Trump Orders Officials to Say "Superintelligence" Instead of "AI"

In late September 2026, Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring US officials to use the word "superintelligence" instead of "artificial intelligence." According to 3DNews, the president is now ready to declare anyone who refuses to follow the new wording an enemy of America. The original source does not include the full text of the document, and it is not yet clear how compliance will be checked.

What we know so far

The facts are thin. The order appeared in the last days of September. It applies to officials, so it concerns the language of government speeches, documents and, probably, press releases. The president separately used harsh rhetoric, saying he is ready to call dissenters enemies of the US. Legally, that is a political label rather than a sanction, which is exactly why it is hard to assess in advance.

The source does not disclose the details tied to the order:

• Document: a US presidential executive order, signed in late September 2026.
• Core requirement: "superintelligence" instead of "artificial intelligence" in official speech.
• Who it covers: officials; the exact list is not provided.
• Sanctions: none formally specified, but there is a statement about "enemies of the US."
• Affected rules: unknown whether the order changes definitions in existing laws.

Why one word matters

In the academic sense, superintelligence describes a system that outperforms humans in practically all cognitive tasks. The definition took hold after Nick Bostrom's 2014 book. No existing language model or agentic system meets it, and even the developers themselves acknowledge this. They talk about superintelligence as a goal, not as a product.

Still, the word long ago moved from philosophy into corporate vocabulary. Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence put it right in the company name. In 2025, Meta assembled a division called Meta Superintelligence Labs. Sam Altman regularly writes about superintelligence as a near-term prospect. The order does what the industry has pursued through marketing: it moves the concept from the category of promises into the category of ordinary official terminology.

Where practical problems will arise

The main risk is accuracy. In US law, the concept of "artificial intelligence" has working definitions, for example in the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act of 2020. If officials start calling everything superintelligence, from a chatbot to a scoring algorithm, documents will lose clarity. Regulators will find it harder to tell ordinary systems from hypothetical ones, and with them the levels of risk that are acceptable for each.

The second issue is political. Requiring a specific word under the threat of being branded an "enemy" turns terminology into a loyalty test. For federal contractors, this is a signal: the language of reports and presentations could start to be read as a political position.

The third issue is how the term will affect public perception. The word "superintelligence" sounds heavier and more alarming than "AI." It amplifies both investor enthusiasm and voter anxiety.

What companies and teams should do

Until the full text of the order is published, it makes sense to act cautiously:

• Find the original document and have lawyers check whether it applies to contractors and recipients of government funding.
• For proposals, reports and communications with federal customers, prepare two glossaries: an internal one with precise technical wording and an external one that accounts for the administration's requirements.
• Do not call your own products superintelligence without grounds. Such wording can create reputational and regulatory problems if the system is compared against the academic definition.
• Follow clarifications from the relevant agencies. They will determine what "using the term" ultimately means and how compliance will be checked.

If you work with the US public sector, start by auditing documents where the term "AI" appears. It is the cheapest way to understand the scale of the edits in advance.