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Kratsios Testifies at His Senate Commerce Confirmation Hearing, Feb. 25, 2025

February 25, 2025 · Forbes Breaking News · 2:13:15

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What happened

Michael Kratsios testified on February 25, 2025, before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation at the nominations hearing on his selection to be Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, held jointly with the nomination of Mark Meador to be a Federal Trade Commissioner, according to the committee. Forbes Breaking News carried the hearing in full. Senator Bill Hagerty, who had worked with Kratsios on 5G policy while serving as Ambassador to Japan, introduced him to the committee.

Kratsios, who served as U.S. Chief Technology Officer in the President’s first administration, described China as the United States’ “preeminent geopolitical rival” and “most formidable technological and scientific competitor,” and said the United States must “double down on the uniquely American free-market approach to scientific discovery,” according to a Covington summary of the hearing. He organized his testimony around research and development, removing barriers to innovation, workforce development, and international engagement, according to an Akin Gump summary. Chairman Ted Cruz asked whether the administration would again push to free federal spectrum for commercial use, drawing on Kratsios’s first-term work on 5G; Kratsios replied that it is “critically important to always be looking at ways that we can better utilize spectrum.” Asked by Senator Jacky Rosen how Congress should think about advanced AI models developed by adversaries, Kratsios pointed to measurement science, saying an agency like the National Institute of Standards and Technology is “a great place to refine the measurement science around model evaluation,” as Covington summarized the exchange. The Senate confirmed Kratsios on March 25, 2025, by a vote of 74–25, according to ASME’s report of the vote.

Why it matters

This hearing is the founding document of Kratsios’s OSTP directorship: the China-competition framing, the free-market discovery doctrine, and the spectrum and AI-measurement positions he stated here are the commitments his tenure as the President’s science and technology adviser is measured against on this site. It is also the earliest full public record of the administration’s technology-policy leadership — the office that later staffed the White House’s AI and quantum initiatives.

Scoreboard watch

This is a candidate item for the weekly scoreboard: Kratsios’s February 25, 2025 confirmation commitments — U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and advanced communications against China, pursued through the free-market approach he described — each as stated at the hearing, to be checked against OSTP’s work in office.

Sources: Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, nominations hearing on Michael Kratsios and Mark Meador, February 25, 2025 (full hearing as carried by Forbes Breaking News, embedded above); Covington, March 21, 2025, and Akin Gump summaries of the hearing; Senator Hagerty’s introduction statement, February 25, 2025; ASME, March 2025, on the confirmation vote. All figures and characterizations as stated by Mr. Kratsios and committee members at the hearing.