One year ago, President Donald Trump rolled out his AI Action Plan, which focuses on the three pillars of innovation, infrastructure, and international diplomacy and security. At the core of Trump’s plan is the need to ensure American dominance in the field over adversaries like China.
The AI Action Plan also builds off of the successes that Trump had in technology innovation during his first term; Keith Krach was at the forefront of many of those decisions in his role as Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment in the Department of State. Krach most recently served as the CEO of Freedom 250, which led many of the nationwide celebrations of America’s independence.
In an interview with the Washington Reporter, Krach explained that “the architecture of the AI Action Plan is right, and President Trump’s administration has moved from strategy into execution.”
“The plan correctly treats AI as a full ecosystem, with action on innovation, data-center permitting, power and grid capacity, cybersecurity, full-stack AI exports, and adoption across the national-security enterprise,” Krach explained. “Now,” however, “comes the harder phase: delivery. Projects must move from announcements to operating systems. America needs faster permits, more reliable power, secure semiconductor capacity, a larger technical workforce, strong protection for models and data, and allied deployments that are commercially successful. I would also put a public scorecard behind the plan — milestones for infrastructure, energy, talent, security, adoption, and international partnerships. We will not win the AI race with a document. We will win by building, deploying, and exporting the most trusted and trusted, capable ecosystem in the world.”
Among the lessons that Krach sees Trump’s AI plans is that “America does not need to make everything. We do need the capacity to make and scale what matters. That requires five things working together: abundant and affordable energy; faster and predictable permitting; long-term capital and demand; a world-class technical workforce; and a stronger bridge from research and prototypes to high-volume production. I have seen that challenge firsthand — from helping launch GMF Robotics at the beginning of the industrial-robotics revolution to building supply-chain and digital-transformation companies, working on trusted technology and semiconductor strategy at the State Department, and helping bring leading-edge chip manufacturing back to the United States.”
During his time in the public and private sectors, Krach has seen this firsthand. “I was recently honored with the M. Eugene Merchant Manufacturing Medal, and the lesson across those experiences is the same: technology leadership matters only when we can translate innovation into production and adoption at scale,” he said. “We also have to help small and mid-sized manufacturers adopt robotics, AI, digital twins, and modern production systems. Innovation that never reaches the factory floor does not strengthen the industrial base. Trusted allies are a force multiplier, especially in semiconductors, critical minerals, equipment, and specialized materials. The objective is not autarky. It is resilience — domestic capacity at the critical nodes, diversified allied supply chains, and the ability to surge when the country needs it.”
Trump’s current posture towards China follows a history-bucking trend that dates back to his first term, Krach explained. “The first Trump administration broke with the assumption that engagement alone would change Beijing’s behavior,” he said. “President Trump put reciprocity, intellectual property theft, export controls, investment screening, supply-chain security, and the Huawei threat at the center of economic and national-security policy. COVID then made the cost of concentrated dependence impossible to ignore.”
“Efficiency without resilience can become a strategic liability overnight,” he noted. “We were trying to solve urgent economic and national-security problems. In the process, our team helped pioneer what we now call technology diplomacy — combining technology expertise and private-sector operating strategies with traditional foreign-policy tools to build trusted alliances. The lesson remains simple: protect what is essential, diversify what is vulnerable, build more capacity at home, and deepen supply chains with trusted allies. Never depend on an adversarial government for something you cannot afford to lose. One of the most important steps was helping bring leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing back to the United States. Our State Department team worked with TSMC and Taiwan’s leaders to secure TSMC’s initial $12 billion Arizona commitment, which became a catalyst for a broader wave of semiconductor investment. We also established the first U.S.-Taiwan Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue to deepen cooperation on trusted technology, supply chains, economic security, and investment. These were team achievements built on trust.”
Despite the four years of President Joe Biden’s tenure in office serving as an interregnum between Trump terms, Krach said that, when it comes to China policy, “there has been more strategic continuity than the political debate often suggests.” Despite the vehement disagreements that Trump and Biden had on most policies, Biden kept many of Trump’s tough-on-China moves in place.
“The first Trump administration changed the baseline by confronting forced technology transfer, strengthening export controls and investment screening, treating Huawei and critical infrastructure as national-security issues, and working with allies on trusted supply chains,” Krach said. “The Biden administration largely continued and, in several areas, expanded that framework through additional semiconductor controls, domestic chip investment, outbound-investment restrictions, and allied coordination. President Trump’s second administration has continued many of those policies while putting greater emphasis on speed, energy, permitting, full-stack AI exports, domestic manufacturing, and reciprocity. The lesson is that trusted technology, supply-chain resilience, and strategic competition with China have become durable elements of American policy. The administrations differ in emphasis and execution, but the strategic direction has shown substantial continuity.”
