Michael J. D. Vermeer is a researcher at RAND and the author of Historical Analogues That Can Inform AI Governance, published as RAND Research Report RRA3408-1 on August 21, 2024.
Research
The report argues that AI governance is in an early-formation phase in which present design choices will be path-dependent, and that the governance histories of earlier dual-use, general-purpose and rapidly-evolving technologies supply both templates and cautionary tales. It surveys analogues drawn from nuclear technology, the internet, biotechnology, chemical weapons, financial systems, aviation and pharmaceuticals (Historical Analogues That Can Inform AI Governance — Michael J. D. Vermeer (RAND, 2024)).
The work functions as a methodological reference for analogical reasoning in AI policy rather than as an argument for any particular analogy. Its nuclear-weapons chapter is a reference point for AI and National Security, and its treatment of chemical-weapons and biotechnology export-control regimes bears on the questions raised at Export Controls (AI). Other analogical works in the same tradition include The AI Grand Bargain — Ben Buchanan and Tantum Collins (Foreign Affairs, October 2025), which applies analogies to American railroads, the Manhattan Project and Operation Warp Speed, and Preemption, Federalism, and the Regulation of Emerging Technologies — Roger Hanshaw (ABA NR&E, Summer 2025), which develops an environmental-law analogy.