Leading from the Edge How Diplomats Are Actually Using AI THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY-JUNE 2026 31 Last fall, 10 teams of diplomats gathered for a six-hour hackathon. Their challenge: build AIpowered tools to solve real training problems. By day’s end, they had produced 10 deployable solutions, including custom chatbots for negotiation training, a historical diplomacy tool, and an interactive briefing companion for officers heading to post. This shows something important about AI adoption in U.S. diplomacy right now: The most consequential innovation is happening at the edge of the State Department, closest to the work. None of these innovations required developers. All of them run on tools the department already has. Both individual diplomats and teams at State are building artificial intelligence into their workflows with tools they already have at hand. BY PAUL KRUCHOSKI Paul Kruchoski is a director at Guidehouse, where he helps organizations modernize operations and leverage emerging technologies. A former member of the Senior Executive Service, he served for 16 years at the State Department. His roles included director of the Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources for Public Diplomacy (R/PPR), director of the Public Diplomacy Research and Evaluation Unit, and deputy director of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ Collaboratory Innovation Unit. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a recipient of the State Department’s Sean Smith Award for Innovation in the Use of Technology. FOCUS AI IN DIPLOMACY When I wrote about artificial intelligence for The Foreign Service Journal in June 2024, I argued that the problem wasn’t technology but culture, that we risked fragmented systems and limited utility if we didn’t address how we share data and collaborate across organizational boundaries. Two years later, this prediction is still partially right. The cultural barriers remain; but practitioners found ways around them anyway. The Ground Truth Across the department, diplomats are building AI into their workflows with tools they already have. Instructional designers use Google NotebookLM to create onboarding materials that let new officers interact with procedural guidance conversationally rather than hunting through static documents. One strategic communications team runs a full AI-augmented workflow: brainstorming campaign concepts with large language models (LLMs), generating visual materials, distributing through established channels, and then measuring impact with media analysis tools that track sentiment and reach in near-real time. Beyond the teams, individual practitioners are building personal AI workflows combining tools for research synthesis, translation, and meeting preparation. One officer described using three AI systems to analyze reactions to a major policy speech, synthesize cable traffic, and draft strategic recommendations— several days of work compressed into an afternoon. If AI tools FOCUS ART: ISTOCKPHOTO/NATTAPONKONGBUNMEE.
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