This Forum event featured Thom Mason and Kim Budil in conversation with moderators Donald Haynes and Brian Spears on how AI is reshaping national security, scientific leadership, and the role of the U.S. national laboratories. The discussion explored how a rapidly changing global security environment, including competition with China and evolving nuclear deterrence dynamics, is converging with a major computational and AI revolution. The speakers emphasized that AI creates enormous opportunities for the labs to accelerate scientific discovery, strengthen resilience, and improve mission execution, while warning that existing institutions, infrastructure, classified environments, and workforce culture are not yet prepared to fully capitalize on these capabilities. A major theme was the “AI overhang,” or the gap between what frontier AI can already do and how slowly critical institutions are able to adopt it. The conversation also highlighted the need for closer partnerships between national laboratories and frontier AI companies, recognizing that many important AI advances are now being driven by the private sector. The session concluded with a call for the United States to invest at greater scale, modernize its scientific infrastructure, empower technical experts, and move with greater urgency to translate AI leadership into long-term strategic advantage.

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar joined UC Investments CIO Jagdeep Singh Bachher for an OpenAI Forum conversation on AI’s impact on finance and careers. Friar reflected on her nonlinear path from engineering to finance leadership, emphasizing curiosity, adaptability, and kindness as essential skills for students entering a changing workforce. She described how OpenAI’s finance team is using tools like custom GPTs for investor relations, audit support, and more. While AI is transforming finance tasks and expanding what lean teams can do, Friar stressed that human trust and relationships remain central, especially in fundraising and leadership.