Trump Unveils Tech Policy Team for Potential Second Term, Emphasizing AI and Cryptocurrency

Trump announces new tech policy picks for his second term

Kratsios, who served in Trump's first term as the White House chief technology officer, also briefly held an acting undersecretary role at the Department of Defense near the end of the term. He later became a managing director at Scale AI and has been helping lead Trump's tech policy transition team. The President-elect also picked his former deputy CTO, Dr. Lynne Parker, as Executive Director of the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology. Directing the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets (AKA the "Crypto Council") will be former college football player and unsuccessful Republican congressional candidate Bo Hines. Advising Trump on AI policy as part of the OSTP will be Sriram Krishnan, who has extensive Silicon Valley experience, with roles at Andreessen Horowitz, X, Meta, and Snap.

Trump names OSTP director as part of White House tech team

Michael Kratsios and Lynne Parker would reprise their roles in first Trump administration and work with AI czar President-elect Donald Trump is bringing back the core of his technology policy team from his first term to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Trump yesterday said he would nominate technologist Michael Kratsios to be director of OSTP, and an assistant to the president for science and technology. Kratsios, a former Silicon Valley executive, was the de facto manager of OSTP at the start of Trump's first term, in part because Trump waited nearly 560 days to nominate meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier to lead the office. After the Senate confirmed Droegemeier in January 2019, Kratsios went on to become the White House chief technology officer (CTO) and, later, acting undersecretary of research and engineering at the Department of Defense (DOD). Trump also named computer scientist Lynne Parker as Kratsios's counselor, a new position, and as executive director of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Parker, a computer scientist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), spent 4 years at OSTP during the administrations of Trump and President Joe Biden and led its artificial intelligence (AI) initiative along with serving as deputy CTO. Trump said Kratsios and Parker will be part of a "brilliant team" led by billionaire David Sacks, his new AI and cryptocurrency czar, who will also chair PCAST. The team will also include a White House newcomer, internet entrepreneur and podcaster Sriram Krishnan, who Trump said would be "working closely with Sacks" as a senior policy adviser on AI. OSTP has traditionally overseen the entire $200 billion federal investment in science and technology. And the OSTP director has traditionally, but not always, held the title of science adviser to the president. But Trump's announcement suggests AI could be an outsized portion of Kratsios's portfolio. In June 2019 OSTP issued an AI strategic research plan and in January 2020 put out a set of preliminary guidelines to regulate its use that the Biden administration has largely embraced and carried forward. Those guidelines are also consistent with a report issued last week by a bipartisan congressional panel calling on the government to regulate AI by sector, in order to take into account the vast difference between AI's use in, say, medical devices and video games. That approach contrasts with a framework adopted by the European Union that would regulate the entire industry. Trump's choices also point to his preference for those with backgrounds in technology over basic research. Kratsios earned an undergraduate degree in politics from Princeton University in 2008. He was chief of staff to venture capitalist Peter Thiel before coming to OSTP in 2017. For the past 3 years, he's been managing director of Scale AI, which raises money to help grow AI startups. Krishnan, who earlier this year said he was "temporarily helping out" Elon Musk in revamping the social media platform X, has spent the past 3 years with Andreessen Horowitz, a leading venture capital firm. Krishnan earned an undergraduate degree in information technology from an Indian university in 2005 and runs a podcast with his wife that has featured Musk and other Silicon Valley tech luminaries. In contrast, Parker's career as a scientist is more typical of OSTP staffers. She earned a Ph.D. in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and spent 8 years as a scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory before joining the UTK faculty in 2002. An expert on microrobots, she served as division director for AI at the National Science Foundation before joining OSTP. In 2022 she returned to UTK to become associate vice chancellor and director of the state's AI initiative before retiring in May. Kratsios must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate as OSTP director, but his role as assistant to the president does not require vetting by legislators. Sacks is expected to work out of a separate White House office and serve as a part-time consultant rather than a full-time federal employee. In a separate announcement, Trump also said that Emil Michael would be nominated to lead DOD research and engineering, the position Kratsios held for the past 6 months of the first administration. Michael is a lawyer and serial high-tech entrepreneur.