Why Commerce Needs NAIL, a National AI Lab for U.S. Standards, Security, and Trade

Commerce Needs a National AI Laboratory (NAIL). Here's Why It Matters to Builders

International competition in AI is heating up, and the U.S. needs more than policy statements to keep pace. The Administration's AI Action Plan puts the Department of Commerce at the center of standards, export promotion, IP protection, and export controls. But no current federal unit has the mix of flexibility, scale, and deep technical skill to execute. That gap is the case for a new Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC): the National AI Laboratory (NAIL).

What NAIL Would Deliver

• Advance the science of AI with repeatable, trustworthy evaluation methods and benchmarks.
• Lead international standards so U.S. products are the default choice abroad-clear, testable, and adopted.
• Find and mitigate AI security risks: jailbreaks, backdoors, leakage, data poisoning, and misuse.
• Support export promotion and export controls with technical evidence on models and hardware.

NIST's Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) provides a strong base, but it is constrained by federal hiring and funding rules. An FFRDC gives Commerce the ability to recruit top talent, move fast, and respond to new AI developments with independent, publishable science.

The Technical Gap You See Every Day

As models scale, behavior gets less predictable. Jailbreaks lead to cyber misuse, data leaks, or toxic output-each a reputational and legal liability. Teams need confidence that custom LLMs won't suggest harmful medical advice or that agentic systems won't waste user funds. The fix isn't more hype; it's better science of measurement: evaluations that actually predict real-world behavior.

Without credible, repeatable evaluation, the U.S. can't lead standards. Without deep model knowledge, we can't assess security risk or set smart export controls. That's the core technical workload NAIL would take on, full-time.

Why an FFRDC Is the Right Vehicle

FFRDCs combine government mission focus with private-sector agility. They can recruit from the same talent pools as industry, publish openly, and respond quickly to sponsor needs. The model works: think NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Existing FFRDCs touch AI, but they're not built for Commerce's mission. Defense-focused labs optimize for DoD needs. Cyber units optimize for security. NAIL would target frontier model evaluation, standards, security, and export policy-exactly what Commerce needs.

Plan of Action

1) Stand Up NAIL Within Two Years

Commerce should follow the FFRDC process in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) with public notices, sponsor agreement, and operator selection. Recent examples reach operational status in ~12-18 months after the notice of intent. Details are codified in 48 CFR 35.017.

2) Focus Areas That Move the Needle

• Build a standardized federal science of AI measurement and evaluation. Tests must be predictive of real tasks, not just leaderboard noise. See NIST's work on the AI Risk Management Framework.
• Turn measurement advances into unified, international standards to increase trust and speed adoption.
• Develop security assessment methods for jailbreaks, backdoors, leakage, and poisoning, including evaluations of foreign models. Some work will require clearances.
• Advance interpretability, reliability, and control techniques to harden frontier systems against misuse.
• Provide technical input for export promotion and export controls on models and hardware.

NAIL should mix long-horizon research (to attract top talent) with rapid-response evaluations for new model releases, urgent security reviews, procurement guidance, and competitive analysis. Close collaboration with industry will be essential for practical standards and test protocols.

3) Fund at the Right Scale

• TACK (Testbed for AI Competitiveness and Knowledge): A smaller prototype with dozens of staff to prove value fast. Tens of millions annually. Enough to run serious evaluations without training industry-scale models from scratch.
• Full NAIL: A larger footprint capable of covering the full brief-evaluation, security, standards, and export support-similar in scale to established FFRDCs like the Software Engineering Institute.

Budget lines should cover senior researchers, engineers, data and evaluation support, policy interface staff, compute (GPU clusters or cloud), and core operations.

4) Make NAIL the Backbone of a Commerce AI Ecosystem

Three pillars work best together: an expanded CAISI to coordinate standards and technical policy; a potential NIST Foundation to mobilize flexible funding and partnerships; and NAIL as the execution engine for large-scale research and engineering. CAISI can provide oversight and ensure the work maps to Commerce's priorities.

What This Means for Engineers and Product Teams

• Clear, testable benchmarks you can build against-no guesswork on what "good" looks like.
• Standardized security evaluations for jailbreaks, leakage, and poisoning that reduce enterprise risk.
• Faster, clearer guidance on export compliance for models, tooling, and hardware.
• More predictable federal procurement with reference evaluations you can reuse in RFPs.
• Independent analysis of foreign models to inform your risk posture and integration decisions.

Risks and Guardrails

FFRDCs work when sponsors set "the what" and the lab decides "the how." Too much micromanagement slows progress; too little oversight invites drift. NAIL should keep transparency high, avoid mission creep, and keep close ties to CAISI with regular exchange programs and joint reviews.

How You Can Engage

• Participate in standards and evaluation working groups; contribute test cases and real-world failure modes.
• Support benchmark datasets and red-team exercises (with clear governance for sensitive data).
• Offer temporary staff exchanges or fellowships to speed knowledge transfer.
• Track FAR notices about the new FFRDC and comment on proposed scope and priorities.

If you're building with LLMs and agentic systems today, stronger evaluation science and clear standards help you ship safely and sell globally. If your team needs to skill up on practical AI evaluation and deployment, browse training by role at Complete AI Training.

Bottom Line

NAIL gives Commerce a dedicated engine to evaluate models, lead standards, counter security threats, and support smart export policy. It fills a real capability gap and delivers practical benefits to teams shipping AI products. With the right scope, budget, and partnerships, it can help keep U.S. AI builders ahead-at home and abroad.