Latest news with #EndlessFrontiers
Axios
23-04-2025
- Business
- Axios
The U.S. national security case for deep-tech big bets
Innovation is a weapon. But in a defense world pockmarked by delays, it typically doesn't come fast or cheap. Why it matters: The largest leaps ahead are accomplished by butting heads with the hardest problems. And, oftentimes, whoever corners a market as it emerges sets its rules. The latest: Axios spoke with a half-dozen business executives, financiers, former defense officials and more who made the national-security case for patient capital and argued the government should play riskier hands on technologies that may not come to immediate fruition but, given enough time, can change the game. "The next decade of geopolitical competition is going to get boiled down to frontier technology," Adam Hammer, CEO of Roadrunner Venture Studios, told Axios. "Which technologies dominate and where they are built will decide some of the most important questions facing humanity." Roadrunner springboards deep-tech endeavors. It works closely with scientists and scholars at national labs and universities. "Today it's like, 'Hey, we discovered something in the lab. It's at a bench top.' Great. It needs a team. It needs a business model. It needs to be productized. It needs marketing. It needs all of these things to make it scale," Hammer said. "But we as a country have not figured out that early valley of death." Zoom in: Areas of opportunity include advanced materials and manufacturing; energy production and storage; compute; quantum; and agritech. Some of these sectors are incredibly capital-intensive. "You're unlikely to have a lot of commercial investors fund something super, super early, where they don't know if the basic science has been figured out," Jason Lapadula, a former Pentagon official and Marine infantry officer now at LeoLabs, told Axios. Zoom out: Michael Kratsios, President Trump's chief science and tech policy adviser, in a speech at the Endless Frontiers summit last week said there is "nothing predestined about technological progress and scientific discovery." "For a future stamped with the American character, the federal government must become an early adopter and avid promoter of American technology," he added. "Our industrial might, unleashed at home, and our technical achievements from AI to aerospace, successfully commercialized, can also be powerful instruments of diplomacy abroad and key components of our international alliances." State of play: Some promising avenues already exist. Sources pointed to the Office of Strategic Capital, Defense Innovation Unit and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as well as the Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies program. "The only question is how do we structure this," Anshu Roy, the founder of Rhombus, said in an interview. "It's not a matter of if." Threat level: China's goals for 2035 include boosting economic and science-and-technology strength, "new-type industrialization" and having "national defense and armed forces modernization basically achieved," according to a translated version of its 14th five-year plan. Also mentioned in the document are space and polar exploration — two fronts of security competition. The bottom line: "If the U.S. wants to win the next era of aerospace, we need to fund the hard problems very early. That means prioritizing technologies still in the R&D-to-product transition, not just scaling what's already proven," Venus Aerospace CEO Sassie Duggleby told Axios.
Bloomberg
15-04-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Trump Tech Aide Calls for ‘Creative' R&D Push After Budget Cuts
White House science and technology director Michael Kratsios said the US will need to make 'smart choices' with public research funding to stay competitive in areas like artificial intelligence as the Trump administration's sweeping budget cuts spread to research organizations. 'We must be more creative in our use of public research and development money and shape a funding environment that makes clear what our national priorities are,' Kratsios told technology leaders on Monday at the Endless Frontiers retreat in Austin, his first public remarks since his Senate confirmation in March. Kratsios added that federal dollars for research proposals should be deployed 'more rapidly' and said similar approaches proved valuable during the Covid pandemic.
