WIRED profiles Chris Lehane May 21

WIRED’s May 21 profile of Chris Lehane put a public face on a job OpenAI has been building for months: managing the politics around artificial intelligence as the company faces sharper scrutiny over safety, labor disruption and social harms. Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, has been leading that work from Washington and in state capitals, according to WIRED’s account as summarized in the source briefing. Other recent interviews and reporting show the same effort extending beyond message management into a campaign to shape AI rules that companies such as OpenAI can operate under. ### Who is Chris Lehane inside OpenAI? Chris Lehane is OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, a role the company has used for policy, government relations and public-facing political strategy. OpenAI’s newsroom has a dedicated Global Affairs section, which has recently featured posts on government partnerships, infrastructure and privacy, showing how central that function has become in the company’s public agenda. (axios.com) TIME described Lehane in 2025 as a veteran political operative and OpenAI’s head of global policy. In recent coverage, he has been the executive speaking publicly about regulation, government coordination and public acceptance of AI. ### What problem is he trying to solve? Axios reported on May 13 that Lehane sees a growing risk of “unpopular AI” and has argued that companies will face political backlash if the public does not feel included in the gains from the technology. (openai.com) In that interview, he said, “People need to feel like they’re gonna have a piece of this and participate in it.” (time.com) WIRED’s profile, as described in the source briefing, framed Lehane as the executive trying to cool arguments over AI’s social harms while defending OpenAI’s room to grow. That places him at the intersection of two pressures: public distrust of AI and the company’s need for workable regulation. ### How does that connect to OpenAI’s statehouse strategy? (axios.com) POLITICO reported on May 20 that Lehane is pursuing what he called “reverse federalism,” a state-by-state push to get large states to adopt similar AI rules. He told the outlet OpenAI is trying to get “a bunch of the big states to come together and mirror each other to de facto create a national standard.” (axios.com) POLITICO said California and New York have already passed rules that largely reflect OpenAI’s preferred approach, after input from the company’s lobbyists, and that Illinois is the next target. The report said the laws backed by OpenAI center on transparency and reporting requirements for advanced AI developers and are more permissive than the framework many AI safety advocates want. (politico.com) ### What kind of policy framework is OpenAI promoting? OpenAI published an “Industrial policy for the Intelligence Age” document on April 6 that called its ideas “people-first” and said the company wanted to expand opportunity, share prosperity and build resilient institutions as advanced AI evolves. The document also said OpenAI would convene discussions at a new Washington workshop and offer fellowships, research grants and API credits to build on those ideas. (politico.com) Axios reported that Lehane has also argued for a closer public-private arrangement in which AI companies and government depend on each other for regulation, contracts and deployment. That is consistent with OpenAI’s recent Global Affairs output, which has highlighted work with governments and regulated institutions. ### What comes next? Illinois lawmakers are the next named participants in OpenAI’s state campaign, according to POLITICO’s May 20 report. (openai.com) OpenAI also said in its April 6 policy document that its Washington workshop would open in May and that it would organize feedback, fellowships and grants around its policy proposals. (politico.com) (axios.com)