Trump names Jay Clayton to lead new White House AI task force amid safety concerns

US President Donald Trump on Sunday confirmed that national intelligence chief Jay Clayton will lead a new White House task force on artificial intelligence, a move the administration says aims to keep the United States at the forefront of AI development while responding to growing warnings about the technology’s dangers.

New role and White House framing

Trump said on his Truth Social platform that the group, which he prefers to call the “Super Intelligence Force”, will ensure the United States “continue to lead the world” in AI development and that it is charged to “protect the interests, and improve the lives of all Americans.“

Who is Jay Clayton

The appointee, Jay Clayton, is the nation’s intelligence chief. He is described in the source as a longtime Wall Street lawyer who represented Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis and Barclays in its purchase of Lehman Brothers’ assets. He chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term, a period in which he took a pro-business stance while bringing enforcement cases against the emerging crypto industry.

The source also states that Clayton was tapped to lead federal prosecutors in Manhattan at the start of Trump’s second term and that the Senate confirmed him as intelligence chief in July. The article notes he has no background in the tech industry.

Advisers and the task force’s lineage

Clayton will be the second person to hold an informal national AI czar role after venture capitalist David Sacks, who held the position at the start of Trump’s second term before stepping down. The source says Sacks continues to advise the president on AI, as does Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Safety concerns and political context

The appointment comes amid increasingly vocal warnings from researchers about AI’s potential dangers and reports of systems behaving unsafely. The source mentions cases of AI systems “going rogue and hacking outside systems,” and cites a string of incidents beginning with a July breach of Hugging Face, a platform used to share AI models.

According to the source, Trump has resisted tighter federal AI regulation, arguing that a slowdown could give Chinese firms an advantage and expressing confidence that federal law enforcement can address bad actors misusing the technology. Tech industry leaders at a recent White House meeting signed a commitment to self-police AIan accord the president described as “morally binding.”

Clayton on US primacy

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Clayton said the president had insisted the new task force ensure US primacy in AI, saying: “The risk of not being first is high. Not being first increases the identified, and unidentified, risks, particularly from our adversaries. Being first will better enable us to address those risks on behalf of the American people.“

What to watch next

The source frames the move as part of a wider debate in Washington: lawmakers and voters are increasingly concerned about AI’s potential to displace workers and upend society, even as the administration emphasizes maintaining technological leadership and relying on industry commitments and law enforcement to manage risks.