One of the biggest emphases of Trump’s first term when it came to China was how to handle Huawei, which Krach was at the forefront of handling. “The biggest lesson from Huawei is that a warning is not a strategy,” he said. “We made progress by translating a complex technical threat into clear trust standards, aligning government and the private sector, working country by country, and pairing security requirements with credible alternatives. Partners needed a positive proposition, not simply a demand to say no. That approach became the Clean Network, built on integrity, transparency, reciprocity, the rule of law, property rights, and national sovereignty. It grew to include more than 60 countries, hundreds of telecommunications companies, and many leading technology companies. I was honored to help lead it, but its success came from an extraordinary team across the State Department, our embassies, allied governments, telecommunications companies, and the private sector. The same model applies to AI, but AI is far more complex than 5G. It spans chips, power, data centers, cloud, data, models, applications, cybersecurity, talent, and standards. The coalition must be modular, measurable, and built for continuous innovation. The United States should define what trusted means, help partners finance and deploy the right systems, and respect their sovereignty. Countries will choose the trusted network when it is also the best-performing network.”
While Krach explained that the Trump and Biden administrations approached China in similar fashions, he noted that the private sector’s approach has changed drastically in the decades since he started companies like DocuSign.
“China’s transformation was gradual, but the result is unmistakable,” Krach said. “Earlier in my business career, many leaders believed deeper commercial engagement would steadily produce greater reciprocity and market behavior. Instead, the Chinese Communist Party fused industrial policy, technology, capital, data, and national power more tightly together. I saw that change from two very different front-row seats. At DocuSign, global companies increasingly treated data location, cybersecurity, market access, and supply-chain exposure as board-level operating issues rather than routine commercial questions.”
“At the State Department, I saw the same dynamic at national scale — commercial dependencies, technical standards, financing, and infrastructure could all become instruments of strategic leverage,” he added. “What people outside business often miss is where the leverage sits. It is not only in tariffs or in headline disputes. It is buried in supplier dependencies, joint ventures, standards, licensing, financing, market access, data flows, and the ability of a government to turn a commercial relationship into strategic pressure. This is about the policies of the Chinese government, not the Chinese people. The practical lesson for every company is simple: know what you depend on, who controls it, and what happens if access disappears overnight.”
When it comes to how America can secure victory over China, Krach cautioned that “victory is not one benchmark, one model, or the permanent isolation of China. It means the United States and our allies remain the world’s preferred technology ecosystem — the best place to invent, invest, build, deploy, and set standards.”
“We should measure that through talent, research, capital, secure infrastructure, allied adoption, resilient supply chains, and commercially superior products,” he explained. “AI strategy is a central pillar of the broader China strategy because AI multiplies every other source of power. It accelerates semiconductor design, energy discovery, advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, cyber operations, quantum research, logistics, and defense. This is therefore a competition between entire innovation systems, not simply between individual AI models. America’s enduring advantage is our combination of freedom, entrepreneurship, universities, capital markets, and allies. At the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue, we are advancing that advantage through the Global Trusted Tech Network, which brings governments, companies, and institutions together to move trusted technology from shared principles to practical deployment. No country, company, or institution can win this competition alone.”
America also does not have to go it alone against China, and Krach explained what good partners in that mission look like. “A strong partner shares more than a political preference,” he said. “It protects intellectual property and sensitive technology, secures data, enforces agreed safeguards, supports transparent procurement, respects the rule of law and national sovereignty, and invests alongside us for the long term. The barriers are usually practical: cost, financing, legacy infrastructure, power shortages, workforce gaps, incompatible rules, and concern about being forced to choose sides. That is why the American offer has to be more than a warning about China. We should bring the full package — superior technology, financing, implementation support, cybersecurity, training, interoperable standards, and a durable relationship that strengthens the partner’s own economy and sovereignty. The objective is not to force countries into a binary political choice. It is to make the trusted choice the most secure, capable, affordable, and economically attractive choice.”
Krach also has advice for how his successors as CEOs of organizations like a hypothetical Freedom 300 can best prepare for America’s next major milestone birthday.
“President Trump set the tone and the mission” of Freedom 250, he said. “His directive was to deliver a grand celebration worthy of America’s 250th birthday, and he remained personally engaged as chair of Task Force 250 and through the major national events. That leadership gave the celebration a clear focal point, while Freedom 250 turned it into a national team effort. Freedom was the unifying theme — not as an abstract slogan, but as the founding principle that enables Americans to build, worship, serve, innovate, take risks, and pursue opportunity. It is the freedom to build, fail, learn, and try again. Every event could look different while still belonging to the same national story. That is how you bring Americans together: give people a common mission and the freedom to participate in their own way.”
