Trump names spy chief Jay Clayton to run a new AI task force, doubling his portfolio at a tense moment for the technology

President Donald Trump on Sunday handed his director of national intelligence a second job: AI czar. In a Truth Social post, Trump named Jay Clayton to chair what the White House is calling the "Super Intelligence Force", a four-person task force with a 120-day clock to tell the president what the federal government's role in artificial intelligence should be. The appointment drops one of Washington's most consequential technology questions into the hands of a Wall Street lawyer who has, until now, spent his career managing securities markets and, more recently, the nation's 18 spy agencies.

The move is significant on two counts. It fills a vacancy that has existed since venture capitalist David Sacks left the AI czar post when his term as a special government employee expired. And it comes as researchers and executives inside the industry have issued what some are calling existential warnings, prompting rare, bipartisan alarm on Capitol Hill.

Who Clayton is and what he's been asked to do

Walter "Jay" Clayton III, director of national intelligence, has been named as the first U.S. artificial intelligence czar. Trump nominated Clayton, a New York attorney and former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to replace Tulsi Gabbard as DNI; he was confirmed by the Senate on July 28 and sworn into office on August 3. Before he took over as director of national intelligence, Clayton was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Clayton will lead a new White House task force, which will have 120 days to research and report on AI's risks and opportunities, and offer recommendations on the federal government's responsibilities regarding the new technology. In a Truth Social post, Trump said Clayton will lead the newly formed "Super Intelligence Force" alongside FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, and Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor. The group will report directly to Trump and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Clayton will keep his job as DNI, which oversees the nation's 18 intelligence agencies. That dual role is already drawing scrutiny. Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor who has followed Clayton's career since he chaired the SEC during Trump's first term, said: "It'll be interesting to watch whether he can manage the two major responsibilities, and also be up to speed on AI. It seems to me this new assignment might be even more daunting."

Critics argue that combining intelligence leadership with AI policy coordination concentrates significant power in a single official and that voluntary commitments leave the public reliant on industry self-policing.

The 'Super Intelligence' rebrand, and what the force will actually do

The task force has been freshly renamed "Super Intelligence Force" (SIF) after Trump's effort to rebrand artificial intelligence as "Super Intelligence." The president used that preferred phrasing throughout his announcement. His stated goal 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, and will protect the interests, and improve the lives, of all Americans."

Despite the expansive framing, the task force's mandate is actually narrower than some AI advocates wanted. The Super Intelligence Force is not being asked to write a licensing regime or create a new regulator. Clayton told the Wall Street Journal the group would examine current law and discuss what Congress could do, and that "I expect there will be mechanisms developed in dialogue, just like there are in other industries," pointing to risk models built by the financial industry with the Federal Reserve and the SEC.

Clayton told the Journal the task force will get 120 days to determine the federal government's level of responsibility in AI development. The task force will examine the extent of the law and discuss what actions Congress should take.

The appointment arrives during a volatile moment for the technology. AI industry leaders have called for a slowdown in development after a series of high-profile rogue AI agent hacks and warnings about how quickly AI is improving. The safety of AI has become a major issue in recent weeks, with some researchers warning that people building the technology believe it could kill humans within a decade. Several Democratic and Republican lawmakers have responded with alarm and calls for more action.

Trump himself has taken a different posture. He has described fears over AI as "a hoax" and insisted that the industry could "self police." That tension, between the warnings from Clayton's own task force members and the president's public dismissiveness, is one that congressional overseers on both sides of the aisle say they plan to press.

The White House tech summit that preceded the announcement

Earlier last week, Trump met with tech leaders including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Clayton was also at the meeting. The summit came after AI leaders issued existential warnings surrounding the technology, which Trump has largely downplayed. The sequence matters: the White House gathered the industry, heard the warnings, and within days named a czar, though one without regulatory authority.

Trump said last month he considered Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for the AI czar post but chose not to partly because he was doing "such a great job" at the Treasury Department. Clayton becomes the administration's AI czar, the second person to hold that informal title in this term.

