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Scott Kupor, the director of the Office of Personnel Management and a vice chair of the White House Super Intelligence Force, told Fox’s Saturday in America that slowing American AI development isn’t a safety move — it’s a gift to our adversaries. He framed the task force’s job in blunt terms: protect Americans, yes, but don’t cede the field. Simple, direct, and exactly the sort of conversation Washington has needed.
What Kupor actually said — and why it matters for the AI race
Kupor didn’t mince words: slow down and you hand advantage to countries that won’t share our values or safeguards. He repeated the administration’s line — the U.S. must “win” the AI race while building safety into the treadmill of innovation, not by freezing the treadmill altogether. He also pointed to a practical, boots-on-the-ground step: OPM’s tech-hire push, which has already onboarded hundreds of people and is ramping up fast.
How the Super Intelligence Force is set up — and where the friction is
President Donald Trump named Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton to lead the new Super Intelligence Force, and the roster mixes intelligence, enforcement and workforce players. That’s intentional: the group must produce a concise risk-and-opportunity report on a tight timeline and figure out who does what when an AI incident occurs. But throwing the Federal Trade Commission, OPM and national-security types into the same room creates obvious institutional tension — enforcement actions are already happening while the White House talks voluntary guardrails.
Enforcement today, “voluntary” tomorrow — who decides?
Right now the FTC has an active probe into frontier labs even as White House officials urge industry commitments over heavy regulation. That mismatch matters to ordinary Americans. If companies get slapped with enforcement after the fact, consumers and small businesses could face messier fallout than if clear rules had come first. If we instead clamp down too hard, we risk sending high-paying tech jobs and critical infrastructure development overseas — which is exactly what Kupor warns against.
Real people feel this in two ways: whether their local hospital, power company or small manufacturer has cutting-edge AI to keep systems safe — or whether those systems get weaponized by hostile actors because the U.S. chose caution that looked a lot like surrender. The Force can help shore up incident reporting, rapid response, and federal hiring to meet these threats. But the hard part isn’t staffing a task force; it’s squaring incentives so the next big AI crisis doesn’t arrive while bureaucrats argue about jurisdiction.
So here’s the question nobody seems willing to answer plainly: can Washington keep America first in AI while actually protecting citizens — or will split priorities produce a paper plan and leave the real work to everyone else?
