The Man Playing Peacemaker Between Trump and Tech

"We are really working on issues that policy makers have never tackled before," Mr. Kratsios, the U.S. deputy chief technology officer, told The Wall Street Journal in his first major interview since his appointment in March. "It's just a question of putting smart people around a table and trying to come up with an innovative approach to regulating" new technologies, he said. To do that, he will need to work closely with the science and tech communities--some of the staunchest critics of Mr. Trump's policies. Leading scientists and tech executives have abandoned White House advisory councils and complained that the president's policies in areas like climate change and immigration threaten to reverse years of economic and social progress. It may help that Mr. Kratsios, 31 years old, hails from the world of technology, having spent seven years as an executive at venture-capital firms founded by Silicon Valley luminary Peter Thiel.