A parallel fight: $810 million in clawed-back funds heads to court

The Clayton announcement was not the only federal-authority story breaking in Washington this past week. A separate but consequential legal fight opened over the executive branch's power of the purse.

The Trump administration is facing a cluster of federal lawsuits over its effort to claw back about $810 million in federal funding without Congress' approval. The administration announced the cancellation through a maneuver known as a "pocket rescission," days before the funding expired at the end of the fiscal year on September 30.

On Sept. 25, President Trump submitted a rescission package to Congress covering 11 funding accounts totaling $810 million. The federal fiscal year ended Sept. 30. The largest share, about $567 million, was set aside for the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Government Accountability Office reaffirmed its opinion that "pocket rescissions" are illegal, dealing a blow to the president's plans to cancel $810 million in spending without the approval of Congress. In a letter to congressional leaders, the GAO doubled down on its position that the administration would violate a 1974 budget law by trying to rescind, in the closing days of the fiscal year, funding that lawmakers had already appropriated.

The pocket rescission "subverts both the constitutional process for enacting federal law and Congress's constitutional power of the purse," Edda Emmanuelli Perez, general counsel for the GAO, wrote in a letter to Congress and Trump administration officials.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought responded to the GAO report on social media, saying it was "not a surprise." "GAO has become hyper partisan and Congress recently attempted to cut their spending because of it," he wrote.

On the Hill, the reaction cut across party lines. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, almost immediately weighed in, calling the process "unlawful." Collins told reporters she is exploring whether it is possible to add new language to future appropriations bills that would prohibit pocket rescissions.

Seven states filed suit. California and six other states sued Trump and OMB Director Russell Vought, alleging the administration unlawfully impounded congressionally appropriated funds. The suit also seeks to block the administration's proposed rescission of an additional $810 million in federal funds. California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed the complaint in the Northern District of California, joined by Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, and Oregon.

A pocket rescission, sending Congress a request to cancel funds so close to the end of a fiscal year that they expire before lawmakers can act, has drawn bipartisan criticism as an attempt to circumvent Congress' constitutional authority over federal spending. The Supreme Court allowed Trump to use a pocket rescission in 2025, saying at the time that the government "at this early stage" made sufficient showing that the lawsuit is precluded under the ICA and that the plaintiffs cannot force the federal government to pay the funds. Whether the Court will be as permissive the second time, with a broader dollar figure and a GAO finding already on the record, is the central legal question now before the Northern District of California.

A separate suit, filed in Washington, D.C., by the HEP-CAMP Association, argued that the rescissions illegally targeted $24.9 million in spending on the High School Equivalency Program and College Assistance Migrant Program.

What to Watch

• Clayton's 120-day clock starts now. The task force's first report to Trump and Wiles is due in early February 2027, right as Congress returns from the new-term break. Watch whether Clayton's financial-markets instinct toward voluntary industry frameworks survives contact with Democratic demands for a statutory regulator and Republican concerns about national-security risks from Chinese AI competitors.
• The pocket-rescission litigation is now in the Northern District of California with a GAO finding, seven state attorneys general, and at least two separate private plaintiffs pressing the case. A motion for a preliminary injunction that would force the administration to release the funds is expected shortly; any ruling will land in the middle of the midterm campaign.
• Collins and appropriations: The Senate Appropriations chair's stated interest in adding anti-pocket-rescission language to the next spending bill sets up a collision with the White House budget office. Whether her Republican colleagues back her, or defer to Vought, will be the clearest measure of how much appetite exists in the Senate majority to constrain the president's spending power before November.
• The AI-intelligence overlap: Clayton now sits atop both the 18-agency intelligence community and the administration's AI policy shop. That combination will draw pointed questions at his next congressional oversight appearances about whether national-security AI programs will get more favorable treatment than commercial ones under any framework his task force recommends.

Sources: NBC News | CNBC | PBS NewsHour / AP | UPI | Gizmodo | MSnow | The Hill | Roll Call | U.S. News / Reuters | Washington Sun | House Budget Committee (Rep. Boyle) | Wikipedia / DNI