Russ Wilcox is an analyst and operator working at the intersection of Chinese AI strategy, US national security, and emerging technology governance. He helps decision-makers in defense, policy, and industry understand what Beijing is building and what it means for the United States and its allies.
He chairs the Policy Committee of the American Society for AI, where he authored sections of the Society's submission to America's AI Action Plan, and serves as AI Council Chair at United World Leaders, where he convenes allied-nation policy work on artificial intelligence and emerging technology governance. He sits on a subcommittee of Governor Healey's Massachusetts AI Task Force.
His analysis appears in the Jamestown Foundation's China Brief and The Diplomat, where his decoding of the four-character framework 模芯云用 in the 15th Five-Year Plan was published before the official English translation existed. His brief on Beijing's commercial-diplomatic operations in Norway, prepared from the 2025 MOFCOM Investment Guide, traced the Nuctech corporate chain through Tsinghua Holdings to China National Nuclear Corporation. He publishes The Pacific Divide, a weekly intelligence newsletter on US-China AI competition.
He has spoken at TEDx Boston and is a returning speaker at the World Economic Forum (2024, 2025, 2026), a three-time Forbes feature on AI governance and local technology policy, and a 2026 Forbes Business Council panelist on the two-stack technology world. His work has been briefed to the National Security Council, the Office of the Deputy Secretary of Defense and Pentagon leadership, and multiple State Department bureaus including Cyberspace and Digital Policy, which invited him to UN General Assembly programming during the September 2025 diplomatic week. He has briefed U.S. senators and members of Congress, the UK House of Commons Business and Trade Committee, the Royal Norwegian Embassy, and senior counselors at the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
The same analytical discipline he brings to federal briefings he brings to civic AI work in his home state: school committee testimony, municipal AI policy advising, and the question of how local governments use artificial intelligence in service of the public.
Russ trained as a physicist, presented original research at the American Geophysical Union at seventeen, and built his career on a single discipline:
Go to the source. Then bring what you find to the rooms that need it.