Trump Rules Out Bessent as 'Super Intelligence' Czar

Update, Sept. 28: The chair is still empty. Trump held a private White House dinner with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Sept. 27 — their first one-on-one meeting, confirmed by Trump to Fox News (Axios first reported it) — and Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson and tech CEOs are scheduled to meet on AI at the White House on Sept. 29. Bill Gates told NBC's Meet the Press that self-regulation is insufficient and called for AI legislation: "It's not a hoax at all." No czar appointment has been announced.

Washington — White House Personnel

Trump Rules Out Bessent as ‘Super Intelligence’ Czar

Trump shut down reports that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was the front-runner for his new “Super Intelligence” czar — dismissing a Semafor report as “Fake News” and leaving the field of contenders wide open.

Published September 26, 2026 · By Daniel Rao

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — official 2025 portrait (file photo). Photo: U.S. Department of the Treasury / Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Donald Trump killed a rumor on Friday the bluntest way he knows how: with a Truth Social post calling it “Fake News.” The rumor was that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — the administration’s top economic official and, by most accounts, the front-runner — was about to be named the president’s new artificial intelligence czar.

Trump’s answer was definitive, at least for one man: Bessent is not getting the job.

Trump's Truth Social post: Bessent won't be AI czar

Posting on Truth Social on Friday, September 25, Trump wrote:

“Scott Bessent will not be going to be Super Intelligence (SI) Czar. Number One, he doesn’t want to. Number Two, he’s doing such a great job at Treasury, and that’s where I want to keep him! Why would I ever make such a change? Just more Fake News!”

The post, as reported by Reuters and the Washington Examiner, used Trump’s preferred new term for artificial intelligence — “Super Intelligence,” or “SI” — the rebrand he has been pushing across the federal government this month.

Trump gave two reasons for the decision, and both are worth reading carefully. First, that Bessent “doesn’t want to” take the post — which suggests the question was at least asked. Second, that he wants to keep his Treasury secretary exactly where he is, a signal of how central Bessent has become to the administration’s economic agenda: tariffs, trade negotiations, and the delicate financial relationship with China.

The report Trump was answering

The denial did not arrive out of nowhere. One day earlier, Semafor reported — citing three unnamed sources briefed on the internal discussions — that Bessent had become a leading candidate for the new AI post. According to that report, his Cabinet-level seat at Treasury would not have stopped him from taking on another White House title, and Trump had floated the idea internally even though, Semafor noted, the president “had not made a final choice” and could still pick less obvious candidates.

CNBC, reporting on Trump’s Friday announcement, framed the sequence the same way: the president’s denial came after Semafor and Reuters reported that he was considering Bessent for the post.

The White House had tried to get ahead of the story. Before Trump’s post, spokesman Kush Desai pushed back on the reporting, saying: “Any reporting about personnel decisions that have not been officially announced by the administration should be regarded as baseless speculation.”

That careful non-denial bought the administration roughly a day. Then Trump weighed in personally, and the speculation was over — for Bessent, at least.

Super Intelligence czar shortlist: Kratsios, Kupor, Sacks

With Bessent out, the names Semafor identified as other contenders matter more now. Two are serving administration officials:

• Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). He is already one of the administration’s top science officials and, notably, co-chairs the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
• Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

Then there is the name that hovers over the entire conversation: David Sacks, the venture capitalist who served as the White House AI and crypto czar until he left the post in March. Sacks and Kratsios both co-chair the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and Sacks has remained an influential outside voice on the administration’s tech policy.

As of Friday, the White House had provided no details on who might be tapped for the role. Semafor’s original reporting stressed that Trump had not settled on a final choice — and nothing in Friday’s denial changes that. The chair is still empty; the only thing settled is who will not be sitting in it.

Why Bessent looked like the pick

It is worth asking why so many people believed the Bessent story in the first place. The answer is that, on paper, it made a strange kind of sense — because Bessent has spent the past week doing AI diplomacy.

Last Sunday, September 20, Bessent led talks in New York that were heavily focused on artificial intelligence with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, ahead of this week’s summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington. Afterward, Bessent told reporters the U.S. side had proposed an AI safety notification mechanism and a bilateral dialogue on the issue, with a particular emphasis on national security concerns.

Think about that for a moment: the Treasury secretary — not the OSTP director, not the national security adviser — was the one floating AI safety proposals to Beijing. In any other administration that would be a scheduling quirk. In this one, it read as a sign that Trump had given Bessent an unusually broad portfolio — broad enough that “Super Intelligence czar” did not sound absurd.

Friday’s post closes that door. But the fact that Bessent was the face of the U.S. position in the AI talks with China says something durable about how the administration is structuring its technology statecraft: through its economic leadership, not just its science offices.

The rebrand: AI becomes “super intelligence”

Bessent’s would-be title matters because it was never going to be called “AI czar” anyway. Earlier this week at the United Nations General Assembly, Trump said he would direct his administration to rename artificial intelligence to “super intelligence” in all official U.S. government documents.

