Overview

Background

Kratsios grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, in a family of Greek heritage; his mother and grandfather immigrated from Greece. He graduated from Princeton University in 2008 with a degree in political science and a certificate in Hellenic Studies, and received the Hellenic Studies Senior Thesis Prize. After Princeton, he began his career in the private sector working at Thiel Capital, the investment firm of billionaire Peter Thiel, taking on a role focused on innovation and technology. Peter Thiel was among the most prominent Silicon Valley figures to support Trump's 2016 campaign, and the Thiel connection placed Kratsios at the intersection of the technology investor class and the new Republican political order.

His track record at Thiel Capital led to his appointment to the White House in 2017, initially as deputy chief technology officer, and in 2019 he officially became chief technology officer of the United States — the youngest person ever to hold that role. Under his leadership as U.S. CTO, the White House launched national initiatives for artificial intelligence, 5G, quantum computing, commercial drones, autonomous vehicles, STEM education, and advanced manufacturing. He subsequently served as acting under secretary of defense for research and engineering, responsible for research, development, and prototyping efforts across the Department of Defense. He represented the United States at G7 and G20 technology ministerials and received the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal, the department's highest civilian honor. Between the two Trump terms, he served as managing director at Scale AI, a data-labeling and AI infrastructure company with substantial government contracts.

Public Role in the Second Trump Administration

Confirmation and Institutional Position

As OSTP director, Kratsios is in charge of the country's science and technology policy agenda and serves as a key adviser to President Trump on tech issues. He and David Sacks, the White House AI and crypto czar, serve as co-chairs of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). The co-chairmanship arrangement effectively links OSTP's formal policy apparatus with Sacks's more informal advisory role, positioning Kratsios as the institutional anchor for a set of priorities that span AI governance, semiconductor policy, and scientific research.

At his confirmation hearing, Kratsios told senators it was "common sense" to evaluate agencies for possible DOGE cuts, and deferred to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick when pressed to make commitments about honoring existing CHIPS and Science Act agreements. Those responses signaled his alignment with the administration's deregulatory and budget-reduction impulses, even on programs with broad congressional support.

Artificial Intelligence Policy

On July 23, 2025, OSTP published the long-awaited AI Action Plan, mandated by President Trump's January executive order titled "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence," which outlines policy priorities to enhance the U.S. position as a global AI leader. That plan was co-authored by Kratsios and David Sacks. The AI Action Plan set several goals related to scientific research, including creating high-quality scientific datasets, increasing researcher access to large-scale computing power, and automating lab processes.

Kratsios appeared before the House Science Committee to defend President Trump's AI strategy and encourage Congress to work toward a federal AI standard rather than a patchwork of state-level standards or international standards not set by the U.S. During the hearing, he came under fire from Democratic lawmakers over the administration's campaign to thwart AI regulations both at the state level and abroad, and faced questions over the government's ongoing relationship with Elon Musk's xAI. Kratsios defended Trump's order seeking to block state AI rules, arguing that a fragmented state-by-state regulatory regime favored major tech companies. The administration's position on state AI preemption has been one of the more contested aspects of its technology agenda, drawing criticism from both Democratic officials who favor stronger regulation and some state governments that had moved to fill the federal void.

Science Funding and Research Policy

Kratsios called for a return to reproducible and transparent research to kickstart what he characterized as years of stalled scientific progress, in his first detailed public remarks on science policy since taking office. He has framed his approach to research spending as a matter of strategic prioritization rather than simple reduction. He said that attempts by the president to "right-size" the federal budget have consistently prioritized AI as a critical research priority. However, the Trump administration's budget proposal for 2026 recommended cutting NIST's budget by 28%.

In February 2026, twenty-five House Democrats led by Representative Valerie Foushee sent a letter to Kratsios and Sacks calling for transparency, accountability, and a renewed commitment to federal STEM education and R&D, warning that steep proposed cuts to federal science agencies and a lack of publicly available information about PCAST threatened U.S. leadership in science and technology innovation. The letter reflected a persistent tension between the administration's stated commitment to technological competitiveness and its simultaneous pursuit of broad budget cuts at federal research agencies.

Recent Developments

On July 21, 2026, OSTP published a 123-page report titled Science: A New Golden Age, authored by Kratsios, which the White House framed as "the first comprehensive rethinking of the U.S. science and technology enterprise in over 80 years" since Vannevar Bush's 1945 report Science, the Endless Frontier. The report was paired with a Fiscal Year 2028 R&D Priorities Memorandum, co-signed by Kratsios and OMB Director Russ Vought, that converts the report's recommendations into directives for federal departments and agencies. The FY2028 memorandum committed to fully fund and scale the Genesis Mission, with more than five billion dollars in federal funding commitments announced across fifteen or more agencies.

Kratsios has described the Genesis Mission — the administration's flagship initiative to advance scientific research using AI — as ensuring "American technological and scientific dominance for our future generations" and as a vehicle for fending off competition from China. He has similarly emphasized that quantum R&D is not simply a scientific endeavor but a national security imperative, an area where U.S. leadership must be unquestioned.

Outlook

Kratsios occupies an unusual position in the second Trump administration. He carries enough institutional credibility — two Senate confirmations, a track record from the first term, experience in both the White House and the Pentagon — to serve as a stabilizing presence in an environment otherwise marked by rapid personnel turnover and aggressive disruption of established agencies. At the same time, his effectiveness is constrained by the administration's broader budgetary pressures on federal research agencies and by the more powerful informal influence of figures like Sacks and Musk on technology policy.

The Science: A New Golden Age report and the associated funding commitments represent the most substantial policy output of his tenure to date, and implementation will be the test of whether the ambition of that document translates into durable institutional change. Federal R&D agencies are required to submit implementation action plans within ninety days of the report's release, with a deadline falling around mid-October 2026. Whether Congress, which has shown some resistance to the administration's deepest proposed research cuts, will fund the priorities Kratsios has outlined remains an open question. His ability to navigate the gap between the White House's deregulatory instincts and the scientific community's dependence on sustained federal investment will define the legacy of his second tour in government.