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's tech and science policy chief says Biden led with ‘spirit of fear' and that today's progress lags 20th century innovation
In his first public remarks since his Senate confirmation, Donald Trump's newly-confirmed director of tech and science policy, Michael Kratsios, accused the Biden Administration of leading with a 'spirit of fear' and laid out a plan for how America could do 'more with less' over the next four years. 'Over the last few decades, America has become complacent,' Kratsios said at the inaugural Endless Frontiers tech and policy retreat in Austin, Tex. on Monday. He added: 'Our progress today pales in comparison to the huge leaps of the 20th century.' In emphasizing a commitment to the deregulation of business, Kratsios said the 'chief barrier' to supersonic aircraft, high-speed rail or flying cars has been a 'regulatory regime opposed to innovation and development.' But, he said, another focus of the Trump administration will be making 'smart choices' and being 'more creative' around how the government allocates its public research and development dollars. A tech investor who served as the chief technology officer in the first Trump administration, Kratsios said the government could make use of prizes, advanced market commitments, and fast and flexible grants like those used during COVID, to multiply the impact of government-funded research and quicken the research process. 'We need to think about ways of more rapidly deploying federal dollars,' he said, pointing to the sometimes year-long application process for obtaining a grant from the National Science Foundation as an example of unnecessary constraints in a world where artificial intelligence is advancing so quickly. Kratsios said that the government should be partnering with both the private sector as well as with academia in areas of national interest, such as AI, quantum, biotech, or next-generation semiconductors. What Kratsios didn't mention was how he plans to navigate these academia partnerships as the Trump administration simultaneously cuts grants to universities and makes sweeping cuts across various agencies, including to science departments. NASA, for example, eliminated its Office of the Chief Scientist earlier this year, and now reportedly may see its science budget cut nearly in half. Less than an hour before Kratsios delivered his prepared comments on stage—in which he said America must 'defend the vital work' of U.S. scientists—the U.S. Department of Education issued a freeze on $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contracts to Harvard University after it refused to meet demands the Trump Administration made at the end of last week. In an on-stage discussion with a venture capital investor following his prepared remarks, Kratsios wasn't asked, nor did he comment on how he planned to navigate this tension in his role as director of the OSTP. But he did stress the importance of universities to the innovation ecosystem. 'Sometimes it's not said enough how important the entire academic enterprise is in driving early stage basic research,' Kratsios said. 'And the core thing that we need to work on as a community is finding ways to continue to build links between that community and the investors and the builders and others who can ultimately commercialize those technologies.' Kratsios, who served as Chief Technology Officer of the White House during the first Trump administration, was confirmed by the Senate to lead the OSTP in mid-March. David Sacks, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, sits under Kratsios within the OSTP and is responsible specifically for Trump's AI and crypto agenda. Kratsios, who has an investing background at Thiel Capital and recently served as managing director to the $14 billion startup Scale AI, found a friendly and welcoming crowd as he spoke outside during sunset to a couple hundred investors, entrepreneurs, researchers, scientists, Texas university leaders, and policymakers. Before he went on stage, Kratsios stood to the side, smiling at faces in the crowd and mouthing a 'hello' to someone in the back. This story was originally featured on
Axios
15-04-2025
- Business
- Axios
The future of U.S. security is today taking shape in Texas
Officials from the Trump, Biden, Obama and Bush administrations, defense and intelligence experts, lawmakers, scientists, and investors are huddling in Texas this week to plot American primacy amid a global realignment. Why it matters: Michael Kratsios, Trump's chief science-and-technology policy adviser, in an interview said U.S. national and economic security is contingent on "technological dominance." He delivered his first public address at the Endless Frontiers summit Monday — its only on-the-record segment. "This isn't some movie where we sit back and watch the future happen," Kratsios told Axios. "It's something that we have to actively be participants in." Trump in a letter last month called on Kratsios to" blaze a trail to the next frontiers of science." It mentioned artificial intelligence, quantum and nuclear tech. Zoom out: The 200-plus attendees of Endless Frontiers (invite only) will leave with a game plan addressing: A tech-savvy U.S. arsenal. Reindustrialization, secure supply chains and critical infrastructure. Government competitiveness and mobilization of national talent. What we're hearing: The get-together comes at a precarious time, both at home and abroad. "We're facing geopolitical and technological shifts that are going to determine the place of the country in the future, especially vis-a-vis China," Rush Doshi, an Asia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Axios. "We thought that this decade was decisive. That's a bipartisan judgement, by the way." "There are parts of America's ecosystem that just never talk to each other," Jordan Blashek, a managing partner at America's Frontier Fund, told Axios. "As a result, we are operating in silos at a moment when we need a unified kind of American response, an American strategy." Between the lines: Note that this is happening in Texas. Not New York. Not California. Follow the money: Endless Frontiers planning began about one year ago. It's cohosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, University of Texas at Austin, Rice University, Texas A&M and Baylor University.
