Lindsay Gorman

Managing Director & Senior Fellow
Washington, DC Office
GMF Tech
Staff,
GMF Expert
My Areas of Expertise:
Authoritarian Interference Emerging Technologies Technology and Democracy
China United States

Lindsay Gorman is managing director and senior fellow of GMF’s Technology Program. She is also a venture scientist with Deep Science Ventures focused on AI and biotechnology. A quantum physicist and computer scientist by training, Gorman leads work on the US-China emerging technology competition, AI and democracy, and transatlantic innovation. 

Gorman recently served in the Biden White House as a senior adviser on emerging technology, national security, and democracy issues. At the Office of Science and Technology and the National Security Council, she crafted US technology competition and national security strategy and led international technology initiatives through the US-EU Trade and Technology Council and Quad. In particular, she founded and led the AI cooperation workstream in the Trade and Technology Council. She was also the principal architect of the Advancing Technology for Democracy agenda of the Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal. 

Gorman’s career spans fifteen years at the intersection of technology and international security. She is the former CEO of a technology consulting firm she founded, Politech Advisory. She has served as an expert contributor to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission; technology adviser to US Senator Mark Warner; consultant to Schmidt Futures on 5G; and fellow with the National Academy of Sciences. Her technical background includes building self-driving cars for the DARPA Urban Challenge and pioneering experiments on topological insulators, which she published in Nature Physics.

Gorman regularly delivers keynote addresses and speaks at popular conferences such as South by Southwest. She has testified before the US Senate and US House on AI, cybersecurity, and technology innovation. Her research and analyses have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic, and she frequently appears in TV and radio interviews on CNN, MSNBC, CBS’s Face the Nation, NPR, the BBC, and Bloomberg. She is also a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Truman National Security Project, and an awardee of the US State Department Speaker Program. Gorman holds a BA in Physics from Princeton University and an MS in Applied Physics from Stanford University. 

