Jason Matheny

Jason Matheny holds a Ph.D. in applied economics and an M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University, an M.B.A. from Duke University and a B.A. in art history from the University of Chicago. He worked for Oxford University and the World Bank before joining the intelligence community, where he became director of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), responsible for developing advanced technologies for the U.S. intelligence community. He received the intelligence community's Award for Individual Achievement in Science and Technology and the National Intelligence Superior Service Medal.¹ Open Philanthropy's 2019 grant page described him as having co-founded New Harvest, the cultured-meat nonprofit, and as someone who "broadly shares our interest in cost-effective ways of doing as much good as possible."²

CSET and the White House

In January 2019 Open Philanthropy gave 55 million dollars over five years to Georgetown University to launch the Center for Security and Emerging Technology with Matheny as its director; the grant investigator was Luke Muehlhauser. The grant page cited "multiple conversations with leaders in the defense, intelligence, and policymaking communities" and noted his seat on the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, created by Congress in 2018.² In March 2021 he left CSET for the White House with three titles: deputy assistant to the president for technology and national security, deputy director for national security in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and coordinator for technology and national security at the National Security Council. The NSCAI report he had helped write had recommended changes to national AI policy that he would now help oversee. Dewey Murdick took over CSET as interim director.³

RAND

Matheny became president and chief executive of the RAND Corporation in July 2022.¹ Open Philanthropy gave RAND 5.5 million dollars in April 2023 and 10.5 million in October 2023, in each case "to be spent at the discretion of RAND president and CEO Jason Matheny"; he allocated the October gift to a technology policy training program, the Pardee RAND Graduate School, a new China studies center and a research fund on emerging technology and security.⁴ In September 2023 he became one of the five original trustees of Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust, and he stepped down in December 2023, according to Anthropic, "to preempt any potential conflicts of interest that might arise with RAND Corporation's policy-related initiatives."⁵

In October 2023 the Politico reporter Brendan Bordelon called Matheny "a luminary in the effective altruist community." He reported that Matheny had recommended licensing of advanced AI to the House Science Committee, and that the RAND information scientist Jeff Alstott, who had worked in the White House alongside Matheny, had in an April 19, 2023 email to members of the Omidyar Network circulated an AI licensing proposal he said he had shared with about "40 Hill staffers of both parties," asking recipients to "keep this document and attribution off the public internet." A RAND spokesperson, Jeffrey Hiday, confirmed the email, said Open Philanthropy's money had no bearing on RAND's recommendations, and called Matheny "a financially disinterested trustee."⁶

The AI Executive Order

In December 2023 Politico reported that RAND personnel, including Alstott, had helped draft the reporting requirements in Section 4 of President Biden's executive order on AI of October 30, 2023, which set the reporting threshold for advanced models at more than 10^26 operations, the figure Alstott had proposed; all six of the policy recommendations Alstott made at a September Senate hearing appeared in Section 4 "in some fashion." At a RAND all-hands meeting on October 25, 2023, a recording of which Politico obtained, Matheny said that the "National Security Council, [the Department of Defense] and [the Department of Homeland Security] have been deeply worried about catastrophic risk from future AI systems and asked RAND to produce several analyses," which "informed new export controls and a key executive action expected from the White House next week." An employee at the meeting asked whether the "push for the effective altruism agenda, with testimony and policy memos under RAND's brand, is appropriate"; Matheny answered that it would be "irresponsible" not to address catastrophic AI risk and that "if anything, [he's] seen Open Philanthropy be more hands-off." On October 30, hours before the order was released, Alstott emailed RAND colleagues what he called "a version [of the order] from a week ago." Hiday confirmed the recording and the email and said funders "have no influence on the results of our work." Two Horizon fellows worked at RAND.⁷

In April 2026 the Washington Examiner reported, from documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, that while at the White House Matheny had hired Ben Buchanan, director of CSET's CyberAI project, under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, with Georgetown continuing to pay Buchanan's salary and the government reimbursing it, and tasked him with helping craft the administration's AI policies; Buchanan became an architect of the Biden export controls on advanced chips. Buchanan said he "scrupulously complied with all legal and ethics rules and answered only to President Biden and the senior White House staff." RAND did not provide comment from Matheny.⁸

In a letter to Matheny of September 2024, Senator Ted Cruz, ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, wrote that "RAND apparently had an outsized role in drafting the AI Executive Order," that the order "captures all six of the policy recommendations a senior RAND official provided in congressional testimony last year," and that "you are one of five members on Anthropic's 'Long-Term Benefit Trust.'" He wrote that Tasha McCauley, "an adjunct senior management scientist at RAND and effective altruism advocate," had left OpenAI's board, and that "Last year, Open Philanthropy gave RAND $16 million."⁹