Hodan Omaar

California’s new AI safety law includes some constructive measures like incident reporting and whistleblower protections, but by acting at the state level, it creates a fragmented regulatory patchwork that undermines innovation, complicates a national framework, and risks weakening U.S. leadership in AI governance.

By uniting strategy, promotion, and regulation in a single law, South Korea has given itself a powerful instrument to shape AI—but its blunt regulatory mandates threaten to drag down the very strengths that make the act ambitious.

The idea that nations can invoke “AI sovereignty” to draw on U.S. technology when convenient, while walling off their markets, is not a bargain U.S. policymakers should entertain.

The United States plans to win the AI race by “exporting its full AI technology stack—hardware, models, software, applications, and standards—to all countries willing to join America’s AI alliance.” To succeed, it will need to pursue the right partners, make offers that meet their ambitions, and resist the urge to lead with virtue over value.

Philadelphia’s recent trash crisis highlights the need for a smarter approach to city services—one that uses low-cost AI tools to improve sanitation, reduce costs, and free up resources to better support the city’s workers.

The AI Action Plan signals that the United States is not only committed to pushing the boundaries of what AI can do but also ready to shape how it is built, deployed, and governed globally.

The American Science Acceleration Project (ASAP) is a timely effort to modernize the infrastructure that powers U.S. research. By improving how science is organized, resourced, and executed, ASAP can help unlock faster breakthroughs across a range of disciplines.

Germany’s new coalition government has created a central digital ministry to finally accelerate its slow-moving AI agenda, aiming to modernize public services and support AI innovation. But success hinges on whether it prioritizes practical reform over symbolic sovereignty, especially amid EU regulations and global competition.

The Center for Data Innovation urges the U.S. to refocus its federal AI R&D strategy on unlocking AI’s full potential by emphasizing deployment over harm prevention, linking technical design to real-world performance outcomes, and investing in the generation of high-quality, representative data to drive innovation and public benefit.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued two memos aimed at accelerating AI adoption across the federal government. But that vision won’t materialize unless other parts of the administration stop pulling in opposite directions or failing to act altogether.

U.S. AI policy prioritizes training compute while overlooking inference—the compute needed to deploy models effectively. As AI progress shifts toward optimizing inference, policymakers must adapt by supporting global deployment, refining export controls, and promoting energy-efficient AI to maintain U.S. competitiveness.

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin will decide on HB 2094, a flawed AI bill with inconsistent rules and unworkable enforcement. Signing it would add to a costly patchwork of state laws without improving outcomes.

Join ITIF and the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) for a timely discussion on how content transparency can strengthen trust across the digital ecosystem.

Watch ITIF's Center for Data Innovation discussion on how the United States can build a durable AI alliance that creates strategic partnerships that are mutually beneficial and contains China’s growing technological influence in the Global South.

Hodan Omaar moderates a panel on on AI infrastructure needs at the USA AI Summit hosted by Forum Global.

Hodan Omaar speaks on AI regulation, safety and responsibility at a global level.

Watch now for a panel discussion by ITIF's Center for Data Innovation on what the rise of agentic AI means for innovation, competition, and policy, how prepared the United States is to keep pace, and what policy shifts might be needed to ensure consumers and businesses can successfully develop and deploy AI agents.

Hodan Omaar briefs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on US-ROK collaboration for quantum technologies.

Hodan Omaar speaks about China's AI innovation at a panel hosted by the National Press Foundation.

ITIF’s spring seminar course explores core emerging technologies and issues that are reshaping our world and, in the process, creating public policy challenges and opportunities. The course is open to congressional and federal staff only.

Watch now for a virtual panel discussion with technology policy experts who highlighted and critiqued the most counterproductive tech policies of the past year, and considered how the incoming administration and Congress can turn the page.

Hodan Omaar speaks about the economic potential of AI in the United States at a panel discussion hosted by Microsoft.

Watch now for a timely discussion by The Center for Data Innovation and The Asia Group on how AI governance is unfolding globally, the key tensions shaping global regulations, and what these developments mean in the United States, the Indo-Pacific, and beyond.

Hodan Omaar speaks at the Central European Initiative's panel event on EU competitiveness in Vienna.