Ben Buchanan is a former Special Advisor for Artificial Intelligence at the White House during the Biden administration and an academic and think-tank voice on AI policy. He is the author of The Hacker and the State (2020) and is most often cited in connection with the federal pre-release-vetting debate, where his published position favors a lighter-touch approach.
Background
Buchanan's research focus is on AI in national security, with a long-standing emphasis on cyber-AI capability that predates the Mythos preview. He authored The Hacker and the State (2020). His institutional affiliation in the post-White House period is the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET)).
Roles
During the Biden administration Buchanan served as Special Advisor for Artificial Intelligence at the White House, where he helped shape the architecture later associated with CAISI (NIST CAISI (Center for AI Standards and Innovation)).
Positions and statements
On federal pre-release vetting, Buchanan's published position favors a procurement-and-evaluation model, CAISI-led and voluntary-but-leveraged, over mandatory third-party testing modeled on FDA review (AI Pre-Release Vetting). He is placed on the "narrow" side of the May 2026 two-track Trump-administration executive-order drafting debate, where he was cited alongside Dean Ball as a counterweight to Anthropic-aligned advocates of mandatory broad pre-release vetting.
More broadly, Buchanan argues that the government's most effective AI-policy lever is convening and procurement leverage rather than direct rule-making (Procurement-Driven AI Governance). Specific publications and op-eds on the two-track EO drafting are queued for ingest.
Relationships
- related: Dean Ball — adjacent lighter-touch pre-release-vetting voice.
- related: AI Pre-Release Vetting — the policy question Buchanan is most cited on.
- related: Procurement-Driven AI Governance — Buchanan's preferred governance mode.
- related: NIST CAISI (Center for AI Standards and Innovation) — the operational vehicle Buchanan helped shape.
- related: Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) — Buchanan's institutional affiliation in the post-White House period.
Sources
Substantive Buchanan publications are queued for foundational ingest. Buchanan is cited on the AI Pre-Release Vetting EO drafting debate alongside Dean Ball as a lighter-touch-pre-release-vetting voice; his published positions are summarized from the May 2026 two-track Trump-administration executive-order drafting debate coverage. The Hacker and the State (2020) is the primary book-length work attributed to him.