Salman Ahmed

Salman Ahmed is Distinguished Chair in Strategy and Diplomacy at RAND. He is currently focused on how the advent of artificial general intelligence (AGI) would impact U.S. national security and diplomatic strategy.

Ahmed has held numerous senior positions in government at the intersection of strategy and diplomacy. Over the past four years, he served as the Director of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff. In that capacity, he provided independent advice to the Secretary on the U.S. response to key strategic and geopolitical challenges. He led numerous “policy planning dialogues” with allies, partners, and the PRC on the end of the post-Cold War era and what comes next. Under his leadership, the policy planning staff played a key role in crafting and driving the Secretary’s agenda to modernize U.S. diplomacy, to include greater focus on cybersecurity, digital policy, and emerging technology. From 2009-2017, he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Strategic Planning at the National Security Council, and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.

Outside of government, Ahmed was a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he led a bipartisan task force dedicated to Making U.S. Foreign Policy Work Better for America’s Middle Class. He also served for almost 15 years with the United Nations, working mainly on the management and reform of the UN’s international peacekeeping machinery; co-drafting the UN Secretary-General’s landmark report on the Fall of Srebrenica; and serving in field missions in Cambodia, South Africa, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ahmed taught at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. He earned an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Cambridge, and a BS in Economics from New York University’s Stern School of Business.