The BasePodcastThe Cognitive Revolution111 min

Freedom of Action: America's ASI Strategy, w/ RAND's Joel Predd, Ben Boudreaux & Matt Chessen

In a podcast interview with Nathan Labenz, three researchers from RAND's Center for the Geopolitics of AGI present their paper on a US superintelligence strategy. They sort proposals into seven archetypes and five open questions, and argue the US should not commit to any one yet but build long-lead capabilities such as verification, evaluations and containment.

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Why it matters

The same thing, for different readers.

What it means for you

RAND researchers say the US has no declared plan for superintelligence and may be racing ahead by default while the tools for any other path go unbuilt.

For lawmakers

RAND's Center for the Geopolitics of AGI asks US officials to fund verification, evaluation, incident response and compute tracking before choosing between dominance, deterrence, cooperation or a pause.

For researchers

RAND researchers call for agency evaluations that track, over time, how much of people's decision-making is handed to AI systems in real deployments.

The question it raises

RAND's Ben Boudreaux argues that keeping people able to live and work without AI is what makes a threat to shut AI systems down credible.

In their own words

Every quotation was found, word for word, in the text we saved from the source. That shows the words are there; it does not make them true, or prove the speaker meant them as quoted.

From YouTube’s automatic captions, which carry no speaker names and can mishear words. Where the speaker is known only from context, the quotation says so.

“we believe there's just too much uncertainty right now and none of the archetypal strategies for super intelligence can be justified because if you pre commit prematurely to any one strategy it forecloses other strategies and doesn't build the capabilities that might be needed later”
Matt Chessen, Resident technical expert, Center for the Geopolitics of AGI, RANDGiving the paper's bottom line; the host later attributes this speaker's points to Matt Chessen.
Found word for word in the sourceSpeaker known from context, not confirmed by listening
“We can't just wait for crisis. I think the hugging face you know incident was sort of a mini crisis. And if we're going to rely just on crisis to sort of raise that level awareness, I I think we can do better in the AI policy community.”
Matt Chessen, Resident technical expert, Center for the Geopolitics of AGI, RANDAnswering after the host turns to Matt, on why evidence that danger is close is not reaching policymakers.
Found word for word in the sourceSpeaker known from context, not confirmed by listeningspoken clean-up: i (said twice)
“the shift that I'm seeing is more of a recognition that the AI development and diffusion is not just something happening to us but actually something that we can shape.”
Ben Boudreaux, Policy researcher and professor of public policy, RANDAnswering after being invited by name, on how US decision-makers' views are changing.
Found word for word in the sourceSpeaker known from context, not confirmed by listeningstarts inside a longer claim, right after “that”
“any of the archetypical strategies that we put will be expensive with the exception of acceleration. Although the expense may be borne out in the downsides but in all the cases all these strategies are expensive.”
Joel Predd, Senior engineer and director, Center for the Geopolitics of AGI, RANDResponding to the critique that the strategy has no price tag, then handing over to Ben and Matt.
Found word for word in the sourceSpeaker known from context, not confirmed by listening
“I think we may be in for a rough patch in the cyber world, you know, over the next 12 to 24 months. And hopefully it's just a a narrow rough patch”
Matt Chessen, Resident technical expert, Center for the Geopolitics of AGI, RANDOn cyber capabilities spreading to open-weight models, as the last of the signals this speaker is tracking.
Found word for word in the sourceSpeaker known from context, not confirmed by listeningstarts inside a longer claim, right after “so”stops before “but”, in the same sentencespoken clean-up: i (said twice), a (said twice)

The record

Questions
Who can demand evidence, delay a release or stop an unsafe deployment? · How fast is AI advancing, and where is it heading? · How is AI used in attacks, defence and war?
People
Joel Predd (Speaks, Senior engineer and director, Center for the Geopolitics of AGI, RAND) · Ben Boudreaux (Speaks, Policy researcher and professor of public policy, RAND) · Matt Chessen (Speaks, Resident technical expert, Center for the Geopolitics of AGI, RAND) · Nathan Labenz (Speaks, Host, The Cognitive Revolution)
Also covered by
The Cognitive Revolution (YouTube)
What we read
We read the whole source.
Found by
The Radar, run of October 29, 2026, via pod-the-cognitive-revolution (tier 1: the source’s own channel or an official record)
Cite this
The Cognitive Revolution, “Freedom of Action: America's ASI Strategy, w/ RAND's Joel Predd, Ben Boudreaux & Matt Chessen”, October 28, 2026. Entry in the Ctrl AI Base, https://ctrlai.com/base/cognitive-revolution-2026-10-28-rand-freedom-of-action
Our notesSaved text appears to be YouTube automatic captions (>> turn markers, no names; no second transcript); could not open the .transcript.json to confirm its engine because it is a single very long line. Speakers inferred from hand-offs by name: the archetype/classifier passage is attributed because the host later credits Matt with the 'acceleration by default' point; the price-tag answer ends 'Ben or Matt, would you want to answer that?', so it is taken as Joel Predd. Names in captions are misspelled (Pred, Budro, Chesson); spellings taken from the episode title. Contains a sponsor read for Anthropic's Claude and the host's anecdote about Claude rotating a password; neither is the subject. Minutes from feed duration 6654 s.