Office of Science and Technology Policy OSTP

Presidents have had science advisers since the Sputnik crisis of 1957, when Eisenhower named the first full-time Special Assistant for Science and Technology. The office was abolished in 1973 and then restored on a firmer footing by the National Science and Technology Policy, Organization, and Priorities Act of 1976, which created OSTP. Its director, confirmed by the Senate, serves as the President's chief science adviser.

OSTP coordinates science and technology policy across agencies that together spend well over a hundred billion dollars a year on research, from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation to the Department of Energy laboratories and NASA. It runs the National Science and Technology Council, a cabinet-level coordinating body, and supports the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a panel of outside experts. It also helps set research budget priorities with the Office of Management and Budget.

Its prominence rises and falls with the President's interest. Recent administrations have used it to lead policy on artificial intelligence, quantum computing, semiconductors, and research security, and in July 2025 it issued a national AI action plan emphasizing deregulation and American leadership in the technology. Debates over federal research funding cuts and the independence of government science in 2025 and 2026 also ran through its work.