Florida's aggressive lawsuit against OpenAI show the fight is far from settled. - how to regulate AI companies without prosecution https://startupfortune.com/todd-blanche-says-the-doj-wont-regulate-ai-companies-through-prosecution/ - DOJ policy on artificial intelligence enforcement strategy https://startupfortune.com/todd-blanche-says-the-doj-wont-regulate-ai-companies-through-prosecution/ This article is posted in AI News https://startupfortune.com/category/ai/ , check it out for more related stories. Join the discussion Open in the community → https://startupfortune.com/community/ Almost there. Sign in and your reply posts straight away.