In just the last few months, new reports show artificial intelligence can complete high level work —like creating decks at elite consulting firms — and Elon Musk has put the odds of humanity’s annihilation from AI at 20%.
Michael Kratsios — who may be the most important man you’ve never heard of — is at the tip of the spear when it comes to making sure America dominates AI and every other facet of tech and science.
Kratsios runs the relatively unknown White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), which means he serves as Trump’s top technology advisor and is responsible for tech and science policy across federal agencies.
He is also tasked with ensuring the U.S. leads in science and tech and that it actually benefits the American worker.
We spoke with him in an exclusive interview about what keeps him up at night; what his AI action plan, set to be unveiled in July, may look like; and how he believes the average American will benefit from this new technology.
In some ways, he thinks one of the biggest changes Trump has made is bringing a new mindset to government.
“The Biden administration led by spirit of fear rather than promise — analyzing and trying to anticipate harm that technology can bring to the country,” he told me. “We can harness [AI] for the benefit of the American people… to improve the American way of life, to increase our national security, to increase economic growth, to empower American workers.”
While the U.S. is poised to be the AI powerhouse, it is in no way guaranteed.
“The US has shown we can continue to outpace the world in leading edge technology … but the real question is if no one is using it, if the government is not adopting it, if we’re not putting it into practice at the Department of Defense, in our intelligence community, if our greatest American companies … that worries me,” he told me.
Kratsios took the helm earlier this year after serving as America’s CTO in Donald Trump’s first administration and several stints in the private sector. (He was formerly Managing Director of Scale AI and Chief of Staff for Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel).
His biggest concern, he told me, is that the US isn’t adopting our own technology or exporting it as rapidly, as China has done (Deepseek is a notable example).
Actually exporting new technology like an AI stack (the tools and frameworks that build and manage AI), he believes is still something we’re learning to do.
“The US government has been very good at exporting legacy hardware,” he said. “But the ability the US government has in supporting the export of high end technology and software is not very deep.”
Adopting and exporting technology has become a priority — it’s why J.D. Vance went to the AI Summit in Paris and why Trump pushed for a $500 billion AI investment from Masa Son, Larry Ellison, and Sam Altman.
“We have to do better in adopting [our own innovation] here at home and abroad … so that it becomes kind of a de facto technology that everyone uses. Everything should be running on American chips and American models. And we have that opportunity, if we just get our act together and make it happen.”
His first priority is writing an AI action plan — something the President has signed an executive order to do — that will detail policies America needs to dominate AI. They are still receiving comments from roughly 10,000 people, in a sign of just how significant tech’s reach is.
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“The community that’s interested in tech and tech policy has gotten so broad,” he notes.
But the challenge he must strike is to unleash American technology while still providing guidelines. Adversaries like China and Russia are more focused on building than reining in advancement.
“We are in a privileged position — everyone in the world wants to use our technology,” he said. “We just have to be better at getting it out there and aligning with many of the trade deals that the president and his team are working on… because we know our adversaries are going to try to subsidize and export their AI stack. And I think it’s most critical that we beat them to the punch.”
The other key element of his job is to make sure technology benefits average Americans.
In the next five years it may mean most Americans have simpler healthcare — faster and more accurate diagnoses — and even a personal assistant.
“It’ll make a lot of those daily activities much more automated and less stressful,” he said. “We have the opportunity to harness these amazing technologies to make the lives of Americans better and to ensure long-term economic and national security. And the only way that we can do this is to intentionally choose it.”
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