With the appointment of the first members of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), Donald Trump’s administration is no longer content with soliciting opinions, and is surrounding itself with those who are already concretely structuring innovation infrastructures.
Thirteen personalities have been designated, with a possible extension to twenty-four members, and the council will be co-chaired by David Sacks and Michael Kratsios. The official objective “to strengthen American leadership in science and technology” reflects a more operational ambition: to organize direct convergence between public power and industrial capacities.
A composition that embraces the AI value chain
The list of members draws a coherent architecture, covering the critical building blocks of the contemporary technological economy: calculation, platforms, capital, energy and deeptech.
PCAST members: profiles and strategic role
Computing, infrastructure and cloud
- Jensen Huang
CEO of NVIDIA, a central player in the GPU market. Its architectures now constitute the hardware basis for training large-scale AI models.
- Lisa Su
CEO of AMD, direct competitor of NVIDIA in high performance computing. She is leading the rise of alternatives to the compute AI duopoly.
- Michael Dell
Founder of Dell Technologies. Specialist in IT infrastructures and server systems, at the heart of enterprise deployment of AI.
- Safra Catz
CEO of Oracle. Positioned on the cloud and critical databases, it embodies the software and infrastructure layer of large companies.
- Larry Ellison
Founder of Oracle. Historical figure in software, involved in sovereign cloud and defense issues.
Platforms, data and artificial intelligence
- Mark Zuckerberg
CEO of Meta. Engaged in the development of open models (LLaMA) and in the structuring of social platforms on a global scale.
- Sergey Brin
Co-founder of Google. Involved in the group’s AI initiatives, notably via DeepMind and generative models.
Capital, crypto and innovation financing
- Marc Andreessen
Co-founder of the Andreessen Horowitz fund. Major investor in AI, software infrastructure and crypto.
- Fred Ehrsam
Co-founder of Coinbase. Structuring player in crypto infrastructures and new decentralized financial models.
- David Friedberg
Founder of The Production Board. Investor in agricultural, industrial and climate technologies, at the intersection of software and the physical world.
Deeptech, energy and fundamental science
- Bob Mumgaard
CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Works to develop fusion reactors, a key technology to support AI energy demand.
- John Martinis
Physicist specializing in quantum computing. Former program manager at Google, he embodies disruptive research beyond traditional computing.
- Jacob DeWitte
CEO of Oklo. Develops advanced nuclear reactors, positioned as an energy solution for supercomputing infrastructures.
From scientific advice to strategic coordination tool
Historically, PCAST is part of a tradition initiated under Franklin D. Roosevelt and formalized in its modern version under George W. Bush. Its new composition marks a functional break. It no longer aims only to inform public decision-making, but to directly integrate operators into the strategic definition process.
Work, AI and sovereignty: a controlled political framework
By emphasizing the workforce, the administration is choosing a cautious political approach. Behind this framework, the issues are structuring: automation of tasks, recomposition of professions, ramp-up of critical infrastructures. AI is presented here as a lever for growth and competitiveness, and not as a factor of social disruption, reflecting an approach oriented towards national productivity.
A logic of alignment in a context of global rivalry
PCAST functions as a synchronization mechanism between public priorities (employment, sovereignty, defense) and industrial interests (computing, platforms, technological standards).
A configuration which poses a structural question: that of the influence of dominant players in the definition of regulatory frameworks.
The absent: a hollow map of technological power
Beyond the profiles selected, the composition of the PCAST can also be read through its absences. No explicit representative of Microsoft, although central in the race for AI via its partnership with OpenAI and its cloud infrastructure, nor of Amazon, of which AWS remains a pillar of the global deployment of computing.
The absence of Elon Musk, despite his structuring role in AI (xAI), space and automobiles, is also notable.
More broadly, no actor directly from OpenAI or Anthropic appears at this stage, even though these organizations are at the heart of the model dynamics. This choice suggests a preference for profiles controlling infrastructures (computing, energy, cloud, capital) rather than AI laboratories themselves. A reading which confirms that, in the current approach, technological sovereignty is primarily based on industrial capacities and critical resources, more than on algorithms alone.
