Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh on Thursday named 15 external leaders to steer five task forces that will scrutinise the central bank’s operations, from its communications strategy to the management of its $6.7 trillion balance sheet. The move, announced alongside the appointment of former Fed chair Ben Bernanke to an oversight body at AI startup Anthropic, marks a concerted effort on both sides of the Atlantic to bring heavyweight economic and business figures into the governance of institutions grappling with rapid technological and policy change.

The Fed task forces, which Warsh first flagged in June, will operate independently and deliver recommendations to the Federal Open Market Committee by year-end. The communications panel is co-led by former Brazilian central bank governor Arminio Fraga, former Bank of England governor Mervyn King, and Peter R. Fisher, a former Treasury and New York Fed official. A productivity and jobs group includes venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Microsoft’s Asha Sharma, and Stanford economist Charles I. Jones, who is currently on leave with Anthropic. Other panels cover data, inflation frameworks, and balance-sheet policy, drawing in Harvard’s Raj Chetty, Nobel laureate Thomas Sargent, and former Walmart CEO Doug McMillon. Viewed from Washington, the composition reflects Warsh’s stated aim to gather “the best minds from a range of disciplines” and to move beyond the internally driven reviews of recent years.

In a parallel development, Anthropic said Bernanke will join its Long-Term Benefit Trust, an independent body whose members hold no financial stake in the company and can appoint or remove a majority of its board. Bernanke, who led the Fed through the 2008 financial crisis and won the Nobel Prize for his work on banking and depressions, said the potential of AI depends “in part, on the institutions we build around it.” The trust already includes experts in law, national security, and development, and its expansion with a figure of Bernanke’s stature underscores how AI firms are seeking to anchor public-interest commitments in credible, external oversight.

Analysts in London and São Paulo note that the dual announcements highlight a growing convergence between central banking expertise and the governance of transformative technologies. Fraga’s role on the Fed’s communications task force, for instance, brings a perspective shaped by emerging-market crises, while Bernanke’s move into AI oversight extends a career spent examining systemic risk. The Fed’s review is explicitly forward-looking: Warsh has suggested that sustained productivity gains from AI could influence the rate path, and the task force on productivity and jobs is charged with assessing precisely that dynamic.

The next factual milestone is the delivery of the Fed task forces’ findings to the FOMC, expected before the end of 2025. For Anthropic, the trust’s influence will be measured over a longer horizon, as it exercises its power to shape board composition and hold the company to its public-benefit mission.