Schedule

9:00 – 9:30 AM | Check-In & Coffee

Arrive early to grab coffee and connect with speakers and fellow attendees.

9:30 – 9:45 AM | Official Kickoff

Opening remarks from the Duke Cyber leadership team and faculty advisors.

9:45 – 10:45 AM | Panel I – Confronting the Risks: How AI Is Reshaping the Threat Landscape

Governments must nimbly pivot to address emergent AI challenges. AI-generated images, audio, and videos are flooding social media ahead of elections, distorting public sentiment through misinformation. Bot networks overwhelm networks and enable account takeover (ATO) attacks. Al is exacerbating cybersecurity threats by enabling malicious actors to exploit systems with unprecedented speed and precision. And in national security, AI acts as a force multiplier and is changing the face of warfare through the rise of autonomous weapons systems.

How are governments having to pivot in response to new AI threats?

10:45 – 11:00 AM | Coffee Break

Light refreshments served.

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM | Panel II – Creating the Guardrails: What Effective AI Regulation Should Look Like

This session examines the urgent challenge of building enforcement mechanisms that can keep pace with accelerating technological change. Panelists will tackle core questions of AI safety and accountability: How should models be evaluated before deployment? Who is responsible when they cause harm? And as data becomes the core resource powering AI, how must ownership and privacy laws adapt?

The discussion also addresses the widening gap between AI risks and the capacity of governments to respond. 

What regulatory structures are needed to ensure that AI serves the public interest?

12:00 – 1:00 PM | Networking Lunch

Lunch provided. Attendees are encouraged to connect with speakers, panelists, and partner organizations.

1:00 – 2:00 PM | Panel III – Aligning the World: How Nations, Companies, and Institutions Govern AI Together

This session explores how governments, private corporations, and international institutions struggle to set shared rules for AI while also defending against emerging digital threats. Panelists will examine the hard questions: How can states deter AI-enabled cyber threats without escalating conflict? Who holds the power to establish global norms: national regulators, global alliances, or the tech companies building frontier models? And what forms of public–private collaboration can actually enforce accountability at scale?

How do nations govern AI in a world where cooperation is necessary but competition is inevitable? 

2:00 – 2:15 PM | Short Break

Stretch and grab coffee before the last panel.

2:15 – 3:15 PM | Panel IV - Operating the System: How AI Principles Become Practice

After identifying AI-driven risks, debating regulatory guardrails, and confronting the challenges of global coordination, the focus turns to how AI governance is carried out in practice. At this stage, governance is exercised through concrete decisions about system design and operational control that determine how AI is actually used.

This session examines how AI governance is operationalized across technical and security contexts. Panelists will discuss how infrastructure and distributed systems shape oversight and control, how military and cyber operations integrate AI under time and security pressure, and how companies implement responsible AI across complex geopolitical and regulatory environments.

How do institutions translate AI governance principles into operational systems that work under real-world constraints?

3:15 PM - 3:30 PM | Short Break

Quick break before the closing keynote.

3:30 PM - 4:15 PM | Closing Keynote

A keynote by General C.Q. Brown, Jr., the 21st Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, on how democracies can govern AI amid accelerating geopolitical, cyber, and informational risks. The keynote will tie together the conference’s themes and outline what effective AI governance requires from governments, companies, universities, and global institutions.

4:15 PM - 5:15 PM | Reception & Informal Networking

Continue conversations over refreshments.

5:15 – 5:30 PM | Closing Remarks

Concluding reflections and acknowledgments from the organizing team.