Eric Emerson Schmidt is an American businessman and former software engineer who served as the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011 and as the company's executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also served as the executive chairman of parent company Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 2017,and Technical Advisor at Alphabet from 2017 to 2020. In April 2022,the Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated his net worth to be US$25.1 billion.
Peter Andreas Thiel is an American entrepreneur,venture capitalist,and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal,Palantir Technologies,and Founders Fund,he was the first outside investor in Facebook. As of July 2024,Thiel had an estimated net worth of $11.2 billion and was ranked 212th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Reid Garrett Hoffman is an American internet entrepreneur,venture capitalist,podcaster,and author. Hoffman is the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn,a business-oriented social network used primarily for professional networking. He is also chairman of venture capital firm Village Global and a co-founder of Inflection AI.
The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is a department of the United States government,part of the Executive Office of the President (EOP),established by United States Congress on May 11,1976,with a broad mandate to advise the President on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs.
The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) is a council in the Executive Branch of the United States. It is designed to coordinate science and technology policy across the branches of federal government.
Aneesh Paul Chopra is an American executive who served as the first Chief Technology Officer of the United States. He was appointed in 2009 by President Barack Obama and was at the White House through 2012. Chopra previously served as Virginia's Secretary of Technology under Governor Tim Kaine. Chopra was a candidate in 2013 for the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. He is the author of Innovative State:How New Technologies Can Transform Government (2014) and co-founder and president of CareJourney. In 2015 he joined Albright Stonebridge Group as a senior advisor.
The United States Chief Technology Officer is an official in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The U.S. CTO helps the President and their team harness the power of technology and data to benefit all Americans. The CTO works closely with others both across and outside government on a broad range of work including bringing technology expertise to bear on federal policy and programs,and promoting values-driven technological innovation. The CTO and their team have historically focused on leveraging technology and technical expertise to help create jobs,strengthen privacy protections,harness the benefits and mitigate the risks of artificial intelligence,create paths to improve government services with lower costs,higher quality and increased transparency and accessibility,help upgrade agencies to use open data and expand their data science capabilities,improve quality and reduce the costs of health care and criminal justice,increase access to broadband,bring technical talent into government for policy and modern operations input,improve community innovation engagement by agencies working on local challenges,and help keep the nation secure.
The federal Chief Information Officer of the United States,also known as the United States Chief Information Officer,is the administrator of the Office of Electronic Government,or the Office of the Federal CIO (OFCIO),which is part of the Office of Management and Budget. The President appoints the Federal CIO. The appointee does not require Senate confirmation. It was created by the E-Government Act of 2002.
Alondra Nelson is an American academic,policy advisor,non-profit administrator,and writer. She is the Harold F. Linder chair and professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study,an independent research center in Princeton,New Jersey. Since March 2023,she has been a distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
The Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering,abbreviated USD (R&E),is a senior official of the United States Department of Defense. The USD (R&E) is charged with the development and oversight of technology strategy for the DoD. The post has at various times had the titles Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering,or Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E). The latter title has itself historically varied between the rank of under secretary and that of assistant secretary.
Palantir Technologies Inc. is a public American company that specializes in software platforms for big data analytics. Headquartered in Denver,Colorado,it was founded by Peter Thiel,Nathan Gettings,Joe Lonsdale,Stephen Cohen,and Alex Karp in 2003. The company's name is derived from The Lord of the Rings where the magical palantíri were "seeing-stones," described as indestructible balls of crystal used for communication and to see events in other parts of the world.
The Presidential Innovation Fellows program is a competitive fellowship program that pairs top innovators from the private sector,non-profits,and academia with top innovators in government to collaborate on solutions that aim to deliver significant results in months,not years. It was established in 2012 and has operated continuously since then. The program focuses on generating measurable results,using innovation techniques from private industry such as Lean Startup,Design Thinking,and Agile Development.
Palmer Freeman Luckey is an American entrepreneur best known as the founder of Oculus VR and designer of the Oculus Rift,a virtual reality head-mounted display that is widely credited with reviving the virtual reality industry. In 2017,Luckey left Oculus and founded defense contractor Anduril Industries,a defense technology company focused on autonomous drones and sensors for military applications. Luckey ranked number 22 on Forbes' 2016 List of America's Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40.
Paul Eremenko is a Ukrainian American innovator and technology executive. He was formerly the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of United Technologies Corporation. Earlier,he served as the CTO of Airbus,and former CEO of Airbus Silicon Valley innovation center. He is a former Google executive and head of Google's Project Ara,an effort to create an open,modular smartphone platform. Eremenko was named one of the Top-10 Tech Leaders of 2015 in FORTUNE Magazine. Eremenko has also come out as a strong proponent of artificial intelligence and autonomy research. Eremenko has cited his desire to build a starship as the motivation underpinning his career.
Fei-Fei Li is a Chinese-American computer scientist,known for establishing ImageNet,the dataset that enabled rapid advances in computer vision in the 2010s. She is the Sequoia Capital professor of computer science at Stanford University and former board director at Twitter. Li is a co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and a co-director of the Stanford Vision and Learning Lab. She served as the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 2013 to 2018.
A military artificial intelligence arms race is an arms race between two or more states to develop and deploy lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS). Since the mid-2010s,many analysts have noted the emergence of such an arms race between superpowers for better military AI,driven by increasing geopolitical and military tensions.
Erie Meyer is an American technologist and federal government executive. She currently serves as Chief Technologist of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and previously served as Chief Technologist of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under FTC Chair Lina Khan in 2021. Meyer had also served as a technologist in the office of then-FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra. Meyer is the co-founder of the networking list Tech Ladymafia with Aminatou Sow. In 2022,she was named a Tech Titan by Washingtonian magazine.
The William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 is a United States federal law which specifies the budget,expenditures and policies of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) for fiscal year 2021. Analogous NDAAs have been passed annually for 59 years. The act is named in honor of Representative Mac Thornberry,who served as either the chair or the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee. Thornberry retired from Congress at the end of the congressional session.
William B. Roper Jr. is an American physicist and foreign policy strategist who served as the 13th Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition,Technology and Logistics,overseeing procurement for the U.S. Air Force and Space Force from 2018 to 2021. Before taking office he served elsewhere within the Department of Defense as founder and director of the Strategic Capabilities Office,and prior as Ballistic Missile Defense System Architect at the Missile Defense Agency. He was also a member of the 2018 National Defense Strategy steering group. He is currently the CEO at Istari,as well as serving as senior advisor at McKinsey and Co.,and teaching at Georgia Tech.
Anduril Industries,Inc. is an American defense technology company that specializes in autonomous systems. It was cofounded in 2017 by inventor and entrepreneur Palmer Luckey and others. Anduril aims to sell to the U.S. Department of Defense,including artificial intelligence and robotics. Anduril's major products include unmanned aerial systems (UAS),counter-UAS (CUAS),semi-portable autonomous surveillance systems,and networked command and control software.
