Atlantic Council Commission on AI lays a roadmap for US leadership in the age of AI
The global AI landscape is defined by three intersecting forces: intensified geopolitical competition, deepening interdependence, and accelerating technological disruption. Authoritarian states are leveraging AI to consolidate domestic control and extend influence abroad, while recent frontier model developments, particularly in cybersecurity, underscore the urgency of the United States maintaining the lead in capability development. The Atlantic Council Commission on AI was formed to meet this moment and establish a blueprint for sustained US leadership in AI across six critical domains: innovation, talent, governance, supply chain, energy, and allies and partners.
The Commission reached a unifying conclusion: US leadership in AI will not be determined by any single action, but by many actions pursued through a connected, coherent, and comprehensive approach. Critically, that leadership must be grounded in public trust as a foundational element across all six domains. Building citizens’ confidence in AI, while demonstrating clear safeguards and tangible benefits, is a prerequisite for the United States to compete effectively.
The Commission identified seven cross-cutting imperatives that must underpin any coherent national AI strategy:
- Competitiveness requires public trust and optimism. Policymakers and industry must demonstrate the net positive impact of AI on citizens’ daily lives, providing clear guardrails and assurances around safety and security.
- Innovation and integration are equal priorities. A strategy focused solely on frontier model development is insufficient. Adoption and deployment must be elevated as equal priorities to ensure broad social returns.
- AI is a collective ecosystem that requires holistic strategy and management. Infrastructure, workforce readiness, and integration priorities must be addressed in parallel. Progress in any domain is constrained by the weakest link in another.
- The global security landscape has fundamentally changed and requires urgent action. Cybersecurity implications of new AI models require structured public-private partnerships to enable coordinated awareness and preparation.
- American strength scales with allies. Sustained leadership requires actively building AI development, deployment, and governance capacity among partners. The breadth of the United States’ coalition is as important as the depth of its domestic capabilities.
- Durable leadership is grounded in long-term strategy. The United States needs an enduring national AI strategy that establishes durable priorities while remaining explicitly designed for adaptation as the technology evolves.
- Measurement is key. A national AI scorecard that continuously tracks key indicators across all six domains is as foundational to the success of a national strategy as the models themselves.
Within each domain critical to national AI competitiveness, the Commission identified the significant flashpoints that must be addressed and put forward a series of findings and recommendations intended to build on and accelerate government actions taken to date. The slate of recommendations reflects a nonpartisan approach, focused on advancing actions that, to be effective, should be sustained across political cycles and realized as part of a strategic whole.
The Path Forward
Two areas warrant immediate follow-on action.
First, the Commission proposes establishment of a national AI scorecard: a taxonomy of baseline indicators to assess US competitiveness and guide a responsive national strategy. Rigorous evaluation is essential for technology evolving at this pace, as it enables governments to design smarter policies, measure return on investment, and course-correct in real time.
Second, the US approach to international partnerships must evolve. This requires resolving open questions around interdependence, interoperability, private-sector roles, mutual defense, and capability gaps. The rapid advancement of AI will continue to complicate and reshape geopolitics. Without a strategy grounded in the technical, economic, and geographic realities of the AI ecosystem, existing alliances risk fracturing, accelerating the fragmentation of the global order when cohesion is most needed.
Key Recommendations
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Measuring US success
Realizing AI’s potential to advance the United States’ economy, society, and position in the world requires a deliberate, structured measurement architecture. It requires a system that enables qualitative and quantitative assessments to facilitate evidence-based decision-making around how AI is developed, deployed, and governed. Without a consistent, rigorous methodology that tracks the full suite of elements contributing to AI competitiveness, policymakers risk designing ineffective, short-sighted policy interventions that could handicap the US national ability to compete effectively.
Organized along each of the critical areas for AI competitiveness studied by the commission, the baseline indicators outlined below will be essential for assessing the current state and relative strength of US competitiveness and enabling a strategic, national approach. This framework is by no means exhaustive but is intended to sketch out an integrated baseline that could be used to measure AI competitiveness moving forward. This approach could be extrapolated with similar measures among allies and partners to build an effective diffusion strategy, measuring the allied AI stack to scale US competitiveness globally.
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