The State Department Orders 'SI' Instead of 'AI': What It Means for .si Buyers

What the State Department cable says

The State Department has told its staff to write "Super Intelligence", or "SI", where they'd have written "artificial intelligence". That's according to an unclassified cable obtained by Nextgov/FCW and Government Executive, which both reported it on 20 October 2026.

The cable is dated Monday and addressed to the whole department. It covers new letters, emails, public messages, websites, reports, remarks and policy documents, subject to legal exceptions. Existing material should be updated when staff next revise it.

The line that matters most for anyone thinking about names is this one: "All official titles and the names of Department governance bodies, systems, platforms, inventories, and programs must use SI in place of AI."

It's already happened to one program. The cable says the American AI Exports Program is now the American SI Exports Program, and the program's public website already uses that name to describe its work helping American companies sell technology overseas.

Both outlets say the cable appears to be the first organisation-wide directive setting out where the new language must be used. It brings Trump's Sept. 29 executive order into the daily work of US diplomacy.

The exceptions are the part I'd read twice

This isn't a blanket swap. The cable lists several things that don't change:

• Language required by law and existing legal citations, including quotations from statutes, regulations, treaties and other legal instruments.
• Contracts and grants, pending further guidance.
• Previously published documents, cables and archived web pages, which shouldn't be revised or reissued just to change the wording.
• Published titles of existing presidential actions, programs and organisations, such as America's AI Action Plan, unless the department says otherwise.
• Foreign organisations' names. Staff are told not to change references to China's World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization.

There's also the question of definition. The executive order defines "Super Intelligence" as the same technologies and systems covered by the existing statutory definition of AI. The reports also note that in computing science, super intelligence is defined differently from the generative AI used today.

So for now, SI is a new label on the same thing. The law, the contracts and the archive still say AI. That's why I don't think anyone should read this as AI disappearing. It's two words running side by side, with government writing pushed towards one of them.

Outside government: Bezos and SpaceX

On the same day, two more stories showed the term spreading beyond Washington. Fox News host Bret Baier asked Jeff Bezos about Trump's preferred term, and Bezos said, "I do like SI because artificial is not a very flattering thing." He added: "Nobody wants an artificial sweetener or artificial flavoring. Artificial sort of means fake." That's from Yahoo Finance.

Bezos was also realistic about the timeline. He called changing a term as widely recognised as AI "a big road" and "a long road." I think that's the fairest summary of where things stand.

Then there's the money. SpaceX reported third-quarter 2026 revenue of $14.6 billion, up 161% from a year earlier, and its SI business became its largest revenue contributor at $7.6 billion for the quarter, according to MarketBeat's earnings call summary on Yahoo Finance. So SI is now a line in an earnings report that investors read, not just a word in a government memo.

What this changes for .si names, and what it doesn't

Here's what it changes. Every State Department system, platform, program and title is meant to carry SI from now on. Each one is another place where people read, type and search those two letters. Add a SpaceX segment and a Bezos endorsement, and SI is getting more exposure than it was a month ago.

Here's what it doesn't change. It doesn't mean companies will rename. It doesn't mean private buyers will pay more for .si names. None of these sources mention .si domains at all, and I won't pretend they do. Most .si names are speculation, and the aftermarket for them is small. A government memo doesn't create buyers on its own.

It also doesn't change the rule I keep repeating. A generic word on .si can make sense when the .com and .ai are taken or priced out of reach. A copy of somebody's brand never makes sense, whatever the government calls the technology.

Names in my inventory that fit this story

The American SI Exports Program exists to help companies sell technology overseas, so selling and markets are the obvious theme. These are plain generic names where the other extensions are taken or expensive:

• aimarket.si at $4,500. The .com is listed at $594,888 and the .ai at $47,995. 12,100 searches a month.
• aiprompts.si at $5,500. The .com has been held since 2018 and the .ai is listed at $44,500. Over 200,000 searches a month worldwide for the exact phrase.
• greatmind.si at $2,000. The .com is listed at $500,000 and the .ai is for sale, price on request. 33,100 searches a month.
• futurehuman.si at $1,500. The .com has been held since 1999 and the .ai is listed at $290,000. 5,400 searches a month.

Two of those keep "ai" inside the name. Since the cable leaves AI in law, contracts and archives, I don't see that as a weakness: people are likely to search both words for a long time. You can see the full list at aidomains.si.

Should you buy a .si name because of this?

Not because of the cable alone. It's a real step: a major department putting SI into its titles, systems and programs. But it's an internal style rule with wide exceptions, and Bezos himself calls the switch a long road. If you're buying, buy because the name works for a business, not because of a headline.

Run the three-question test first:

1. Are the .com and .ai taken or expensive? If you can get the .com at a fair price, the .com is usually the better buy. Take it.
2. Is it a generic name and not a brand? Plain words only. Never a copy of one company's name.
3. Do people search for it? Check the monthly search volume. If nobody types the phrase, the extension won't save it.

If a name passes all three, a .si can be a sensible, cheaper option. If it fails any one of them, I'd walk away, and I'd tell you to do the same.

Names from this store that pass the test

Questions

Sources

1. Nextgov/FCW, 2026-10-20
2. Government Executive, 2026-10-20
3. Yahoo Finance, 2026-10-20
4. Yahoo Finance (MarketBeat), 2026-10-20

This post was researched and drafted with AI help from the sources above, then checked by me before publishing. Facts are as reported on the dates shown.