Inside the Biden admin’s AI policy approach | Jake Sullivan, Biden’s NSA | via The Cognitive Revolution

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Sep 26, 2025

Jake Sullivan, the former U.S. National Security Advisor, dives into the challenges and opportunities of AI as a national security issue. He introduces a four-category framework to assess AI risks, emphasizing the importance of 'managed competition' with China. Sullivan discusses the Pentagon's slow AI adoption and the need for private sector leadership to keep pace. He also shares insights on the implications of AI in modern warfare and highlights the potential for job disruption, urging for robust social policies to address these changes.

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INSIGHT

Plan For Powerful AI As A Core Security Issue

Jake Sullivan treats powerful near-term AI as a distinct possibility and plans policy on that basis.
He ranks AI alongside top national security issues because it touches warfare, economy, and non-state threats.

ADVICE

Accelerate Government AI Adoption

Integrate AI across government agencies and speed adoption to retain advantage.
Use directives and leadership from the White House to break bureaucratic barriers in the Pentagon and intelligence community.

ADVICE

Use Demos But Prepare Flexible Rules

Use vivid demos to build political awareness but expect Congress to act after real-world impacts.
Prepare flexible regulatory tools and deploy them based on evolving tech and dialogue with industry.

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Jake Sullivan was the US National Security Advisor from 2021-2025. He joined our friends on The Cognitive Revolution podcast in August to discuss AI as a critical national security issue. We thought it was such a good interview and we wanted more people to see it, so we’re cross-posting it here on The 80,000 Hours Podcast.

Jake and host Nathan Labenz discuss:

Jake’s four-category framework to think about AI risks and opportunities: security, economics, society, and existential.
Why Jake advocates for "managed competition" with China — where the US and China "compete like hell" while maintaining sufficient guardrails to prevent conflict.
Why Jake thinks competition is a "chronic condition" of the US-China relationship that cannot be solved with “grand bargains.”
How current conflicts are providing "glimpses of the future" with lessons about scale, attritability, and the potential for autonomous weapons as AI gets integrated into modern warfare.
Why Jake worries that Pentagon bureaucracy prevents rapid AI adoption while China's People’s Liberation Army may be better positioned to integrate AI capabilities.
And why we desperately need private sector leadership: AI is "the first technology with such profound national security applications that the government really had very little to do with."

Check out more of Nathan’s interviews on The Cognitive Revolution YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast

Originally produced by: https://aipodcast.ing

This edit by: Simon Monsour, Dominic Armstrong, and Milo McGuire | 80,000 Hours

Chapters:

Cold open (00:00:00)
Luisa's intro (00:01:06)
Jake’s AI worldview (00:02:08)
What Washington gets — and doesn’t — about AI (00:04:43)
Concrete AI opportunities (00:10:53)
Trump’s AI Action Plan (00:19:36)
Middle East AI deals (00:23:26)
Is China really a threat? (00:28:52)
Export controls strategy (00:35:55)
Managing great power competition (00:54:51)
AI in modern warfare (01:01:47)
Economic impacts in people’s daily lives (01:04:13)