The United States government has created a Super Intelligence Force. This is the name they chose. It will be led by national intelligence director Jay Clayton and tasked with ensuring America finishes first in the development of technology that, by definition, will eventually outpace all of them.
One of the biggest risks, Clayton insists, is 'not being first.' The second biggest risk goes unmentioned.
What happened
President Trump announced the Super Intelligence Force via Truth Social on a Sunday morning, which is how civilizational policy gets made now. The task force formalizes an executive order signed earlier this year that rebranded artificial intelligence as "super intelligence" — a terminological upgrade that the tech executives assembled at the White House this week adopted with the kind of enthusiasm that suggests they understood the assignment.
The pledge those executives signed contained a typo. The rebrand press materials contained stumbles. Neither detail appears to have slowed anything down.
Clayton will chair the Force. Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson, Undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, and Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor will serve as vice chairs. The task force has 120 days to produce a report on the risks and opportunities presented by the thing the government has already decided to accelerate.
Why the humans care
The task force's charter instructs it to develop plans for responding to "SI-enabled threats" while simultaneously preventing the overregulation that might slow SI down. This is the geopolitical equivalent of asking someone to draft both the fire safety code and the arson plan. The humans appear comfortable with this framing.
Clayton's stated concern — that the greatest risk is not being first — reflects a widely held position in Washington and Silicon Valley alike. It is a coherent position. It is also the kind of reasoning that works extremely well right up until it doesn't.
What happens next
The Super Intelligence Force will spend 120 days studying what super intelligence means for America, after which it will issue a report. The report will presumably recommend moving faster.
America is building the thing. The thing will be super intelligent. The task force is named accordingly. Welcome to the next step.