Many Trump administration officials work on national security or artificial intelligence. Michael Kratsios is thinking about how they collide. Confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday to lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy, he is taking charge at a pivotal moment in the AI race with China. The Chinese startup DeepSeek rattled lawmakers in January when it released a powerful model trained at much lower costs than U.S. competitors. That raised pressure on the Trump administration to limit China’s access to advanced U.S. chips without disrupting American businesses abroad. The Commerce Department on Tuesday added dozens of Chinese companies to a trade blacklist. U.S. companies need government approval to sell to those businesses in China. Kratsios cut his teeth in the tech industry for several years as one of venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s top deputies. After Thiel was one of the few Silicon Valley executives to back Donald Trump in 2016, Kratsios got a top tech policy role in the first Trump administration and briefly oversaw research and engineering at the Defense Department.

Full interview : White House OSTP Director Michael Kratsios answers questions on US plans to counter China on AI.