Jamie Frederic Metzl (born July 1, 1968) is an American technology and healthcare futurist. He is a founder and Chair of the global social movement OneShared.World, a Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, a faculty member of NextMed Health, and a Singularity University expert.
Metzl has been appeared on national and international media and his syndicated columns, podcast conversations with Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, and others, and interviews on AI, science, technology, and global affairs. He is the author of seven books, including the newly-released Superconvergence: How the Genetics, Biotech and AI Revolutions Will Transform Our Lives, Work, and World, the international bestseller, Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity, and the sci-fi thrillers Genesis Code and Eternal Sonata.
Contents
Early life and education
Metzl was born to Marilyn Metzl, a clinical psychologist, and Kurt Metzl, a pediatrician.
Metzl was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He is the third of four sons of Kurt and Marilyn Metzl. His father, an Austrian-born Holocaust survivor and pediatrician, died from cancer in April 2025. His mother, originally from Queens, New York, practiced for many decades as a psychologist and psychoanalyst in Kansas City.
He attended high school at The Barstow School in Kansas City, Missouri. He graduated from Brown University. He holds a Ph.D. in Southeast Asian history from Oxford University (1994), and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1997. He was a White House Fellow.
Career
In 1988, at the age of 19, Metzl volunteered as a teacher and teacher trainer for Cambodian, Hmong, and Vietnamese refugees in the Panat Nikhom refugee camp in Chonburi, Thailand, an experience that had a profound impact on his life.
From 2001 to 2003, he took a leave of absence from his Ph.D. program at Oxford University, where he was writing his dissertation on the international community’s failure to prevent the Cambodian genocide, to serve as a Human Rights Officer for the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia. There, he helped establish a nation-wide human rights investigation and monitoring unit. After completing his Ph.D. program in a record two years of study, he then attended Harvard Law School, where he was active in both the human rights and technology communities.
While a student at Harvard Law School, he began publishing pieces in Foreign Affairs and the American Journal of International Law on how strategic information campaigns could and should have been used to help prevent the genocide in Rwanda and other crises.
Following his graduation from Harvard Law School in 1997, he served for six years in the United States government where he led efforts develop America’s strategic engagement with newly development information technologies, including the early-stage internet.
From 1997 to 1999, he was Director for Multilateral and Humanitarian Affairs in the U.S. National Security Council, serving under National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and Senior Directors Richard Clarke and Eric Schwartz, where he became deeply engaged with issues relating to emerging capabilities in machine learning, genetics, and biotechnology, which has subsequently been the topic of four of his books and other work. In the Clinton administration, he was the primary drafter of Presidential Decision Directive 68 on International Public Information
At the NSC, he created and led the International Public Information initiative, an effort to coordinate and strategically leverage all U.S. government information efforts in conflict zones, particularly the former Yugoslavia.
He led information operations to counter the propaganda of then Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, including by establishing the “Ring Around Serbia” transmission towers broadcasting the Serbian language programming of the VOA, BBC, RFI, and other networks into Serbia. Metzl was the originator and drafter of Presidential Decision Directive 68, an executive order President Clinton signed in April 1999 establishing information as a recognized domain of U.S. strategy.
Honors and awards
Metzl has been selected as a White House Fellow, an Aspen Institute Crown Fellow, and a French-American Foundation Young Leader.
He is the former Honorary Ambassador to North America of the Republic of Korea Ministry of Trade and Industry and the current Honorary Global Investment Ambassador to the Mayor of Seoul.
Personal life
Metzl lives in New York City. An avid skier, ultramarathon runner, and ironman triathlete, Metzl has completed 60 marathons, 13 ironman triathlons, and 40 ultramarathons. His experience training with the East Timorese Olympic running team was highlighted by the New York Times in 2001, and his grueling experience completing a 19 hour ultramarathon in a Taiwanese rainforest was featured in Trail Runner in 2017.
Works
Jamie Frederic Metzl (1996). Western Responses to Abuses in Cambodia, 1975-80. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-333-64325-9.
Jamie Frederic Metzl (May 2004). The Depths of the Sea. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-32202-X.
Jamie Frederic Metzl (2014) Genesis Code, Arcade. ISBN 1628724234
Jamie Frederic Metzl (2016) Eternal Sonata, Arcade. ASIN: B01HDVCR4U
Jamie Frederic Metzl (April 2019) Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity, Sourcebooks. ISBN 149267009X
Metzl, Jamie Frederic (2024). Superconvergence: how the genetics, biotech, and AI revolutions will transform our lives, work, and world. Portland, Oregon: Timber Press. ISBN 978-1-64326-300-7.
Metzl, Jamie Frederic (April 21, 2026). The AI Ten Commandments: A New Moral Code for Humanity. Transcend Books. ISBN 9798994572603.
