Trump named the four men who will run American AI policy on Sunday. All four work for him. Jay Clayton, his intelligence chief, runs the Super Intelligence Force. Andrew Ferguson, his Federal Trade Commission chairman, sits beside him with the Pentagon's research chief and the man who runs federal hiring. They report to Trump and his chief of staff. Congress gave them nothing: no law, no budget. Trump needed an act of Congress for the Space Force and a Truth Social post for this one.
Trump told reporters what he wants on September 29, after lunch with the AI chiefs. "Whoever wins SI is going to win," he said. "It's much bigger than the internet. Now that's already been proved." Then: "This blows it away." On Sunday he called it "bigger than the Industrial Revolution, and the Internet." He is not talking about beating China. He is talking about the machine itself, and who holds it. Vladimir Putin said it first. On September 1, 2017, he told Russian students that "the one who becomes the leader in this sphere will be the ruler of the world." Trump says the same thing now, in his own words. Whoever controls the internet wins. He has just put the next internet under his own administration, so the people controlling it are him and his appointees, not the public. Google's AI chief asked for a referee. Trump gave the industry a committee of his own men. Who killed the referee, and what has Trump already done with a market he could move?
