Publications

CSET produces evidence-driven analysis in a variety of forms, from informative graphics and translations to expert testimony and published reports. Our key areas of inquiry are the foundations of artificial intelligence — such as talent, data and computational power — as well as how AI can be used in cybersecurity and other national security settings. We also do research on the policy tools that can be used to shape AI’s development and use, and on biotechnology.

Report

CSET’s 2024 Annual Report

Center for Security and Emerging Technology
| March 2025

In 2024, CSET continued to deliver impactful, data-driven analysis at the intersection of emerging technology and security policy. Explore our annual report to discover key research highlights, expert testimony, and new analytical tools — all aimed at shaping informed, strategic decisions around AI and emerging tech.

Filter publications
Reports

Putting Teeth into AI Risk Management

Matthew Schoemaker
| May 2024

President Biden's October 2023 executive order prioritizes the governance of artificial intelligence in the federal government, prompting the urgent creation of AI risk management standards and procurement guidelines. Soon after the order's signing, the Office of Management and Budget issued guidance for federal departments and agencies, including minimum risk standards for AI in federal contracts. Similar to cybersecurity, procurement rules will be used to enforce AI development best practices for federal suppliers. This report offers recommendations for implementing AI risk management procurement rules.

Reports

An Argument for Hybrid AI Incident Reporting

Ren Bin Lee Dixon and Heather Frase
| March 2024

Artificial Intelligence incidents have been occurring with the rapid advancement of AI capabilities over the past decade. However, there is not yet a concerted policy effort in the United States to monitor, document, and aggregate AI incident data to enhance the understanding of AI-related harm and inform safety policies. This report proposes a federated approach consisting of hybrid incident reporting frameworks to standardize reporting practices and prevent missing data.

Formal Response

Comment on NIST RFI Related to the Executive Order Concerning Artificial Intelligence (88 FR 88368)

Mina Narayanan, Jessica Ji, and Heather Frase
| February 2, 2024

On February 2, 2024, CSET's Assessment and CyberAI teams submitted a response to NIST's Request for Information related to the Executive Order Concerning Artificial Intelligence (88 FR 88368). In the submission, CSET compiles recommendations from six CSET reports and analyses in order to assist NIST in its implementation of AI Executive Order requirements.

Data Snapshot

Introducing the Cyber Jobs Dataset

Maggie Wu
| February 6, 2024

This data snapshot is the first in a series on CSET’s cybersecurity jobs data, a new dataset created by classifying data from 513 million LinkedIn user profiles. Here, we offer an overview of its creation and explore some use cases for analysis.

Data Snapshot

The U.S. AI Workforce: Analyzing Current Supply and Growth

Sonali Subbu Rathinam
| January 30, 2024

Understanding the current state of the AI workforce is essential as the U.S. prepares an AI-ready workforce. This Data Snapshot provides the latest estimates for the AI workforce by using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey. It also highlights the changes in size and composition of the AI workforce since our earlier analysis of data from 2018.

Formal Response

Comment on DHS’s Proposed Rule Modernizing H-1B Requirements

Luke Koslosky
| December 2023

CSET submitted the following comment in response to a DHS Notice on Proposed Rule-Making from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services about modernizing H-1B requirements, providing flexibility in the F-1 program, and program improvements affecting other nonimmigrant workers

CSET submitted the following comment in response to a Request for Comment (RFC) from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) about a draft memorandum providing guidance to government agencies regarding the appointment of Chief AI Officers, Risk Management for AI, and other processes following the October 30, 2023 Executive Order on AI.

Reports

Repurposing the Wheel: Lessons for AI Standards

Mina Narayanan, Alexandra Seymour, Heather Frase, and Karson Elmgren
| November 2023

Standards enable good governance practices by establishing consistent measurement and norms for interoperability, but creating standards for AI is a challenging task. The Center for Security and Emerging Technology and the Center for a New American Security hosted a series of workshops in the fall of 2022 to examine standards development in the areas of finance, worker safety, cybersecurity, sustainable buildings, and medical devices in order to apply the lessons learned in these domains to AI. This workshop report summarizes our findings and recommendations.

Reports

Assessing China’s AI Workforce

Dahlia Peterson, Ngor Luong, and Jacob Feldgoise
| November 2023

Demand for talent is one of the core elements of technological competition between the United States and China. In this issue brief, we explore demand signals in China’s domestic AI workforce in two ways: geographically and within the defense and surveillance sectors. Our exploration of job postings from Spring 2021 finds that more than three-quarters of all AI job postings are concentrated in just three regions: the Yangtze River Delta region, the Pearl River Delta, and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area.

Reports

DOD’s Emerging Digital Workforce

Diana Gehlhaus, Ron Hodge, and Jonathan Rotner
| October 2023

This report summarizes recent DOD digital workforce trends as an update to our 2021 report. We expanded our definition of AI talent to include data, analytics, software, and AI, referred to here as the “digital workforce,” to be more aligned with Department needs and current workforce planning efforts. We find that the Department of Defense continues to struggle with their ability to define, identify, develop, assign, promote, and retain digital talent.