A message from Isaac "Ike" Harris on the necessity of a translation layer for democratic AI leadership.
I've spent more than two and a half decades at the intersection of technology, governance, and national security. As a naval officer commanding a destroyer, I saw firsthand what happens when the systems we rely on are opaque, untested, or poorly integrated.
As a military and then congressional strategist focused on the Chinese Communist Party's technology ambitions, I watched Beijing execute its playbook with speed and discipline while Washington debated definitions.
"The defining question of our time is not whether AI will transform society, but who will shape that transformation."
In the private sector at a global supply chain risk management company, I saw the vast chasms between technology companies and national security needs. As a think tank senior fellow, I worked with brilliant minds to address these needs.
Three things became clear to me:
"The space between strategic intent and operational reality is America's most urgent vulnerability."
I founded The Chiron Project because we are at a critical moment. If democracies do not build the implementation frameworks, standards, and metrics that govern AI, authoritarian systems will. And they will export those systems globally.
I know what is at stake. I've led teams in environments where a single flawed data feed can shape a life-or-death decision. I've watched China build a vertically integrated AI ecosystem designed for control, not freedom. And I've seen American innovators desperate to build responsibly, but isolated from national-security imperatives and mission needs that would allow them to do so.
Chiron exists to close that gap.
Chiron is neither a think tank nor an advocacy group. It is an operational effort to build the standards and mechanisms that ensure AI strengthens American power and reflects American principles.
Time is not on our side. The next two years will determine whether the United States leads the future of AI or adapts to rules written elsewhere.
This is the work of my life, and it is why I built Chiron.
The opportunity to shape the future of democratic AI is now. We invite strategic partners, technical experts, and policy leaders to join us in establishing the implementation frameworks that will define the next generation of global power.
