Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton will serve as the Trump administration’s AI czar and lead a three-month effort to establish the “risks and opportunities” of the technology.
Clayton, who was largely expected to lead the White House’s recently formed “Super Intelligence Force,” told the Wall Street Journal in an exclusive interview the “risk of not being first is high” as debates about AI policy swirl in Washington. His appointment comes less than a week after the nation’s leading AI executives convened at the White House and signed a non-binding commitment to self-regulation called the “White House Accord on Super Intelligence.”
“Not being first increases the identified and unidentified, risks, particularly from our adversaries,” Clayton said. “Being first will better enable us to address these risks on behalf of the American people.” The Trump administration has largely emphasized an anti-regulatory approach to AI policy, often citing a need to ensure American companies outpace their Chinese counterparts.
“I feel very comfortable that we’ve gotten a group with a lot of experience, diverse skill sets and a common commitment,” Clayton said in reference to the internal and external participants in the task force, which includes Trump administration officials such as Vice President JD Vance and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, as well as venture capitalist David Sacks and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “These are all serious people who have addressed opportunities and risks in the past and are committed to doing this so that America wins the SI race and we win it through the benefit of the American people.” Trump also signed an executive order this week changing “artificial intelligence” to “super intelligence,” at his own request.
A bipartisan backlash against data center construction gave way to safety and cybersecurity concerns throughout September as lawmakers and the public continued to grapple with AI’s potential impacts on the economy and country writ large. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei became the figurehead of the “pace the frontier” movement in the wake of supposed hacking incidents, which, combined with the public’s negative perception of AI, have created calls for regulation throughout the summer.
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OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Grok CEO Elon Musk, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg joined Amodei, Trump, and House Speaker Mike Johnson at the signing ceremony on Tuesday.
Johnson described the commitment as “robust internal controls and layers of internal and external review.” Clayton also noted in the interview the task force would discuss potential legislative options that could be part of an AI framework moving forward.