Good morning. A new White House task force will have 120 days to report on the risks and opportunities of artificial intelligence—and determine the federal government’s responsibility—according to Jay Clayton, the director of national intelligence who effectively becomes the administration’s AI czar.

• Clayton’s role: Clayton will chair the “Super Intelligence Force” which takes President Trump’s preferred name for AI: super intelligence or SI. “The risk of not being first is high,” Clayton said. “Not being first increases the identified, and unidentified, risks, particularly from our adversaries. Being first will better enable us to address those risks on behalf of the American people,” he added.

• AI leaders input: Formation of the group comes on the heels of a meeting Trump convened at the White House on Tuesday in which AI leaders and the industry agreed to a series of principles including internal controls to monitor model development, external model reviews by third parties and notifications to the board of directors about those safety efforts, voluntary pledges that Trump hailed as the right approach.

• Industry-led approach: The task force will still yield to the industry as the primary vehicle for managing risks, officials said. But it will work in conjunction with the industry to identify risk and opportunities. “I expect there will be mechanisms developed in dialogue, just like there are in other industries,” Clayton told The Wall Street Journal. He cited risk models for the financial industry that have been developed in conjunction with the Federal Reserve and Securities and Exchange Commission. He said the task force would examine current law and discuss possible actions that Congress could take.

• Background: Formation of the task force follows rising public concern over AI, not just on its potential to wipe out jobs, but also its ability to perform sophisticated hacks and its use as a weapon—or even wipe out civilization, as some industry researchers fear. Data centers, which power the technology, also have faced growing public backlash. Trump has largely advocated for less regulation, but the task force represents a growing recognition some government oversight will be necessary.

In case you missed it: America has spent much of the past decade trying to reduce its trade and economic dependence on China, but it is proving difficult. Also, data centers grapple with becoming military targets. Listen to new episodes every Friday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon.

Community banks swing back at Trump regulators over crypto charters.

Community bankers sued the Trump administration on Friday after regulators moved to grant bank charters to a wave of cryptocurrency companies, the latest chapter in a fight between traditional banking and crypto.

What the bankers allege. The lawsuit by the Independent Community Bankers of America accuses the regulators of allowing “highly risky cryptocurrency and digital asset activities” to enter the banking system without submitting them to the same level of regulatory oversight as banks.

California man charged with smuggling $300 million in export-controlled servers.

The owner of a California-based technology company was arrested and charged with smuggling high-end export-controlled computer servers valued at $300 million and containing U.S.-made graphics processing units to China, Risk Journal’s Anwar Faruqi reports (free link).

The charges. Greg Lui, 38, of San Gabriel, California, faces charges of conspiracy to violate export control laws, outbound smuggling and conspiracy to commit money laundering, the Justice Department said Thursday. The servers contained graphics processing units commonly used for artificial intelligence applications.

• Companies that use recycled carbon to make greener chemicals told Risk Journal’s Yusuf Khan that a loophole in Europe’s flagship emissions-trading system inadvertently incentivizes fossil-fuel production (free link).

• The SEC on Thursday released a proposal that would set rules of the road for advisers to hold custody of clients’ crypto holdings, filling in a regulatory gap to further legitimize an asset class the Trump administration has been aggressively promoting.

• The U.S. is reviewing its arms control regulations in an effort to focus on critical technologies and reduce regulatory burdens, Risk Journal reports (free link).

• The U.K.’s financial watchdog permanently banned a former HSBC banker from working in the financial services industry after he was found to have committed fraud in a scam devised to avoid nearly £6,000 worth of train fares, about $7,900, reports Risk Journal (free link).

• Watch WSJ’s Katherine Long break down Polymarket’s pattern of compliance failures.

• A charity that Los Angeles Dodgers owner and billionaire Mark Walter launched to put urban kids on a path to college and high-paying jobs is now being primarily funded by a little-known Chicago financial firm that has also been linked to the federal probe into Walter’s insurance empire.

• Two senators, one a Democrat and one a Republican, are opening a probe into how leading home and auto insurers process claims, following a Wall Street Journal investigation into the rising chances of no payout.

Join senior risk and compliance leaders at the Risk Journal Summit in Singapore on Oct. 6, 2026, to discuss emerging risks across geopolitics, financial crime, sanctions, supply chains, AI and cybersecurity. Request your invitation today. All requests are subject to approval.

Barrels of crude oil and fuel that the Group of Seven major economies agreed to release from their emergency stocks with the goal of bringing down the soaring price of diesel and other fuels.

Near-catastrophe on flight 1073 exposes gaping hole in Dubai’s aviation security.

The FlyDubai pilot who stabbed his captain and sent the plane diving toward the ground slipped through one of the world’s tightest aviation-security nets. The question is: How?

What’s at stake. The route connecting the United Arab Emirates and Israel is one of the world’s most sensitive. And yet on Wednesday a pilot was able to conceal his intentions, and put a plane carrying around 170 people into a dive so steep it nearly tore it apart in midair.

The impact. “This is 100% a major security failure,” said Michael Horowitz, a security and geopolitical analyst who wrote a book about Israel’s future in the Middle East. “The question is how broad and how bad.” The answer will weigh on Israel’s air links to the world and the prospects of the U.A.E.’s core aviation and tourism businesses. FlyDubai suspended its flights to Israel while the investigation continued.

• Multiple Security Failures Allowed FlyDubai Pilot Into Cockpit

• FlyDubai Attacker Used ‘Crash Ax,’ a Common Fixture on Many Jets