Regulatory Consulting at Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

Overview

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a leading bipartisan national-security think tank, and its Wadhwani AI Center has become one of Washington’s most influential voices on the geopolitics of artificial intelligence. Established in 2023 through a $5 million commitment from CSIS trustee and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Romesh Wadhwani, the center produces in-depth research on AI and national security, U.S.–China competition, semiconductor export controls, and global AI governance — explicitly to help U.S. and allied policymakers improve their technological understanding, implement protections, and pursue agile governance. It is led by Gregory C. Allen, who joined CSIS from the Department of Defense’s Joint AI Center (where he was Director of Strategy and Policy) and whom Semafor has called ‘the most-watched U.S. analyst’ on AI and semiconductor export controls, and The Economist has described as central to formulating current U.S. policy. Allen leads a team — including Matt Mande, Laura Caroli, Georgia Adamson, and Kateryna Bondar — that advises bipartisan officials and civil servants through congressional testimony, private briefings, and published reports, while engaging directly with leading AI companies and academic researchers. That combination gives the Wadhwani AI Center a rare vantage point spanning the Pentagon, Congress, the frontier labs, and allied governments, and its analysis of export controls, U.S.–China competition, and systems like the Maven Smart System is cited constantly across the national press.

AI-Focused Regulatory Work

If you want to understand how Washington thinks about AI as a matter of national power, the Wadhwani AI Center is where much of that thinking gets formalized. Romesh Wadhwani founded it on a blunt premise — that regulatory frameworks were falling ‘very, very far behind’ generative AI, and that the U.S. needed a serious policy think tank to integrate research and recommendations for decision-makers — and Gregory Allen has built exactly that. Allen’s own trajectory is the center’s calling card: he helped shape allied AI policy at the 2023 and 2024 G7 Summits and the AI Safety Summit series, his research on AI and semiconductor export controls is treated as required reading, and his congressional testimony (including in December 2025 on protecting the U.S. lead in advanced chips) directly informs policy. The team’s output is unusually operational: detailed analyses of the Maven Smart System that has reshaped military targeting, breakdowns of the EU’s AI initiatives by EU-fluent scholars like Laura Caroli, and close tracking of specific export-control fights such as the B30A and H200 chip debates. What distinguishes CSIS from advocacy shops is its bipartisan, government-facing posture — it functions less as a critic and more as a trusted advisor that frontier labs, the Pentagon, and Congress all take seriously at once. For a directory reader focused on AI geopolitics, the Wadhwani AI Center is the single most-cited node connecting national-security policy, chip strategy, and the U.S.–China contest that increasingly defines global AI governance.

Notable AI Policy Work

• Produces the most-cited U.S. analysis on AI and semiconductor export controls (Gregory Allen), shaping congressional and executive-branch policy on chips and U.S.–China AI competition.
• Delivers frequent congressional testimony (e.g., December 2025 on protecting the U.S. lead in advanced chips) and private government briefings to bipartisan officials.
• Publishes detailed analyses of the Maven Smart System — the AI-powered military-targeting platform — and the policy questions raised by autonomous and software-defined warfare.
• Tracks and interprets EU AI initiatives (e.g., the EU ‘AI Continent Action Plan’) through EU-fluent scholars, and analyzes specific chip-policy fights (B30A, H200, licensing/export fees).
• Shaped allied AI-policy conversations at the 2023 and 2024 G7 Summits and the AI Safety Summit series, and runs an AI Governance Project and a monthly newsletter.
• Founded in 2023 via a $5M gift from CSIS trustee Romesh Wadhwani; engages directly with leading AI companies and academic researchers as part of its research process.

Thought Leadership

1. CSIS Wadhwani AI Center
   The CSIS Wadhwani AI Center — high-impact research on AI national security, U.S.–China competition, export controls, and global AI governance.
2. Wadhwani AI Center — Analysis & AI Governance Project
   The center’s ongoing analysis and AI Governance Project — including Maven, EU AI initiatives, and chip-export fights.
3. Gregory C. Allen — profile, testimony & publications
   Director Gregory Allen’s profile, testimony, and publications — widely regarded as the most-watched U.S. analyst on AI and semiconductor export controls.
4. Wadhwani AI Center — In the News
   The Wadhwani AI Center’s press coverage across NYT, POLITICO, Bloomberg, and the FT.

Clients

Bipartisan and government-facing: advises Congress and executive-branch national-security policymakers, and engages allied governments and frontier AI companies. Endowed in part by CSIS trustee Romesh Wadhwani; nonpartisan and nonprofit.