Ball will assume the role of head of strategic futures and report to Jason Kwon, OpenAI's chief strategy officer, according to two of the people familiar with the hire. The appointment signals the company's continued investment in navigating the complex and increasingly partisan landscape of federal AI regulation.
After leaving the White House following the release of the AI Action Plan last summer, Ball joined the Foundation for American Innovation, a right-leaning tech think tank where he remains a senior fellow. In March, he was named a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, further embedding himself in conservative policy circles.
Despite his departure from government, Ball has maintained influence within the White House. Since early March, he has emerged as a prominent critic of the Trump administration's escalating conflict with rival AI company Anthropic, including the Pentagon's decision to label the firm a supply chain risk and the White House's recent imposition of export restrictions on Anthropic's new Fable AI model.
A Career Bridging Academia and Policy
Before his White House tenure, Ball was a researcher at George Mason University's Mercatus Center and a program manager at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He has also held positions at the Manhattan Institute and oversaw a scholarship program at the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation. This blend of academic and policy experience positions him to help OpenAI navigate the tension between innovation and national security concerns.
After the hire was reported, Ball confirmed the appointment and pointed to a Substack post detailing the news. He wrote that he will lead "a small, high-agency team" charged with shaping frontier AI policy, focusing on matters including catastrophic risk, recursive self-improvement, labor market impact, and the relationship between frontier labs and governments.
Ball's arrival at OpenAI comes as the company faces heightened scrutiny from both political parties over the safety and societal impact of its technology, and as the broader AI industry grapples with an increasingly fractured regulatory environment in Washington.
