Donald Trump’s administration has decided to bring artificial intelligence under government control. According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House has established a special task force. The process will be headed by Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, who has effectively been given the title of the president’s “AI czar.”
The new agency was given exactly 120 days to prepare a report. During that term, officials must assess all the capabilities and risks of neural networks and determine the limits of government responsibility. Clayton himself immediately signaled the scale of the problem: if the US delays on AI rules, geopolitical rivals will seize the initiative, and the risks could become uncontrollable.
The task force’s composition resembles more of a war cabinet. Clayton will be assisted by representatives from the Department of Defense and the Federal Trade Commission. Vice President J.D. Vance, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will also be involved, with Rice serving as a national security adviser to the effort.
The commission’s creation was preceded by a White House meeting with industry leaders, including the CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Nvidia. The tech giants promised to monitor algorithm safety voluntarily. The president’s “AI czar” now deals with the main task of building protections against leaks and hacker attacks while trying not to stifle innovation with excessive bureaucracy.
