Battleground AI: U.S. National Security and Adversarial Use of AI

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For malign actors seeking to undermine U.S. global leadership and economic prosperity, AI is the latest battleground. To learn how U.S. adversaries leverage AI to advance their military, cyber, and malign influence capabilities, join RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, senior director of FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI); Matt Pottinger, chairman of FDD’s China Program and CEO of Garnaut Global LLC; and Leah Siskind, AI research fellow and director of impact at FDD.

This panel will discuss how the government and private sector innovation base can collaborate to combat national security threats, counter adversarial AI use, and expand the innovation capabilities of America and its allies around the world.

RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery

RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery serves as senior director of FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation and directs CSC 2.0, an initiative that works to implement the recommendations of the congressionally mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission, where he served as executive director. Previously, he served as policy director for the Senate Armed Services Committee, coordinating policy efforts on national security strategy, capabilities and requirements, and cyber policy. Montgomery served for 32 years in the U.S. Navy as a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer, retiring as a rear admiral in 2017.

Matt Pottinger

Matthew Pottinger is chairman of FDD’s China Program. He served the White House for four years in senior roles on the National Security Council staff, including as deputy national security advisor from 2019 to 2021. In that role, he coordinated the full spectrum of national security policy. He previously served as senior director for Asia, where he led the administration’s work on the Indo-Pacific region, in particular its shift on China policy. Matthew is credited with raising awareness of Chinese Communist Party efforts to spread influence and interfere in various U.S. institutions, including academia, the tech sector and Wall Street. Before his White House service, he spent the late 1990s and early 2000s in China as a reporter for Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. He then fought in Iraq and Afghanistan as a US Marine during three combat deployments between 2007 and 2010. Following active duty, he founded and led an Asia-focused risk consultancy and ran Asia research at an investment fund in New York

Leah Siskind

Leah Siskind is FDD’s director of impact and an artificial intelligence (AI) research fellow at FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation. At CCTI, her research focuses on the adversarial use of AI by state and non-state actors — including Iran, China, Russia, North Korea — targeting the United States and its allies. Before joining FDD, Leah served as the deputy director of the AI Corps at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. She previously spent four years with the U.S. Digital Service in the White House, where she led efforts to modernize government technology. Her private sector experience includes roles at data and analytics companies such as Palantir and Uptake. Earlier in her career, she served as chief of staff to former Obama adviser David Axelrod and worked in diplomacy as a representative of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, leading government affairs at the consulate in the Pacific Northwest.