The White House announced the new members of a board called the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) on Wednesday. First established under President George W. Bush with the stated goal of “strengthening American leadership in science and technology,” the board’s latest iteration is comprised of people who’ve debased themselves in order to get closer to President Donald Trump. But there’s one big-name tech oligarch that you might notice is currently missing.
The board is co-chaired by David Sacks, Trump’s AI and crypto czar, as well as Michael Kratsios, the chief technology officer of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The full list of names announced on Wednesday:
- Marc Andreessen (Andreesen Horowitz)
- Sergey Brin (Google)
- Safra Catz (Oracle)
- Michael Dell (Dell)
- Jacob DeWitte (Oklo)
- Fred Ehrsam (Coinbase)
- Larry Ellison (Oracle)
- David Friedberg (All-In podcast)
- Jensen Huang (Nvidia)
- John Martinis (Nobel Prize in Physics)
- Bob Mumgaard (Commonwealth Fusion Systems)
- Lisa Su (AMD)
- Mark Zuckerberg (Meta)
Are there any names that seem to be conspicuous in their absence? The wealthiest man in the world, perhaps?
That’s right, Elon Musk didn’t make the list, and it’s not immediately clear why. The Tesla CEO might be too busy working on his preparations for SpaceX to go public. Or he might not be invited, since Musk and Trump had a falling out, and the billionaire oligarch shouted to the world that the president was in the Epstein files.
Both men are in the Epstein files, of course, but dropping that fact in a heated moment is kind of the nuclear option for members of the ruling class. Trump and Musk did seem to publicly reconcile after the DOGE implosion, but things clearly aren’t the same as they were in 2025.
The White House announcement notes that the advisory board “may be composed of up to 24 members,” so there is the chance that Musk and plenty of other Silicon Valley fat cats will get a chance to join soon. But it’s not even clear what the board will be doing in the coming year.
The White House website says that members will “focus on topics related to the opportunities and challenges that emerging technologies present to the American workforce, and ensuring all Americans thrive in the Golden Age of Innovation.” That sounds about as generic as it comes and could mean anything.
If we had to guess, the board under Trump will help steer money to benefit favored tech businesses that are willing to play ball with the Trump regime’s authoritarian playbook. Under Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, there were a handful of members of the board who were leaders in the tech industry, but the vast majority were scientists and academics.
As we’ve seen with the Pentagon’s designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk, any tech company that’s not willing to bend the knee will be punished. And in backsliding democracies, who you know determines whether your business will be allowed to survive.
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