Trump administration cancels November 6 meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology; Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg and others were not in attendance

PCAST was reestablished by Trump through an executive order in January 2025, and its first members were appointed in March 2026. There are 13 members, most of whom come from the technology industry rather than traditional academia. The members include Jensen Huang (Nvidia), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Lisa Su (AMD), Larry Ellison and Safra Catz (Oracle), Sergey Brin (Google/Alphabet), and Marc Andreessen, among others. Co-chair David Sacks previously served as the White House special adviser on AI and cryptocurrencies, and Michael Kratsios is the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Compared with past PCASTs, which were centered on university scientists, this one is clearly tilted toward chip, cloud and platform company executives.

The meeting was originally intended to advise the “Super Intelligence Task Force.” The task force is led by national intelligence director Jay Clayton, and its members include FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Department of Defense undersecretary for research and engineering Emil Michael, and Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor. It was established in October 2026, and its tasks include coordinating the federal government’s assessment of the risks and opportunities of superintelligence, using the government’s term, and submitting a report within about 120 days. As an external advisory body, PCAST was assigned to provide input on issues such as cybersecurity, biosecurity and model control. After the meeting was canceled, the Energy Department did not confirm a new date, and the White House did not explain the reason.

Compared with previous PCASTs, this one is more heavily concentrated in industry. For example, PCAST during the Biden administration included more National Academy members and researchers in biomedicine and climate fields, whereas in this 13-member panel only one is a university physicist (John Martinis), with the rest mainly being chip and cloud infrastructure executives. The meeting had originally been scheduled for the day after tech stocks fell sharply following the midterm election results, with the Nasdaq down about 5.5% in a single day and about $3 trillion in market capitalization erased, but it was ultimately canceled. The similarity to historical cases is that advisory committees serve presidential priorities; the difference is that this panel directly covers key parts of the AI supply chain, and the timing of the meeting coincided with changing market expectations about congressional regulation.

The cancellation itself does not change PCAST’s advisory nature, nor does it show that the work of the Super Intelligence Task Force has stopped. However, against the backdrop of a sharp pullback in tech stocks amid worries about regulation of data centers and AI infrastructure, the planned external industry-advice segment has been postponed, which may leave the task force in the short term relying more on internal officials, such as the team led by Clayton, rather than directly hearing real-time input from core supply-chain companies such as Huang’s, Zuckerberg’s and Su’s. Indicators to watch are whether the Energy Department or the White House announces a new PCAST meeting date, and the final publication timing and content of the task force’s 120-day report.

ABAB News · Cognitive Law

1. For an advisory committee led by industry executives, the meeting schedule is still directly determined by administrative scheduling rather than market fluctuations.

2. When the external advice segment is canceled, the channels for information input into the internal task force narrow accordingly.