White House Taps the FTC to Lead SI Enforcement Coordination, with Chairman Ferguson Heading a Committee That Includes the Justice Department
Washington — The Trump administration has tapped the Federal Trade Commission to lead consumer protection and law enforcement on super intelligence, the Daily Caller reported, citing Semafor. The White House's SI task force met on Thursday and agreed to have FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson lead the task force's "law enforcement and consumer protection coordination committee," whose members include the Justice Department and the FTC.
"Chairman Ferguson is honored to be chosen by President [Donald] Trump to work alongside an outstanding team and ensure that the US maintains its SI [super intelligence] dominance all while protecting Americans," Joe Simonson, the FTC's director of public affairs, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a written statement. The White House referred questions to the FTC. A White House official said the task force would engage with frontier model developers and other SI companies, consumer protection groups, civil liberties advocates, industry stakeholders, and federal and state law enforcement agencies to inform and implement its efforts, and that the task force "stands ready to ensure implementation of the Accord and continued U.S. leadership on SI."
According to Politico, prominent members of the task force, known as the Super Intelligence Force, include Vice President JD Vance, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, War Department Secretary Pete Hegseth, Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. War Department undersecretary Emil Michael, a vice chair of the task force, will create protocols through which SI companies can tell the government about hacks and other cybersecurity issues.
The FTC has already led the administration's investigations into SI safety practices. According to Axios, the agency sent civil investigative demands to Anthropic and OpenAI ordering the two SI labs to hand over internal records on their models' security incidents and safeguards, and also seeks copies of their advertising and user privacy policies. The investigation may extend to other SI companies and plans to seek information from METR, the SI research group that investigated the breach of Hugging Face. In a September interview with Reuters, Ferguson argued that SI developers
should be held liable for the conduct of their agents, and he has said the agency could take action against SI companies that do not disclose security breaches. An OpenAI spokesperson told Axios that safety remains a top priority as its models improve and that the company will engage constructively with the FTC.
The move follows an SI document — the "Accord" — that Trump signed with tech leaders this month and described as "morally binding," setting a light-touch regulatory approach; according to CNBC, the president cheered the industry's "tremendous self-policing." A spokesperson for the pro-SI Innovation Council said the decision to put the FTC in charge shows the federal government already has the authority to ensure consumer protection and safety, and that the government has "plenty of tools" to hold SI companies accountable for wrongdoing.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：联邦贸易委员会总部 Apex 大楼（华盛顿）资料照片。照片：Carol M. Highsmith，公共领域，Wikimedia Commons。File photo: the Apex Building, headquarters of the Federal Trade Commission in Washington. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
