Trump's 'Super Intelligence' Rebrand Was a Loyalty Test—and Big Tech Blinked
Original: Trump’s Crazy AI Rebrand Was a Loyalty Test for Tech Execs—and It Worked
Why This Matters
When the world's most powerful tech executives accept politically mandated terminology without protest, it signals a meaningful shift in who sets the terms of AI governance—literally.
President Trump signed an executive order banning the term 'artificial intelligence' in favor of 'Super Intelligence' at a White House lunch with top AI executives on or around October 2, 2026. Attendees including Bezos, Huang, Amodei, Zuckerberg, Pichai, Brockman, Karp, and Musk raised no objection.
At a White House lunch this week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring 'artificial intelligence' a forbidden term, replacing it government-wide with 'Super Intelligence.' The move came days after he floated the idea at a September 23 UN speech—a hint many dismissed as bluster. It wasn't.
The room was stacked with the most powerful names in tech: Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang, Dario Amodei, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Greg Brockman, Alex Karp, and Elon Musk. Not one voiced a public objection. Trump, in turn, claimed their silence as active endorsement.
The term 'artificial intelligence' dates to 1956, coined by John McCarthy at the Dartmouth Conference. A Google Scholar search returns roughly 7.42 million results for it. It is the defining label for an industry these very executives built their careers around.
Author Jacob Weisberg, whose recent book Profiles in Cowardice examines collaboration in the Trump era, called the episode a textbook loyalty test. 'If you pass the loyalty test, you fail the backbone test,' he told WIRED. Weisberg argued collective pushback would have been low-risk: 'If all of those guys had just said, we'll agree to the terms of self-regulation but we don't accept the name change—what would he have done?'
Instead, the assembled billionaires went along. Wired's Steven Levy frames the outcome bluntly: for all their wealth and influence, the alpha in the room was the one with executive order authority.