Michael Kratsios

Michael Kratsios (born 1986) is the most consistent through-line of Republican AI policy. A Princeton-educated former Thiel Capital principal, he served as U.S. Chief Technology Officer in the first Trump administration, spent the interregnum as a managing director at Scale AI, and returned in 2025 as director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy — the first OSTP director in decades without a doctorate, and the first whose entire portfolio is effectively AI.

Author of the acceleration agenda

Kratsios was a principal author of “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” released in July 2025 under an executive order on removing barriers to American AI leadership. Its three pillars — accelerating innovation, building AI infrastructure, and exporting the American AI stack — came wrapped in his signature framing that winning the race would usher in “a new golden age of human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.” In speeches he cast regulation itself as the adversary, telling a House hearing in 2026 that the patchwork of state AI laws was “anti-innovation.”

His April 2025 remarks at the Endless Frontiers Retreat — declaring that American technologies “permit us to manipulate time and space” — went viral as both inspiration and self-parody, capturing the administration’s techno-optimist register. Critics, including AI-safety researchers and consumer groups, argue his plan dismantles guardrails precisely as capabilities surge; Kratsios counters that American dominance is the safety strategy, since the alternative is AI shaped by authoritarian values.