What happened
On September 29, 2026, President Trump signed EO 14434, 'Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence' (published in the Federal Register Oct 2; 91 FR 63129). It directs executive departments and agencies, to the maximum extent permitted by law, to use 'Super Intelligence'/'SI' in place of 'Artificial Intelligence'/'AI' in official correspondence, communications, websites, reports and policy documents, and to not acknowledge the 'AI' usage. It defines SI as the existing statutory AI definition (15 U.S.C. 9401(3)) and gives the APST 60 days to propose a new federal SI definition with conforming amendments. NIST has already updated its super-intelligence page stating it is working 'to incorporate the term super intelligence as directed,' which applies to NIST AI RMF-family outputs, SP/NIST IR publications, and federal procurement. A separate voluntary White House Accord on Super Intelligence (same-day, six frontier labs) commits signatories to layered frontier-model controls.
Why it matters
This is an authoritative directive that will reshape how the U.S. federal AI-security standards corpus (NIST AI RMF, profiles, SP 800-series AI guidance, CISA/NSA publications, federal contractor language) is named and framed, creating potential divergence between federal terminology and the industry/international vocabulary used by ISO/IEC, OWASP, and state laws. It directly affects the traceability of AI security standards and any compliance language referencing NIST definitions.
Action needed
Organisations contract with or responding to U.S. federal agencies should anticipate SI terminology in guidance, solicitations and procurement; standards and compliance teams should monitor the APST legislative-definition proposal (due ~Nov 28, 2026) for changes that could alter the scope of AI-security obligations and NIST AI RMF references.