The renaming has been a public, almost theatrical process. Trump ran polls for the public to choose a replacement name — the initial options were “superior intelligence,” “extreme intelligence,” and “supreme intelligence” — before settling on “super intelligence,” which he believes conveys power. In his view, as the Washington Examiner reported, “artificial intelligence” makes the technology “sound fake.”

The State Department has already been instructed to use “super intelligence” and “SI” in its communications, according to the Associated Press. And in a separate Truth Social post earlier on Friday, Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping — in Washington for a three-day summit — preferred “super intelligence” to the commonly used term.

So when the new czar is finally named, the title on the door may literally read “Super Intelligence Czar.” Friday’s news is that Bessent will not be the person under it.

President Donald Trump — official 2025 White House portrait by Daniel Torok (file photo). Photo: The White House / Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

What the czar would actually run

The czar post exists because of his earlier announcement of an ‘AI Force’: on Saturday, September 19, Trump said he plans to appoint an artificial intelligence adviser and create an “AI Force” modeled on the Space Force he established in his first term. As TechPulse USA reported at the time, the announcement came with no budget, no timeline, no statutory authority, and no clarity on whether the force would be a military branch, a civilian office, or an interagency task force.

That context is important, because it defines what Friday’s news is and is not. The president did not appoint anyone; he un-appointed a rumor. The most consequential hire in American AI policy remains unfilled, and the institution it would lead remains undescribed.

What we do know is the philosophy the eventual czar will be asked to execute. Trump has repeatedly downplayed concerns about AI and argued that additional regulation is unnecessary. That puts the White House on a collision course with the people actually building the technology: top AI researchers have warned that some believe AI could kill humans within a decade, following cases of AI agents going rogue to hack external systems. Lawmakers from both parties have responded with alarm and calls for more action.

What the denial tells us — analysis

The following is analysis, not reported fact.

Friday’s post does three things at once, and only the first is obvious.

First, it ends the Bessent speculation. That matters for markets and for Beijing: Bessent is the face of the administration’s tariff and trade policy, the man who just proposed an AI safety mechanism to China’s vice premier. Moving him would have signaled a reshuffle at the top of the economic team. Trump’s “that’s where I want to keep him” is as close to a vote of confidence as this White House issues.

Second, it tells us the czar search is real and active enough to generate leaks. Three sources briefed on the talks, per Semafor, is not a rumor manufactured from nothing — it is a sign of a live internal process with factions. Trump’s decision to kill the Bessent story publicly, rather than let Desai’s “baseless speculation” line do the work, suggests he wanted the denial on the record, in his own voice, before the story hardened.

Third, and most interesting: it narrows the field to people whose job descriptions already look like the czar’s. Kratsios runs the White House science and technology office and co-chairs PCAST with Sacks. Kupor runs personnel for the federal government. Neither is an economist or a diplomat. If the pick comes from that list, it will signal that Trump sees the czar as a technology and management job — not the sweeping economic-statecraft role a Bessent appointment would have implied.

There is a tension underneath all of this that Friday’s news does not resolve. The same week Bessent was proposing an AI safety notification mechanism to China, the president was arguing that the AI industry needs no new rules and rebranding the technology to sound more powerful. The czar — whoever it is — will inherit both of those postures at once: safety dialogue with Beijing on one hand, “no new regulation” at home on the other. That contradiction is where the real story lives, and Friday’s denial only sharpens it.

What to watch next: the AI czar pick and the AI Force

The short version: the guessing game continues, minus one name. Watch for three things.

The actual pick. Semafor’s reporting said Trump had not made a final choice and could reach for less obvious candidates. Kratsios and Kupor are the known names; the surprise would be someone outside the current org chart.

What the job is. Title aside, the czar needs a defined budget, an office, and authority over the Pentagon and Commerce Department’s AI programs — or it is an adviser with a louder business card. The AI Force announcement gave none of that. The appointment will show whether any of it is coming.

The China track. Bessent may not be the czar, but he is still the man talking AI safety with Beijing. The notification mechanism he proposed in New York — and whatever came of it in this week’s Trump–Xi summit — will shape U.S. AI diplomacy regardless of who gets the White House title.

Until then, the scoreboard is simple: one rumor dead, one chair still empty.

Related: Sept 24 summit · Trump dismissed as a hoax

Sources

Reuters, “Trump says Treasury’s Bessent will not be his AI czar” (Sept. 25, 2026); Washington Examiner, “Trump confirms Bessent will not be ‘super intelligence’ czar” (Sept. 25, 2026); CNBC (via Scoop), “Trump says Scott Bessent won’t be AI czar” (Sept. 25, 2026); Channel News Asia, “Trump says Treasury’s Bessent will not be his AI czar” (Sept. 25, 2026); Semafor reporting as described by the Washington Examiner; Associated Press on State Department “super intelligence” usage; TechPulse USA, “Trump AI Force 2026: What the New AI Military Plan Means” (Sept. 21, 2026).