After his speech at the United Nations on 11 September, President Donald Trump announced that the term artificial intelligence would be replaced by super intelligence, a change that quickly caught the attention of the global tech community.
Within weeks, the Slovenian national registry— responsible for the .si domain space— reported a dramatic jump in new registrations. September saw 44,000 new addresses, a figure that more than doubles the number of domains added in August and represents a 2,100% increase compared to the previous month.
The spike coincided with the announcement that U.S. federal agencies had to adopt the new terminology in all official correspondence, reports spokesperson Klara Herman. She cautioned that while the data is clear, it is not conclusive evidence that the president’s remarks were the sole cause of the domain boom.
Domain speculators may have seen an opportunity. The practice, known as cyber‑squatting, involves registering high‑profile names in anticipation of future value. The temptation is amplified when a new acronym like SI shares initials with well‑known domain suffixes, prompting many to invest in logos and brand names that could later be sold on the secondary market.
Bundled with the executive order is a public confession that the typographical error in President Trump’s signature—misspelling ‘United States’—has become a viral meme, illustrating the challenge of aligning personal branding with national governance on a global stage.
The situation in Slovenia offers a fresh case study on how politics, branding, and the unregulated expanse of the internet can intersect, producing a novel form of digital” frenzy that is as much a reflection of human ambition as it is a technical phenomenon.
