Trump Finally Names a U.S. CTO
Michael Kratsios, now deputy CTO, sees himself translating the president’s views into a tech agenda.
Michael Kratsios at the State of the Net Conference 2019 at the Newseum in Washington on Jan. 29, 2019.
Photographer: Michael Brochstein/AP
For the first time in two years—and for the first time under President Trump—the U.S. is set to have a chief technology officer. On March 21 the president will nominate for the post Michael Kratsios, a former venture capitalist who now serves as deputy CTO, a White House official tells Bloomberg Businessweek.
Kratsios is just 32, but he’s exceedingly well-connected, having served as chief of staff at investment management firm Thiel Capital before joining Trump’s transition team in late 2016. The firm’s namesake, archconservative-by-Valley-standards Peter Thiel, had broken with the technology industry by endorsing Trump and then helping with the transition. After the inauguration, Thiel kept his day job as an investor, but Kratsios was named deputy CTO, becoming Trump’s de facto head of tech policy while the top job went unfilled. It was his first job in politics since the George W. Bush era, when he interned for Republican Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina while studying political science at Princeton.