Staff at US AI safety center asked to report informally to White House office
The Associated Press reported on November 8, 2026, citing two former government officials, that staff at the Commerce Department's Center for Advancing Innovation and Standards for Super Intelligence (CAISSI) were recently asked to report informally to an office in the White House. The AP did not identify that office. CAISSI is formally an independent Commerce division with an annual budget of about $10 million, roughly one-eighth of the budget of its UK counterpart. The White House did not answer specific questions about the center. Its statement instead pointed to Trump's newly formed Super Intelligence Force, which it said would help maintain US leadership in AI.
The center has gone months without a permanent leader. According to the AP account, a director hired in April was fired within days, and a replacement later resigned. The Hill identified the April hire as Collin Burns, who had previously worked at Anthropic, and reported that Chris Fall resigned in July after about three months in the job. NIST director Arvind Raman, who heads the parent institute, is serving as acting director.
CAISSI also stopped publishing public AI safety reports in August, the same month Congress asked why. That leaves outside evaluators with fewer public benchmarks. The core reporting rests on anonymous sources, and no published record shows changed findings or a formal reorganization of the center.
Why it matters
Companies that expect government testing before launch use CAISSI's evaluations as a reference point. If those reviews start running through a White House channel, founders may face new contacts, longer timelines, or criteria that shift with political priorities. Third-party evaluators also have fewer published results to compare against, which makes independent benchmarks harder to build and weigh.
Investors should treat the leadership vacancies and small budget as a risk factor for any business whose revenue depends on federal approval or procurement. Teams preparing for pre-deployment reviews or government contracts should document their own testing, keep evidence that does not depend on a single agency, and plan for reporting lines that may change.
Key points
- 1Two former officials told the Associated Press that CAISSI staff were asked to report informally to a White House office.
- 2CAISSI is formally an independent Commerce Department division with an annual budget of about $10 million.
- 3The UK counterpart spends roughly $80 million on AI safety, about eight times CAISSI's budget, according to AI Weekly.
- 4A director hired in April was fired within days, and the replacement resigned in July after about three months.
- 5CAISSI stopped publishing public AI safety reports in August, the same month Congress asked why.
