Aalok Mehta

Director, Wadhwani AI Center
Aalok Mehta

Aalok Mehta currently serves as the director of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he oversees the program’s projects and research on a wide range of AI policy topics. He previously served as the responsible AI policy lead at Google, where he oversaw policy development and analysis for a wide range of global AI governance, testing, evaluation, and legislative issues. Prior to that, he served as senior adviser to SeedAI and was OpenAI’s U.S. policy lead, where he ran policy operations during the launches of DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT. Previously, as a senior appropriations staffer in the House of Representatives, he oversaw a portfolio of technology, cybersecurity, and financial regulators. Mehta worked on emerging technologies, including AI, 5G, and autonomous vehicles, at the National Economic Council and the Office of Management and Budget, and advised senior leadership on wireless and competition issues at the Federal Communications Commission. He is a 2025 presidential leadership scholar and a 2023 Eisenhower USA fellow, for which he traveled to India and Sweden to study social safety net programs that can help manage technology-driven job shifts. He has a PhD from the University of Southern California, where his dissertation focused on U.S.-China AI great power competition, as well as an MA and MPP; he also has a BA from Rice University. Prior to working in public policy, he served as a technology journalist for a variety of outlets in Washington, D.C., including National Geographic and the Washington Post.

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The AI Policy Podcast

Decoding State-Level Regulation with Jason Elliott

Jason Elliott, the former Deputy Chief of Staff to California Governor Gavin Newsom, joins for a conversation about regulating AI at the state level.

Podcast Episode by Aalok Mehta — September 10, 2026

Photo: CSIS

AI Agent Containment Failures: Technical Realities and Policy Responses

The Wadhwani AI Center is pleased to host an event on recent frontier AI security incidents, featuring a keynote address from Representative Suhas Subramanyam (VA-10), a presentation from Hugging Face and expert panel discussion. Presented with the Institute for Law and AI. 

Event — August 24, 2026

The AI Policy Podcast

Three More AI Hacking Incidents, and a Push to 'Pace the Frontier'

In this episode, we touch on Texas' new verification and audit requirement for data center developers seeking connection to the state's grid (1:11) before unpacking Anthropic's disclosure of three incidents in which its models hacked into another company during internal cyber evaluations (11:02).

Podcast Episode by Aalok Mehta and Nicole Errera — August 6, 2026

Photo: CSIS