AI, national security, and democratic accountability

Ashley Deeks, a Miller Center faculty senior fellow, is the vice dean of the University of Virginia School of Law and directs the National Security Law Center. Her primary research and teaching interests are international law, national security, intelligence, and the laws of war. She is the author of The Double Black Box: National Security, Artificial Intelligence, and the Struggle for Democratic Accountability and has written articles on the use of force, executive power, secret treaties, the intersection of national security and international law, and the laws of armed conflict. She is a member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Law, a senior fellow at the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare, and a senior contributor to the Lawfare blog. Deeks served in the Biden administration as White House associate counsel and deputy legal advisor to the National Security Council.

Brian Lessenberry is a senior national security practitioner with nearly three decades of experience at the intersection of intelligence, strategy, and emerging technology. He previously served as deputy assistant secretary of state for global analysis, where he led work on global threats and emerging technologies. He also served in senior leadership roles at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, where he directed intelligence support to U.S. warfighters and decision-makers, and at the National Intelligence Council, where he was the National Intelligence Officer for Weapons of Mass Destruction. Now based in Charlottesville, he advises and mentors the next generation of national security leaders and innovators.

George Foresman is the executive director of the National Security Policy Center at University of Virginia’s National Security Data and Policy Institute. Foresman has served in confirmed cabinet positions at both the state and federal level, as Virginia’s homeland security secretary in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks and then as undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. His bipartisan career includes appointed roles with five Democratic and Republican governors and three U.S. presidents. Foresman’s leadership experience also includes roles as the chief executive of a multi-billion-dollar organization with thousands of employees, heading 25 national working groups, cochairing a five year congressionally established commission on U.S. security, and participating in a project to reform the U.S. national security system. Foresman is a graduate of Virginia Military Institute and the Virginia Executive Institute.