On July 30, the CSIS Wadhwani AI Center hosted Michael Kratsios, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for a discussion breaking down the recently released AI Action Plan and discuss the Trump administration’s vision for U.S. AI leadership and innovation amid strategic competition with China. 

As the thirteenth Director of the White House OSTP, Mr. Kratsios oversees the development and execution of the nation’s science and technology policy agenda. He leads the Trump administration’s efforts to ensure American leadership in scientific discovery and technological innovation, including in critical and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and biotechnology. In the first Trump administration, he served as the fourth Chief Technology Officer of the United States at the White House and as Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering at the Pentagon.

Watch the full event or read the transcript here: Unpacking the White House AI Action Plan with OSTP Director Michael Kratsios 

In this special episode, we honor the life of Andrew Schwartz, Chief Communications Officer at CSIS and beloved  co-host of this podcast. Andrew was a mentor, a friend, and a tireless champion of the CSIS Wadhwani AI Center’s work. His humor, personal stories, and passion shaped this show and left a lasting impact on all of us. Our team, our community, and CSIS will miss him deeply.

In this episode, we are joined by Kyle Chan, postdoctoral researcher at Princeton’s Sociology Department and adjunct researcher at the RAND Corporation, to explore China's approach to AI industrial policy. We discuss the fundamentals of industrial policy and how it operates in China's digital technology sector (4:15), the evolution of China's AI industrial policy toolkit and its impact on companies (19:29), China's current AI priorities, protectionism strategies, and adoption patterns (47:05), and the future trajectory of China's AI industrial policy amid US-China competition (1:12:22).

Kyle co-authored RAND's June 26 report "Full Stack: China’s Evolving Industrial Policy for AI," which is available here.

In this episode, we’re joined by Miles Brundage, independent AI policy researcher and former Head of Policy Research at OpenAI, and Chris Rohlf, Security Engineer at Meta and cybersecurity expert. We cover the fundamentals of cybersecurity today (9:20), whether AI is tipping the offense-defense balance (21:00), the critical challenge of securing AI model weights (34:55), the debate over “AI security doomerism” (1:03:15), and how policymakers can strengthen incentives to secure AI systems (1:08:46).

In this episode, we discuss the U.S. AI Safety Institute's rebrand to the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (00:37), BIS Undersecretary Jeffrey Kessler's testimony on semiconductor export controls (10:36), and Meta's new AI superintelligence lab and accompanying $15 billion investment in Scale AI (22:26). 

On June 9, 2025,  the CSIS Wadhwani AI Center hosted Ryan Tseng, Co-Founder and President of Shield AI, a company building AI-powered software to enable autonomous capabilities for defense and national security. 

Mr. Tseng leads strategic partnerships with defense and policy leaders across the United States and internationally. Under his leadership, Shield AI secured major contracts with the U.S. Special Operations Command, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy, while expanding internationally with offices opening in Ukraine and the UAE. 

Watch the full event here.

In this episode, we discuss House Republicans’ proposed moratorium on state and local AI laws (00:57), break down AI-related appropriations across the executive branch (18:54), and unpack the safety issues and safeguards of Anthropic's newest model, Claude Opus 4 (26:51).

Correction: In this episode, a quote was incorrectly attributed directly to Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.). The statement—“Should the provision be stripped from the Senate reconciliation bill, some Republicans are eyeing separate legislation.”—was reported by The Hill as a paraphrase of Rep. Lee’s comments.

In this episode, we discuss Princeton researcher Kyle Chan's op-ed in the New York Times on China's industrial policy for AI and advanced technologies (0:35), what the Bureau of Industry and Security's new controls on Huawei's Ascend chips mean for China's AI ecosystem (10:09), and our biggest takeaways from President Trump's visit to the Middle East (19:07).

In this episode, we discuss the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the AI Diffusion Framework (1:34), the message of top AI executives in their recent Senate testimony (20:03), what AI adoption could mean for the IRS (35:15), the U.S. Copyright Office’s latest report on generative AI training (44:44), and what AI policy might look like in the new papacy (49:24).