Trump stacks science panel with big tech royalty: zuckerberg, ellison, huang
Donald Trump just handed the keys to America’s scientific future to the same titans who already own half the cloud. An executive order signed late Monday seats Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison and Jensen Huang on the revived President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, parachuting Silicon Valley’s C-suite directly into the West Wing briefing room.
The co-chairs: venture legend david sacks and former cto michael kratsios
They will steer a body last mothballed by Joe Biden in 2022, now re-christened with a mandate to keep the U.S. workforce competitive against AI, quantum and bio-manufacturing challengers from Beijing. Translation: every rule that could shape hiring, H-1B visas or federal R&D dollars will cross this table first.
The optics are blunt. Oracle’s cloud is chasing a $9 billion Pentagon renewal. Nvidia’s chips power both Meta’s Llama models and the Department of Energy’s exascale labs. Putting their CEOs inside the advisory tent means policy drafts will arrive pre-loaded with vendor specs. Critics call it regulatory capture in lab coats; the White House calls it “ensuring American dominance in the Golden Age of Innovation.”
Trump’s memo orders the council to issue workforce roadmaps within 180 days. Expect screaming matches over open-source AI guardrails, offshore fab subsidies and whether a TikTok ban helps or hurts Nvidia’s quarterly numbers. The first meeting is slated for March, behind closed doors, no public minutes required.
History buffs note the pattern: every president since Franklin Roosevelt has weaponized PCAST for his own industrial crusade—Kennedy used it to sell Apollo, Obama to push clean-tech loans. Trump’s twist is the sheer market cap at the table: $5.2 trillion in combined valuation, more than the GDP of the UK.
The losers? Academic scientists who once dominated the roster. Only three university presidents made the cut, none from the Ivy League. One insider joked the council now has more private jets than PhDs.
Bottom line: if you earn a paycheck anywhere near AI, robotics or cloud infrastructure, these 24 names will decide how fast your job evolves—and whether you need a security clearance to keep it. Keep your résumé warm and your GPU bills paid; the rules are being rewritten by the very people who sell you the silicon.