In his first public remarks since his Senate confirmation, Donald Trump’s newly-confirmed director of tech and science policy, Michael Kratsios, accused the Biden Administration of leading with a “spirit of fear” and laid out a plan for how America could do “more with less” over the next four years.
“Over the last few decades, America has become complacent,” Kratsios said at the inaugural Endless Frontiers tech and policy retreat in Austin, Tex. on Monday. He added: “Our progress today pales in comparison to the huge leaps of the 20th century.”
In emphasizing a commitment to the deregulation of business, Kratsios said the “chief barrier” to supersonic aircraft, high-speed rail or flying cars has been a “regulatory regime opposed to innovation and development.” But, he said, another focus of the Trump administration will be making “smart choices” and being “more creative” around how the government allocates its public research and development dollars.
A tech investor who served as the chief technology officer in the first Trump administration, Kratsios said the government could make use of prizes, advanced market commitments, and fast and flexible grants like those used during COVID, to multiply the impact of government-funded research and quicken the research process. “We need to think about ways of more rapidly deploying federal dollars,” he said, pointing to the sometimes year-long application process for obtaining a grant from the National Science Foundation as an example of unnecessary constraints in a world where artificial intelligence is advancing so quickly.
Kratsios said that the government should be partnering with both the private sector as well as with academia in areas of national interest, such as AI, quantum, biotech, or next-generation semiconductors.
What Kratsios didn’t mention was how he plans to navigate these academia partnerships as the Trump administration simultaneously cuts grants to universities and makes sweeping cuts across various agencies, including to science departments. NASA, for example, eliminated its Office of the Chief Scientist earlier this year, and now reportedly may see its science budget cut nearly in half.
Less than an hour before Kratsios delivered his prepared comments on stage—in which he said America must “defend the vital work” of U.S. scientists—the U.S. Department of Education issued a freeze on $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contracts to Harvard University after it refused to meet demands the Trump Administration made at the end of last week.
In an on-stage discussion with a venture capital investor following his prepared remarks, Kratsios wasn’t asked, nor did he comment on how he planned to navigate this tension in his role as director of the OSTP. But he did stress the importance of universities to the innovation ecosystem.
“Sometimes it's not said enough how important the entire academic enterprise is in driving early stage basic research,” Kratsios said. “And the core thing that we need to work on as a community is finding ways to continue to build links between that community and the investors and the builders and others who can ultimately commercialize those technologies.”
Kratsios, who served as Chief Technology Officer of the White House during the first Trump administration, was confirmed by the Senate to lead the OSTP in mid-March. David Sacks, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, sits under Kratsios within the OSTP and is responsible specifically for Trump’s AI and crypto agenda.
Kratsios, who has an investing background at Thiel Capital and recently served as managing director to the $14 billion startup Scale AI, found a friendly and welcoming crowd as he spoke outside during sunset to a couple hundred investors, entrepreneurs, researchers, scientists, Texas university leaders, and policymakers. Before he went on stage, Kratsios stood to the side, smiling at faces in the crowd and mouthing a “hello” to someone in the back.
