The U.S. Department of Justice is creating a dedicated task force to police the misuse of advanced artificial intelligence, the latest move in Washington's accelerating effort to build enforcement muscle around a technology that officials increasingly frame in near-science-fiction terms.

Announced Thursday, the Super Intelligence Task Force, or DOJ-SITF, will be led by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward and Associate Deputy Attorney General Stephen Weiss, according to the department's official announcement. Its stated mission is to ensure that American leadership in "super intelligence" is not compromised by bad actors — whether foreign governments and their proxies, transnational criminal organizations, or companies and individuals using AI to commit fraud or other crimes.

The department invoked President Donald Trump's framing that "America stands at the forefront of a new technological revolution in intelligence."

"SI development will continue to be powered by American innovators," Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement, adding that the task force would work alongside SI Force Chair Jay Clayton to keep critical AI technologies from being "manipulated by bad actors at home or abroad."

Blanche said the DOJ would keep "identifying and prosecuting individuals whose use of SI violates the law, including by maliciously targeting American taxpayers, critical U.S. infrastructure, or other aspects of our national security."

The initiative is not purely prosecutorial. Weiss said the department also has "a responsibility" to "harden regular reporting on SI risk and response, and ensure companies exercise vigorous internal controls so that SI technology behaves as intended" — a signal that the DOJ wants AI developers themselves to tighten safeguards against models going off the rails.

The term "super intelligence" typically refers to a hypothetical form of AI that surpasses human capability across the board, and the government's embrace of the phrase marks an escalation in how officials talk about the technology. Former SEC chair Jay Clayton has been tied to a broader Trump administration push around super intelligence, and the SEC recently added "super intelligence" to its 2027 examination priorities.

The new task force joins a widening federal scramble to get ahead of AI risk. Trump signed an executive order setting up a fight with states over AI regulation, and earlier this week the U.S. banking regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), issued its first AI framework as banks battle rogue agents reaching into customer accounts. Taken together, the moves put AI oversight on several Washington fronts at once — criminal enforcement, securities examinations, banking regulation, and a federal-state fight over who writes the rules.

The DOJ did not specify a timeline for the task force or detail how it would coordinate with other agencies, saying only that its work would "promote innovation and prevent the misuse" of the technology. Until those details emerge, the first threats it moves against — whether foreign governments and their proxies, transnational criminal organizations, or companies and individuals using AI to commit fraud — will offer the clearest window into its practical priorities.

This article is based on reporting by Decrypt.