Media Mentions

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Lindsay Gorman
“ For China, the optics of the talks may be as important as their substance, according to Lindsay Gorman, a former senior technology advisor in the Biden White House. “China wants to be a player in global governance. It wants to be on equal footing with the U.S. as another pole when it comes to leading the conversation on AI development and regulations,” said Gorman, who now heads the German Marshall Fund’s technology program. And it’s not just Washington, either—Xi’s visit to Europe this month included a joint declaration on AI governance between France and China.“China benefits from calm seas, including on these AI topics. A public show of diplomacy helps foster that image, and anything they can do to blunt some of these tech actions would definitely be in their interest,” Gorman said. ”
Foreign Policy
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Lindsay Gorman
“ The big issue with TikTok is that it's owned by a company, ByteDance, that is based in the Peoples' Republic of China and is held accountable to the Chinese Communist Party. (...) the ability to influence TikTok's algorithm, to have massive amounts of data about the likes, dislikes, and habits of American voters [is] handing the Chinese Communist Party a loaded gun ”
The Burn Bag Podcast
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Lindsay Gorman
“ It “is not a foregone conclusion by any means” that China will allow a sale, said Lindsay Gorman, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund who specializes in emerging tech and China. ”
New York Times
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Lindsay Gorman
“ The autocratic playbook — we know that Trump admires autocrats and strongmen — the autocratic playbook is to enrich cronies, and to make policies in support of cronies. ”
POLITICO
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Lindsay Gorman
“ 'No certainty' TikTok owner ByteDance would sell app if banned ”
Translated from English
MSNBC
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Lindsay Gorman
“ Xi is interested in signaling that despite geopolitical tensions -- especially around the high-tech industries -- China remains open for business. ”
AFP
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Lindsay Gorman
“ It’s certainly interesting timing. It looks like ByteDance is introducing Lemon8 as a potential alternative to TikTok. ”
OLT News
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Lindsay Gorman
“ "If China has an advantage in the infrastructure layer, that gives it an advantage in all the other application layers that are built on top of it. And that's why this decision is so important. ”
IndexHR
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Lindsay Gorman
“ The stakes could not be higher when it comes to Germany because… we’re not just talking about one layer of digital infrastructure, we’re talking about a full technology stack that gets built on top of it. ”
Politico
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Lindsay Gorman
“ Officially, the German government is still examining the extent to which tech components 'Made in China' pose a security risk in German mobile communications. In September, however, Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) came up with a concrete scenario for the extensive banning of Huawei components from the German 5G network. ”
Translated from German
Junge Welt
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Lindsay Gorman
“ The ability for a Chinese technology platform to represent critical information infrastructure in a democracy has to be part of that calculus when assessing risk ”
CNBC
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Lindsay Gorman
“ From a national security standpoint, in addition to creating user profiles with all these data, social media platforms also have the ability to select, promote and demote content based on opaque metrics that ultimately, we don’t really have an insight into. ”
CNBC
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Lindsay Gorman
“ It has become a common modus operandi for Chinese companies to spin off companies from parents that have garnered some policymaker concern and brand them as something different but retain ownership or financial ties. ”
Financial Times
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Lindsay Gorman
“ The status quo of allowing unfettered influence and interference in democratic politics is over. ”
VOA
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Lindsay Gorman
“ The TikTok battles are indicative of the end of an era. This era where U.S.-China business relations can continue absent considerations of geopolitics is over. ”
Wall Street Journal
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Lindsay Gorman
“ It’s not just one side of the aisle clamoring for TikTok to address these national security concerns, but this is now coming from all sides. ”
New York Times
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Lindsay Gorman
“ These social media platforms, including TikTok, build detailed user profiles, which could be used to target you in the same vein as authoritarian states like Russia have targeted voters in the past. It's really not a theoretical concern. ”
Newsweek
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Lindsay Gorman
“ There’s bipartisan consensus that TikTok poses a national security to the United States’ democracy. The China tech threat—today exemplified by TikTok—may be the only thing Congress agrees on. ”
The Hill
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Lindsay Gorman
“ TikTok has all that data about U.S. voters and then could target information left and right, literally, to individual citizens based on its control over the algorithm. And so the really big concern, I think, is from the propaganda and information manipulation side of things. ”
The Messenger
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Lindsay Gorman
“ The app [TikTok] gives a name and a face to the export of China’s surveillance state around the world. ”
VOA
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Lindsay Gorman
“ Disruptive technologies like generative AI have the potential to exploit asymmetries in the way democracies and autocracies depend on, use, and misuse information. ”
Truepic
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Lindsay Gorman
“ The initiative represents a rarely-seen depth of interagency focus on emerging and disruptive technologies in a national security context, with the potential to harness new techniques and tools to mitigate autocratic threats. In the best case scenario, this initiative will help shore up vulnerabilities to illicit technology transfer and violations of export controls on emerging technologies. ”
Breaking Defense
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Lindsay Gorman
“ The United States and democratic nations have an inherent advantage – a robust clinical trial process with transparency that can garner global credibility that autocratic nations like China and Russia could only dream of. ”
The Hill
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Lindsay Gorman
“ Say a handful of American voters in a particular state watches or is engaged by a particular type of content. Then it’s way easier to capture your attention. If they do then decide to put political messages [in your For You page] or amplify certain political content, they know what grabs you. ”
Vox
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Lindsay Gorman
“ We can't ignore the fact that these concerns about TikTok's Chinese parent ownership have not been resolved. ”
Newsy
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Lindsay Gorman
“ It’s very clear that TikTok is not ready for the onslaught of political content. And there’s a question whether TikTok — being owned by a Chinese company — can ever really be ready for handling U.S. political content responsibly. ”
Washington Post
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Lindsay Gorman
“ The United States has recognized that it is impossible to keep U.S. components from ending up in Chinese warplanes if we're also selling them to the Chinese commercial sector. ”
Newsweek
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Lindsay Gorman
“ There is a risk that the Chinese state may be able to amass data - whether it's genetic surveillance information or more traditional information about political opinions or activity through these systems. ”
Thomson Reuters Foundation
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Lindsay Gorman
“ [Political campaigns are] probably some of the least-equipped institutions in our society to prioritize cyberthreats because of the incentive structures that they face being short-term organizations, where the risk-benefit calculus … doesn't often come out in favor of creating more protections, ”
Washington Post
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Lindsay Gorman
“ It was naive to assume, when TikTok was becoming popular, that a platform known for dance videos and cat memes wasn't going to become a forum for political debate. ”
Translated from Italian
Formiche
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Lindsay Gorman
“ We’ve taken our innovation advantages for granted. There’s nothing like a dedicated competitor to snap us into action. ”
New York Times
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Lindsay Gorman
“ The key piece for this [cyber ambassador] role will be casting them in a cohesive, coordinated light, such that they're swimming in the same direction, as opposed to having potentially conflicting priorities. ”
Washington Post
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Lindsay Gorman
“ The worst thing would be for the US to proclaim loudly that it is in a race with China, but then get caught stopping to tie our shoes while China outruns us. ”
Financial Times

Featured Work