Fourteen names on a White House press release. That's all it took to redraw the map of who actually matters in American AI policy.

On March 25, 2026, President Trump announced his first appointments to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology — PCAST. The 14-member roster reads like a who's-who of Silicon Valley royalty: Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Jensen Huang (NVIDIA), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Sergey Brin (Google co-founder), Marc Andreessen (a16z), Lisa Su (AMD), Michael Dell (Dell Technologies), Safra Catz (Oracle), and several others including Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte, and Commonwealth Fusion Systems CEO Bob Mumgaard.

Co-chairing the council: David Sacks, Trump's AI and crypto czar, and Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The council can grow to 24 members. But the names that aren't on it yet tell a sharper story than the names that are.

The two missing chairs

Elon Musk — the man who spent hundreds of millions getting Trump elected, who ran DOGE from inside the West Wing, who has his own AI company xAI — isn't on the council. Neither is Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, arguably the single most influential AI company on Earth.

No Microsoft executives either. Zero.

The White House hasn't explained the omissions. They don't need to. The context does the talking. Musk and Altman are locked in two separate federal lawsuits — Musk suing Altman over OpenAI's nonprofit-to-profit conversion and over alleged market monopolization. Putting them in the same advisory room would be like seating two divorce lawyers at the same dinner table and asking them to collaborate on dessert.

What PCAST actually does

Trump established PCAST by executive order back in January 2026, framing it in national security language: the United States must achieve "unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance." The council advises the President on science, technology, and innovation policy. In practice, it's a signal — a very public list of which tech leaders have the administration's ear.

The roster leans heavily toward hardware (NVIDIA, AMD, Dell), cloud infrastructure (Oracle), and venture capital (Andreessen, Sacks). It also includes two nuclear fusion CEOs — DeWitte from Oklo and Mumgaard from Commonwealth Fusion — which is a quiet tell about where this administration sees the energy future for AI data centers.

The uncomfortable math

Here's what nobody's saying out loud: this council is stacked with people who need something from the government. NVIDIA needs export controls loosened for chip sales to the Middle East. Oracle is building $100+ billion in data center capacity and needs permitting streamlined. Meta is in a regulatory gray zone with the EU and wants a friendly US counterweight. These aren't neutral advisors. They're stakeholders drafting their own rulebook.

My Opinion

I'll be blunt — I think this council is useful theater.

Getting Jensen Huang and Lisa Su in the same room with David Sacks will probably produce some decent policy ideas about chip manufacturing and export strategy. The fusion energy people are a smart pick. But let's not pretend this is an independent scientific body. Every person on this list has billions of dollars riding on exactly the policies they'll be advising on.

The Musk and Altman exclusion is the most interesting part. Trump has basically told the two loudest voices in AI: sit this one out. Whether that's because they're too volatile, too litigious, or simply too distracting — I think it's the right call. You can't build consensus policy when two of your advisors are suing each other in federal court.

What worries me more is what's not on the council: AI safety researchers. Ethicists. Anyone from academia or civil society. This is a council of builders and sellers, not a single person whose job is to say "wait, should we?"

We'll see if Trump fills the remaining 10 seats with some balance. I'm not holding my breath.

Author: Yahor Kamarou (Mark) / www.humai.blog / 26 Mar 2026