Technology and Democracy

Lindsay Gorman is managing director of and senior fellow with GMF Technology. A quantum physicist and computer scientist by training, she leads work on US-China emerging-technology competition, artificial intelligence (AI) and democracy, and transatlantic innovation. 
Gorman recently served as a White House 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 for the US-EU Trade and Technology Council and the Quad. She founded and led the council’s AI cooperation workstream. She was also the principal architect of the Advancing Technology for Democracy agenda of the Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal. 

Gorman’s career spans 15 years at the intersection of technology and international relations. She has served as an expert contributor to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, a technology adviser to US Senator Mark Warner, a jury member for German innovation agency SPRIND’s Deepfake Challenge, and a fellow with the National Academy of Sciences. Her technical background includes building machine learning systems for self-driving cars for the DARPA Urban Challenge and pioneering experiments on quantum topological materials, which Nature Physics has published.

Gorman regularly delivers keynote addresses and speaks at popular conferences such as SXSW. She has testified before the US Congress 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 conducts television and radio interviews. She has appeared on CNN, CBS’s Face the Nation, National Public Radio, and Bloomberg. She holds a master’s degree in applied physics from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in physics from Princeton University.

Mareike Ohlberg is a senior fellow in the Indo-Pacific Program and leads the Stockholm China Forum. She is based at GMF’s Berlin Office. Before joining GMF, Mareike worked as an analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, where she focused on China’s media and digital policies as well as the Chinese Communist Party’s influence campaigns in Europe. Prior to that, she was an An Wang postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and a postdoctoral fellow at Shih-Hsin University in Taipei. She spent several years living and working in Greater China. She is co-author of the book Hidden Hand: How the Communist Party of China is Reshaping the World (2020). Mareike has a doctoral degree in Chinese studies from the University of Heidelberg and a master’s degree in East Asian regional studies from Columbia University. She is a frequent commentator in the media on the global implications of China’s rise.