The U.S. Department of Justice announced the creation of the Super Intelligence (SI) Task Force (DOJ-SITF) on Thursday. The unit is tasked with making sure U.S. artificial intelligence technology is not compromised, or misused by foreign actors or fraudsters.
The new task force will be led by Attorney General Todd Blanche underlings Stanley Woodward and Stephen Weiss, according to a press release, which is filled with the kinds of statements you’d expect to hear from Trumpy government officials.
Honestly, the release is kind of jarring to read at this late date. It serves as a reminder of President Donald Trump’s desperate attempt to rebrand AI as SI. Apparently we’re still doing that.
Attorney General Todd Blanche, the former personal attorney for the president, said that, “SI development will continue to be powered by American innovators.”
Blanche’s statement continued to use “SI” repeatedly. It all hits a little differently after the elections on Tuesday, where Democrats scored historic wins across the country. Dems won at least 54 of 100 seats in the Senate (Mississippi and Alaska haven’t been called yet) and at least 252 of 435 seats in the House (25 races haven’t been called yet).
There’s been a huge vibe shift, and it remains to be seen whether the tech oligarchs will continue to placate Trump in the same old ways. There’s no denying that they will need him if they want to continue to get massive government contracts. But when the Democratic House and Senate are seated in January, they are very likely to start investigations that could make complicity in Trump’s actions look like a poor business decision.
It was always about business for guys like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Working with Trump was a way to make sure they could get the best regulatory treatment (which in the Trump White House means no regulation at all). They didn’t really care if there was a Republican or Democrat sitting in the Oval Office.
Elon Musk can even be seen in a similar light. He was more than happy to shake hands and work with Democratic President Barack Obama as long as the subsidies and government contracts were helping out Tesla and SpaceX. Granted, he seems like a true believer in Trump’s fascist worldview, but Musk was always a businessman first—ready to crush anyone who might hinder his ability to become the world’s first trillionaire.
The second these guys don’t need Trump anymore, there’s no reason to call it superintelligence. For that matter, there’s no reason to call it Lake America or the Gulf of America or whatever else his broken brain spits out next.
There’s probably still plenty of money to squeeze out of that dying MAGA mind of his. But we can expect to see them playing along less and less as Trump’s fascist coalition crumbles.
