Zara Reyes: Hi. Quick question before we do anything else — what do you call the technology that writes your emails, drives your Waymo, and is currently eating every VC's portfolio?
Cole Bryant: I mean — AI? Artificial intelligence? That's — that's just the word.
Zara Reyes: Wrong. It's Super Intelligence now. Trump posted on Truth Social October 27th — 'AI' and 'Artificial Intelligence' are banned in, quote, 'all relevant documents, and everything else.' The replacement term is Super Intelligence. SI.
Cole Bryant: No way. He actually — he said 'everything else'? That's not a policy, that's a vibe request.
Zara Reyes: A vibe request! And his reasoning — 'artificial' makes intelligence sound fake. So Super Intelligence is the truth-telling rebrand, apparently.
Cole Bryant: Okay but wait — does he actually have the power to do that? Like, can you just ban a word?
Zara Reyes: Inside the executive branch — kind of, yeah. The September 29th executive order, 'Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence,' it's literally in the Federal Register, it tells agencies to use SI instead of AI. But that order lives and dies at the walls of the executive branch. Nvidia, the Journal, your startup's pitch deck — all still say AI and there is nothing legally he can do about it.
Cole Bryant: So it's like — your boss sends a company-wide email renaming the product, and then you open LinkedIn and every customer still calls it the old name. Indefinitely.
Zara Reyes: Except it's not even that clean, because he already tried to be that boss — and a federal judge told him no.
Cole Bryant: Wait wait wait — the AP thing. The Associated Press got literally locked out of the Oval Office pool because they wouldn't say 'Gulf of America' instead of 'Gulf of Mexico.' Like, physically barred. And a federal judge ruled that likely violated the First Amendment.
Zara Reyes: And that case is still on appeal RIGHT NOW.
Cole Bryant: So he's — dude, he's doing the exact same legal move. Pressure a media org over terminology, same theory, same cliff. And then he turns around and posts on Truth Social calling out the Wall Street Journal specifically for still using 'AI.' The Journal! That's not a vibe request anymore, that's — I mean, that's a threat with a legal precedent already sitting against it.
Zara Reyes: He's running the same play while the ref is still reviewing the last one.
Cole Bryant: Exactly — no wait, actually that's the part that breaks my brain. The AP ruling isn't settled. It's on appeal. So the administration doesn't even know yet if geography bans are constitutional, and they're already stacking a taxonomy ban on top of it.
Zara Reyes: So the theater framing I had — I'm lowkey walking that back. Theater implies he's not actually swinging. But barring the AP from the Oval Office over 'Gulf of Mexico' is a real swing with real consequences for a real news organization.
Cole Bryant: Right — but the part that doesn't fit is he has to know the Wall Street Journal isn't the Associated Press. The Journal's not in a press pool he controls. So what's the actual leverage there?
Zara Reyes: The Journal leverage is basically nothing — but Elon's leverage is everything, which is why the Sunday before October 27th is the detail that breaks this wide open. He posted 'AI data centers' on X. Not 'SI data centers.' AI. Days before Trump's Truth Social post goes live.
Cole Bryant: Wait — Elon specifically? Like, the guy who was standing there nodding?
Zara Reyes: The guy in the room. And then Trump posts on October 27th — and I mean, maybe that's a coincidence, or maybe that post is a very public reminder directed at one very specific person.
Cole Bryant: So Trump is — dude, he's subtweeting Elon via Truth Social? That's actually unhinged. But okay, okay — Jensen Huang did the same thing, right? He's standing at the White House event, full endorsement, 'Super Intelligence' on the record. And then Nvidia goes home and sells AI chips.
Zara Reyes: Nvidia's entire product line. The press releases, the earnings calls — all AI. Jensen nodded at the podium and then walked back to a company whose market cap is built on that exact word.
Cole Bryant: That's — I mean, that's not a gap, that's a canyon. But wait, the Anthropic thing is actually the one that — okay, a two trillion dollar IPO filing. Filed while this mandate is live.
Zara Reyes: Nearly a hundred pages. 'AI' throughout. And 'catastrophic' — ten times in the risk disclosures. Under the 'artificial intelligence' brand. The capital markets are literally pricing the entire sector under the term the administration wants gone. That's not performance, that's a structural collision.
Cole Bryant: No but picture the poor Series B founder right now — her legal docs say 'artificial intelligence,' the government procurement language says 'super intelligence,' and her pitch deck probably says something like 'AI-native' because that's what VCs respond to. Three versions of the same category in the same meeting.
Zara Reyes: Nobody knows which one survives in six months. And lowkey — that confusion is doing real work for someone. The language fight is eating all the oxygen, which is exactly why we should probably talk about what's not getting covered while this is happening.
Cole Bryant: Oh that's — yeah, there's a whole other layer under this we haven't touched yet.
Zara Reyes: The thing not getting covered — Trump's December 2025 executive order, EO 14365, literally put industry in the driver's seat on AI governance. No new safety frameworks. Zero. The language fight is the cover.
Cole Bryant: Wait — so while every outlet's running 'Trump bans AI' on October 27th, the actual story is there's no safety architecture being built at all?
Zara Reyes: Every outlet. That headline ate the whole news cycle. And Design It For Us — the advocacy group literally pushing Congress to regulate AI — completely ignored. Like, they don't exist in this conversation.
Cole Bryant: Dude, okay — that's the verdict for me, actually. No wait, let me land this right. The rebrand didn't fail. It worked. It just worked for a different goal than people think. One news cycle where nobody's asking why there are no guardrails.
Zara Reyes: Cole you're doing the serious voice.
Cole Bryant: I know, I know — but even Neil Chilson, former FTC chief technologist, he thinks 'artificial intelligence' is a bad term. Like he's on record hating the phrase. And even he's not rallying around 'Super Intelligence.' Nobody is. Several agencies said yes, the entire rest of the ecosystem said absolutely not.
Zara Reyes: Which means the mandate phrase — 'to the maximum extent permitted by law' — that's not hedging. That's pre-built collapse. They wrote the exit into the order.
Cole Bryant: Pre-built collapse that bought exactly one news cycle. That's — I mean, that's actually the whole play, right? SI doesn't need to win. It just needed October 27th.
Zara Reyes: And while we were all typing 'Super Intelligence' into search, nobody wrote the story about what AI governance actually looks like when there's no framework and industry sets the rules. That's the one.
Cole Bryant: My favorite detail — still not over it — Elon uses 'AI data centers' on X the Sunday before October 27th. Not weeks before. Days. The guy in the room.
Zara Reyes: Mine is that 'to the maximum extent permitted by law' line baked into the September 29th order. They wrote the escape hatch into the mandate itself. That's not a policy, that's a confession.
Cole Bryant: And the Gulf of America appeal is just — sitting there. Like, if the court rules geography mandates violate the First Amendment, the 'Super Intelligence' play dies before a single VC has to update a deck. One ruling. Done.
Zara Reyes: Okay fine — I'll half-concede the theater read. It's not theater he was wrong about. It's theater that knows exactly what it's doing and built the collapse in from day one. The word 'artificial' was never the problem. The absence of any actual policy is.
Cole Bryant: That's the line. Toast to 'Super Intelligence' — may it rest in the Federal Register where it belongs.
