Artificial Intelligence Security and Stability

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) is at a pivotal moment. AI capabilities continue to rapidly improve, with top-performing AI systems on the verge of eclipsing human expert-level performance in critical domains such as mathematics, coding, and science. In the midst of this rapidly shifting technological landscape, AI has become a source of intense geopolitical competition, particularly between the United States and China. Nations around the world are investing in AI to improve their military, intelligence, and other national security capabilities. AI policy has become a central issue for U.S. national security and industrial policy. How U.S. policymakers address these challenges, and how other nations and private companies respond, could have profound consequences for the future of AI development. The CNAS AI Security and Stability project aims to inform government decision-making on the most critical AI policy issues that will affect the future of AI development. Major lines of effort include:

• Understand and mitigate risks from national security relevant advanced AI capabilities: These risks can include dangerous capabilities in domains such as cyber operations, biological weapons, nuclear stability, and the financial sector; risks of future misalignment or loss of control from agentic AI systems; or systemic risks from U.S.-China AI competition.
• Understand and shape opportunities for compute governance: Compute is emerging as a key lever for AI governance as a consequence of technological and geopolitical trends. This line of effort will deliver concrete policy recommendations to preserve U.S. advantage and leverage in governing computing hardware and, by extension, the most capable frontier AI systems.
  
• Improve U.S. military processes for ensuring safe, secure, and trusted AI: This line of effort seeks to identify concrete ways that military AI systems may fail and how the U.S. military can establish policies that ensure AI capabilities are safe and trustworthy.
• Understand Chinese decision-making on AI and stability: This line of effort focuses on ways that advances in AI contribute to risks in the U.S.-China security relationship and how U.S. and allied policymakers can mitigate those risks.
  
• Inform the use of U.S. economic security tools to shape AI development and proliferation: This line of effort analyzes the policy and commercial drivers of AI diffusion globally, develops a U.S. economic security policy framework for responsible diffusion of AI, and assesses long-term risks to U.S. AI leadership from unintended consequences of broader U.S. economic policy decisions.

This cross-program effort includes the CNAS Technology and National Security, Defense, Indo-Pacific Security, and Energy, Economics, and Security programs. CNAS experts will share their findings in public reports and policy briefs with recommendations for policymakers. This project is made possible with the generous support of Coefficient Giving.

Further Reading