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By Jason Matheny

Jason Matheny is founding director of Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Previously he was Assistant Director of National Intelligence, and Director of IARPA, responsible for the development of breakthrough technologies for the U.S. intelligence community. Before IARPA, he worked at Oxford University, the World Bank, the Applied Physics Laboratory, the Center for Biosecurity, and Princeton University, and was the co-founder of two biotechnology companies. He is a member of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and the National Academies’ Intelligence Community Studies Board; is a recipient of the Intelligence Community’s Award for Individual Achievement in Science and Technology, the National Intelligence Superior Service Medal, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers; and was named one of Foreign Policy’s “Top 50 Global Thinkers.” He has served on various White House committees related to artificial intelligence, biosecurity, high-performance computing, and quantum information science. He co-led the National AI R&D Strategic Plan released by the White House in 2016 and was a member of the White House Select Committee on AI, created in 2018. He holds a Ph.D. in applied economics from Johns Hopkins University, an MPH from Johns Hopkins University, an MBA from Duke University and a B.A. from the University of Chicago.

Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity Director Jason Matheny worries a lot about national security risks that probably aren’t headlining many lists of pressing threats to the United States — pandemics, autonomous systems, and strategic nuclear war, to name a few.

“We also have a need to protect what’s right now a wild west of biotechnology,” he told The Cipher Brief’s Annual Threat Conference in Sea Island, Georgia last week.

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