Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity

The Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC) was established in 2015 at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Information, funded by a $15 million seed grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation — part of the foundation's $45 million Cyber Initiative split across Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT. The center was co-founded by Professor Steven Weber, a political scientist who served as founding Faculty Director through 2021. Ann Cleaveland joined as Executive Director in 2018, having previously served as Interim Executive Director of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science and Senior Director of Strategic Planning at ClimateWorks Foundation. Professor Chris Hoofnagle (Law and I School) succeeded Weber as Faculty Director in 2021. CLTC's mission is to amplify the upside of the digital revolution, help decision-makers act with foresight, and expand who has access to and participates in cybersecurity. The center works at the intersection of people and digital technologies, producing research, policy guidance, and educational programs designed to address cybersecurity challenges over a long time horizon. The AI Security Initiative (AISI), launched in 2019, has become one of CLTC's most prominent programs, particularly relevant to AI safety. Directed by Jessica Newman, AISI conducts interdisciplinary research on the global security implications of AI. Key outputs include the UC Berkeley AI Risk-Management Standards Profile for General-Purpose AI and Foundation Models (v1.1, January 2025), a working paper on intolerable risk thresholds for frontier AI submitted to the Paris AI Action Summit (November 2024), a full report on intolerable AI risk threshold recommendations (February 2025), and an Agentic AI Risk-Management Standards Profile (February 2026). AISI participates in the NIST AI Consortium and engages with international AI governance bodies. The AI Policy Hub, co-run with CITRIS Policy Lab, trains UC Berkeley graduate students and researchers to develop AI governance and policy frameworks that reduce harmful effects and amplify benefits of AI. The UC Berkeley Cybersecurity Clinic (formerly Citizen Clinic), founded in 2018, was the world's first public-interest cybersecurity clinic. It deploys Berkeley students to provide pro bono digital security services to under-resourced civil-society organizations. By 2024-25, the clinic enrolled a record 34 students per semester. CLTC co-founded the Consortium of Cybersecurity Clinics in 2021 to expand this model globally, with the goal of placing a clinic in every US state by 2030. Other programs include the Public Interest Cybersecurity initiative (protecting schools, hospitals, and city governments), the Daylight Security Research Lab (cultural dimensions of cybersecurity), and the Internet Atlas project (analyzing structural risks to global internet infrastructure). In 2019, CLTC distributed $1.3 million in research grants supporting more than 30 projects and approximately 50 graduate student and faculty researchers.