Michael Kratsios was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 25, 2025, as the 13th Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in a bipartisan 74–25 vote. In this role, he also serves as the President’s Science Advisor, guiding national strategies on emerging technologies, innovation, and scientific research.

He has just given his first major speach since confirmation as OSTP director (at the Endless Frontiers Summit on April 14, 2025). This is the first major articulation of a the administration’s technology policy. The full video is at the end of this post.

The following are core themes from this landmark speech. The vision he lays out is one of national renewal, technological ambition, and geostrategic competition.

Together, the United States will:

• Restore a national culture of innovation by rejecting stagnation and reigniting the “pioneer spirit” that built mid-20th century breakthroughs.
• Promote and protect U.S. technological leadership simultaneously: promotion through investment and early adoption; protection through export controls, IP security, and hardened supply chains.
• Move beyond the “small yard, high fence” strategy. Passive protection is insufficient.
• We must aggressively build and compete. Invest in critical and emerging technologies that define the 21st-century economy: AI, quantum, biotech, and advanced semiconductors (many more were implied).
• Use fast, flexible government funding tools like prizes, advanced market commitments, rapid grants to signal national priorities and catalyze private sector engagement.
• Reform outdated, innovation-hostile regulations, especially those slowing nuclear energy, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, and high-speed transportation.
• Make the federal government an early adopter of emerging technologies. Government procurement should act as a catalyst, not a drag.
• Create new export pathways for the “American tech stack” to become the global standard, reinforcing alliances and global economic leadership.
• Rebuild domestic industrial capacity by reshoring supply chains for critical technologies, using investment incentives and public-private partnerships.
• Enforce strict export controls and “know your customer” compliance to stop the transfer of frontier technologies to adversaries—especially China.
• Restrict foreign access to sensitive research and data. Tighten oversight of international collaborations, particularly those that risk IP leakage or foreign influence.
• Stop relying on cheap labor and unrestricted immigration as substitutes for productivity.
• Prioritize technology that empowers American workers to do more meaningful, high-leverage work.
• Engage builders, researchers, and technologists in the policy process. Innovation and politics can’t be siloed.

His full remarks are available on YouTube at: