John Blakeslee is an M.Phil. student at the RAND School of Public Policy and an assistant policy researcher at RAND. His research examines how the United States deploys financial, regulatory, and technological tools to constrain adversaries and shape allied behavior amid U.S.-China strategic competition. Current projects investigate outbound investment restrictions on AI capital flows, whether allied sovereign wealth funds substitute for restricted American capital in Chinese technology sectors, and critical data infrastructure vulnerabilities. His quantitative methods span staggered difference-in-differences estimation and New Keynesian modeling of data poisoning attacks on monetary policy, drawing on custom AI-powered tools for synthesizing regulatory filings, investor communications, and foreign-language primary sources. His MNSP capstone, The Political Economy of Cognitive Infrastructure, argues that large language models are strategic national assets and that control of their training data constitutes geopolitical leverage.
Prior to RAND, Blakeslee served in the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Operations, with overseas assignments in sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America who has sold original work to Netflix and worked in television on shows including Jane the Virgin and Casual. He holds a bachelor's degree in political science and philosophy from Boston College, where he received the Donald S. Carlisle Award as the department's top graduate, and a Master of Fine Arts in writing for screen and television from the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Education
MNSP in national security policy / economics, RAND School of Public Policy; M.F.A. in writing for screen & television, Univerity of Southern California; B.A. in political science & philosophy, Boston College