Former White House AI policy official Saif Khan launches Center for Technology & Statecraft

The Washington, DC research initiative will focus first on AI-driven automation and the social contract, alongside long-term US-China AI competition

The Center for Technology & Statecraft will research AI automation, the technology supply chain and long-term US-China competition

Former White House and Commerce Department official Saif M. Khan has launched the Center for Technology & Statecraft (CTS), a new non-partisan research initiative focused on some of the longer-term policy challenges emerging from advanced AI.

Based in Washington, DC, CTS is starting with two main areas: how policy should respond to growing virtual and physical automation, including its effects on work and the social contract, and how the US should manage long-term AI competition with China while maintaining stability.

The organization will operate as an independent initiative supported by the Institute for Progress (IFP), a non-partisan innovation policy think tank. Its research will also examine the AI value chain, from chipmaking tools, compute, algorithms and data through to software agents and AI-powered robots.

For Khan, who spent four years working on technology policy across the White House National Security Council and the Commerce Department, the launch is rooted in concern that policymaking could struggle to keep pace with rapidly advancing AI.

Writing on LinkedIn, he said: “But we've never had to adapt to a technology that is both this transformative and developing this fast.

“I worry policy will stay reactive right up until we face immense disruptions — including basic challenges to human agency and relevance in a world of powerful AI.”

His argument is not that those outcomes are inevitable. Instead, CTS is being built around the idea that policy choices can influence how the transition develops.

“Even still, I believe policy can steer this transition, but only with foresight and the right information,” Khan wrote.

AI automation puts work and the social contract on the agenda

The first strand of CTS's research will look at what happens as AI systems take on a larger share of both digital and physical work.

That includes software agents carrying out tasks traditionally completed by people at computers, as well as robotics and embodied AI extending automation into industrial and physical settings.

CTS plans to study the scale and characteristics of this AI labor, alongside its potential consequences for employment, the distribution of resources, competition and human agency.

The research agenda also goes further than asking which jobs might be automated. CTS says it wants to examine how elements of the social contract may need to change if AI becomes a more significant economic actor, including questions around taxation, corporate and intellectual property law, ownership structures and the distribution of the economic benefits generated by automation.

Its work will also consider how policy could help keep humans involved in economic and societal decision-making as AI capabilities expand.

That focus draws on Khan's earlier career. After around a decade working as an intellectual property and technology lawyer, he joined Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) in 2019, where his work included AI chips, semiconductor supply chains and AI policy.

He later moved into government, serving across the White House National Security Council and Commerce Department from 2021 to 2025.

Khan said that experience showed him the value of carrying out technical research before an issue reaches the center of policy debate.

“I’ve seen firsthand how technical, forward-looking research can inform policy if it’s ready for the policy window,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

US-China AI competition forms second research pillar

CTS's second major focus will be the long-term relationship between the US and China as both countries develop and deploy AI.

The organization plans to examine the factors shaping each country's AI capabilities, including access to computing power, chips and other parts of the AI supply chain, as well as how AI is deployed across economies and national security systems.

Its research agenda includes industrial policy, export controls and the longer-term effects of AI on the balance of technological power between the two countries.

But competition is only one side of the program. CTS also intends to study how the US and China could maintain stability and create room for coordination on areas including AI safety, resilience, verification and crisis response.

CTS says its analysis will consider changes in AI development, robotics, export controls and the wider US-China relationship into the 2030s.

The organization is also taking a deliberately broad view of how AI policy develops. Its research framework distinguishes between a “security mindset,” focused on sudden capability jumps and the actions of major governments and frontier AI companies, and a “diffusion mindset,” which looks at how AI spreads gradually through businesses, markets and society.

CTS says its researchers will draw from both depending on the issue, rather than treating them as competing approaches.

First investigations will focus on the AI supply chain

Khan is launching CTS with a team that includes Konstantin F. Pilz, Nicholas Brown, Amelia Michael and Mary Clare M., and says the organization plans to continue growing its research team.

The initiative is also setting aside dedicated budgets for computing resources and datasets, with the aim of using frontier AI systems as part of its research work.

The first major CTS investigations are expected in the coming weeks and will focus on the AI supply chain, the drivers of AI capabilities and China policy.