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
US 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 US 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 US strategy. Metzl’s role in formulating and implementing America’s strategic communications strategies have been described in multiple articles and books, including
Forging Peace: Intervention, Human Rights and the Management of Media Space. From 1999 to 2001, he was Senior Advisor on International Public Information at the
US Department of State, serving under then Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright. From 2001 to 2003, he served as Deputy Staff Director of the
US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations under then Chairman
Joe Biden and Staff Director
Antony Blinken. In 2003, he served briefly as Project Director for the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Emergency Preparedness. When released, its report,
Drastically Underfunded, Dangerously Unprepared, received a great deal of public attention. Metzl appeared alongside co-chair
Senator Warren Rudman on
Meet the Press with
Tim Russert in June 2003 and testified before Congress calling for significantly enhancing preparations for future crises. Metzl moved back to his hometown of
Kansas City, Missouri to run for
US Congress. In the Democratic primary of the heavily democratic
Fifth District, he was defeated by former Kansas City mayor
Emanuel Cleaver. In 2004, he was recruited by a mentor,
Richard Holbrooke, to become Executive Vice President of the
Asia Society, an international not-for-profit headquartered in New York City, of which Holbrooke had recently become board chair. Metzl served in that capacity for six years, where he played the role establishing the Asia-Pacific leadership development network Asia 21, transformational policy initiatives, and revamped media and social media strategies. In 2008, Metzl was the lead witness in a US House of Representatives hearing on Genetics and Other Human Modification Technologies. In 2014, he became a partner in the global holding company Cranemere LLC, a position which he left following the release of his books exploring the future of AI, genetics, and biotechnology. In 2019, following both the publication of
Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity and the highly controversial birth of the world’s first “
CRISPR babies” in China, Metzl was appointed to the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Committee on Human Genome Editing by WHO Director-General
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. In 2020, he created the global interdependence movement, OneShared.World, which brough together people from around the world to draft a Declaration of Interdependence, which has been translated into twenty languages. The
Dalai Lama, WHO Director General
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, opera artist Fenee Fleming and
Sting. Metzl has also served as an election monitor in
Afghanistan and the
Philippines and advised the
government of North Korea on the establishment of
Special Economic Zones. He is a current board member of Partnership for a Secure America, the American University in Mongolia and
Parsons Dance and previously served on the boards of HIAS, Park University, and the International Center for Transitional Justice. In March 2023, he testified at the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic invited by US House
Republicans. Metzl has been called “the original COVID-19 whistleblower“ for his efforts calling for a full investigation into pandemic origins. Since early 2020, he has been a leading voice raising the possibility of a
COVID-19 research related origin.In April 2020, he launched his “
Origins of SARS-CoV-2,” website. His July 2020
Wall Street Journal editorial raising questions about pandemic origins and August 2020
The Hill editorial calling for the establishment of a 9/11-style commission. Metzl was the co-organizer and lead drafter of open letters issued by the “Paris Group” of experts, of which he was a leading member, that were released on March 4, April 7, April 30, and June 28, 2021 and covered by media. In 2021, 60 Minutes ran a feature highlighting Metzl’s work on pandemic origins. Metzl was also the lead witness in the March 2023 US congressional hearings on COVID-19 origins, the first such hearings held anywhere in the world. In 2021, the co-established, along with the global financial services firm WisdomTree, the WisdomTree BioRevolution ETF. The publicly listed exchange-traded fund largely tracks the thesis regarding the intersection of AI, genetics, and biology Metzl outlined in
Hacking Darwin. In 2025, he was appointed as a Commissioner of The Lancet Commission on Precision Medicine, which will develop over four years what is expected to be the definitive report on the future of technology-enhanced healthcare. Metzl has been an advocate of bipartisan collaboration on US foreign and national security policy for decades. Along with
Warren Rudman and
Lee Hamilton, he co-founded in 2004 the national security organization Partnership for a Secure America. He served as PSA’s board co-chair for over two decades. From 2023-2024, Metzl served as the lead Democratic commissioner in the
Heritage Foundation Nonpartisan Commission on China and COVID-19, alongside lead Republican and Commission chair,
John Ratcliffe. The commission’s report, released in July 2024, detailed the aggregate costs of the COVID-19 pandemic and outlined essential next steps for preventing similar future crises. In 2024, Metzl recruited other previous staff of then President
Joe Biden to sign a petition he had drafted calling on the president to not seek reelection and allow for a competitive primary to select an alternate candidate. Metzl is the author of six 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
Eternal Sonata, the historical novel
The Depths of the Sea, and a history of the Cambodian genocide. Metzl’s short story “
A Visit to Weizenbaum” was made into the 2021 short film
Source Code. Metzl provides keynote addresses on the impact and implications of revolutionary technologies to corporations, organizations, and associations, and was the lead keynote speaker at the inaugural
Dubai Future Forum. He serves as a strategic advisor on the future of AI to organizations and has been a featured speaker at AI summits across the globe. He also lectures to health and health-related organizations about the future of healthcare and sits on the advisory boards of Genomic Prediction,
Harvard Medical School Preventive Genomics, the Lake Nona Impact Forum. == Honors and awards ==