President Trump last week officially nominated Michael Kratsios, member of the first Trump administration without a diploma in science or in engineering, to be his scientific advisor.
Experts in scientific policy claim that the vast experience of Mr. Kratsios in private and public technological management and management is what makes him an attractive candidate. Its expertise includes a central role in the first federal efforts to accelerate the rise of artificial intelligence and to compete with China in its development. He will join A cohort of White House advisers On the difficult subject.
Despite this, the selection of Mr. Trump marks a clear interruption of a long tradition in which the presidential science advisers have obtained superior diplomas and deep scientific roots. The appointment of Mr. Kratsios led other experts to warn of the budget cuts in health and physical sciences.
“It’s a total disaster,” said Michael S. LubellProfessor of physics at the City College in New York and former spokesperson for the American Physical Society, the largest group of physicists in the world. “Climate science is dead. God knows what will happen to biomedicine. This marks the start of the decline of the golden age of American science. »»
Neal F. LaneA physicist who was the scientific advisor to President Bill Clinton, said the appointment of Mr. Kratsios represented a deep change. “The first Trump administration had a scientific advisor with extraordinary references,” he said.
This official was Kelvin DroegemeierA meteorologist who received his doctorate. In atmospheric sciences from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. For almost a decade, until his appointment to the White House, Dr. Droegemeier was vice-president of research at the University of Oklahoma, a pioneer center in the development of weather forecasts. It also served 2004 to 2016 on the National Sciences CouncilWho oversees the National Science Foundation and gives independent advice to the Congress and the President.
Practically all the former scientific advisers in the country had doctorates, often elite universities with reputation for the production of Nobel Prize winners. The first, Bush VannevarScientific advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, received his doctorate jointly from MIT and Harvard. He played a central role in Washington’s persuasion Build the first atomic bomb.
Victoria Lacivita, spokesperson for the Office of Scientific and Technological Policy of the White House, said that the office would not comment on the selection of Mr. Kratsios. Instead, she listed the scientific leaders who have expressed their support for Mr. Kratsios, in particular Sudip ParikhHead of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Barbara R. SnyderHead of the Association of American Universities; And Mark BeckerHead of the Association of Public Universities of Land Concessions.
Mr. Kratsios, 38, grew up in South Carolina and obtained her Magna Cum Laude diploma in 2008 Princeton with a Baccalaureate ès arts in politics. He has no other diploma. During his university stay, he was A trainee For Senator Lindsey Graham, the Southern Carolina Republican.
After school, he was a Wall Street analyst Before working in an investment fund managed by Peter Thiel, a venture capital in Silicon Valley which supported Mr. Trump’s first presidential offer and advised him on technological issues.
In March 2017, at the start of his first mandate, Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Kratsios as his assistant assistant for technological policy. He was the administration First rental Among its many openings for science and technology advisers. In this post, he led technological policy initiatives on issues such as AI, drones, quantum IT and cybersecurity.
At the time, Dr. Lane, Mr. Clinton’s scientific advisor, referred to Mr. Kratsios in a New York Times opinion Like “a technologically inexperienced financier from Silicon Valley holding a baccalaureate in political science”. The title of the test was “Trump’s disdain for science”.
A lot of criticism default The Trump administration for having left many of its best scientific positions. For example, Mr. Trump had been in office for almost two years before Dr. Droegemeier was confirmed by the Senate as a scientific advisor.
Technical experts too accused The Trump administration to sell the edge of the United States to China. Mr. Kratsios shortly after led the administration’s appeal to stronger IA initiatives.
“We must invest in the industries of the future”, wrote The need for more difficult AI policies in a wired article in February 2019. “We must act now to guarantee that this innovation generates excitement rather than uncertainty.”
Simultaneously, he played A central role In the birth of what the Trump administration praised as the first strategy of the nation, known as Artificial American Intelligence Initiative.
In March 2019, Mr. Trump selected Mr. Kratsios will be the country’s technology director. The message, created By the Obama administration, requires confirmation of the Senate and is located within the Office of the Science and Technological Policy of the White House, which houses the president’s scientific advisor.
In July 2020, the White House gave Mr. Kratsios a second work – The Defense Under-Secretary for Research and Engineering. In this role, he supervised a sprawling labyrinth of units which included the department’s research laboratories as well as the Space Development Agency and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
For his service, he received The distinguished public service medal, the highest price awarded by the Ministry of Defense to private citizens or non -career federal employees.
In an interview, Dr. Droegemeier, Mr. Trump’s scientific advisor during his first mandate, described Mr. Kratsios as an extremely intelligent and very well organized. “He has a very good vision of things and a feeling of what to be done,” he said. “He looks through a geopolitical lens.”
Dr. Droegemeier, who has often collaborated with Mr. Kratsios in the White House, added that he “knows what he does not know” and would constantly be based on the specialists who did it.
He jokingly noted the baccalaureate of Mr. Kratsios in politics and said that after an early meeting with him “I wanted this diploma”.
After leaving the government when President Biden won the elections in 2020, Mr. Kratsios became Managing Director of AI scaleA San Francisco startup that helps companies to improve their products. As responsible for the Startup strategy, His main work had to help companies put their AI pilot projects on the due date and the commercial market.
In 2024, the Pentagon selected AI failure to help its tests and the assessment of AI models that could one day help combatants make decisions.
The Trump administration has made AI an absolute priority. As elected president, Mr. Trump selected David Sacks, a conservative ally close to the Silicon Valley of Elon Musk, to be his AI and his Crypto Tsar.
In an interview, Dr. Lane, Mr. Clinton’s scientific advisor, said his criticism from Mr. Kratsios in 2018 could not take into account the progress he has later made in his technological career. Mr. Trump chooses him as a scientific advisor, he added, can be considered justified given Washington’s current push To beat China in the world of AI.
“Technology is a much higher priority for everyone in the White House than over the past years,” said Dr. Lane, including Mr. Trump’s first term. And that, he added, has made a scientific advisor with an in-depth knowledge of technology and its arcanic complexities an important asset.
“He can indicate a wide range of responsibilities,” said Dr. Lane about Mr. Kratsios’ curriculum vitae, including not only his jobs in technology, but also his mandate as Pentagon research chief.
In terms of skills acquired in terms of policy and scientific management, Dr. Lane added: “He can indicate the experience that could be more important than a doctorate”.