“Freedom 250 worked because it was not a single Washington event,” Krach explained. “Signature moments gave the country shared focal points, but the real power came from federal agencies, states and territories, businesses, civic organizations, volunteers, and local communities making the celebration their own. For Freedom 300, start early, decentralize from the beginning, and preserve the complete playbook. We did not inherit a complete operating archive from the Bicentennial. We are building one now so the organizers of 2076 inherit the plans, decisions, and lessons learned. A national anniversary succeeds when citizens are participants, not spectators.”
Below is a transcript of our interview with Keith Krach, lightly edited for clarity.
Washington Reporter:
Let’s start with a recap on Freedom 250, which you helped make into a massive success; how do you think that went? And what lessons would you give to the organizers of Freedom 300 as they plan for that in future decades?
Keith Krach:
President Trump set the tone and the mission. His directive was to deliver a grand celebration worthy of America’s 250th birthday, and he remained personally engaged as chair of Task Force 250 and through the major national events. That leadership gave the celebration a clear focal point, while Freedom 250 turned it into a national team effort. Freedom was the unifying theme — not as an abstract slogan, but as the founding principle that enables Americans to build, worship, serve, innovate, take risks, and pursue opportunity. It is the freedom to build, fail, learn, and try again. Every event could look different while still belonging to the same national story. That is how you bring Americans together: give people a common mission and the freedom to participate in their own way. Freedom 250 worked because it was not a single Washington event. Signature moments gave the country shared focal points, but the real power came from federal agencies, states and territories, businesses, civic organizations, volunteers, and local communities making the celebration their own. For Freedom 300, start early, decentralize from the beginning, and preserve the complete playbook. We did not inherit a complete operating archive from the Bicentennial. We are building one now so the organizers of 2076 inherit the plans, decisions, and lessons learned. A national anniversary succeeds when citizens are participants, not spectators.
Washington Reporter:
When it comes to China, let’s start with your pre-Trump administration background; you spent decades in business, and China has changed substantially over time. How have you seen that happen firsthand? What do people outside of the business world not see?
Keith Krach:
China’s transformation was gradual, but the result is unmistakable. Earlier in my business career, many leaders believed deeper commercial engagement would steadily produce greater reciprocity and market behavior. Instead, the Chinese Communist Party fused industrial policy, technology, capital, data, and national power more tightly together. I saw that change from two very different front-row seats. At DocuSign, global companies increasingly treated data location, cybersecurity, market access, and supply-chain exposure as board-level operating issues rather than routine commercial questions. At the State Department, I saw the same dynamic at national scale — commercial dependencies, technical standards, financing, and infrastructure could all become instruments of strategic leverage. What people outside business often miss is where the leverage sits. It is not only in tariffs or in headline disputes. It is buried in supplier dependencies, joint ventures, standards, licensing, financing, market access, data flows, and the ability of a government to turn a commercial relationship into strategic pressure. This is about the policies of the Chinese government, not the Chinese people. The practical lesson for every company is simple: know what you depend on, who controls it, and what happens if access disappears overnight.
Washington Reporter:
How did you see America’s policies shift during the first Trump administration when it comes to China, and how did COVID change that even further?
Keith Krach:
The first Trump administration broke with the assumption that engagement alone would change Beijing’s behavior. President Trump put reciprocity, intellectual property theft, export controls, investment screening, supply-chain security, and the Huawei threat at the center of economic and national-security policy. COVID then made the cost of concentrated dependence impossible to ignore. Efficiency without resilience can become a strategic liability overnight. We were trying to solve urgent economic and national-security problems. In the process, our team helped pioneer what we now call technology diplomacy — combining technology expertise and private-sector operating strategies with traditional foreign-policy tools to build trusted alliances. The lesson remains simple: protect what is essential, diversify what is vulnerable, build more capacity at home, and deepen supply chains with trusted allies. Never depend on an adversarial government for something you cannot afford to lose. One of the most important steps was helping bring leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing back to the United States. Our State Department team worked with TSMC and Taiwan’s leaders to secure TSMC’s initial $12 billion Arizona commitment, which became a catalyst for a broader wave of semiconductor investment. We also established the first U.S.-Taiwan Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue to deepen cooperation on trusted technology, supply chains, economic security, and investment. These were team achievements built on trust.
Washington Reporter:
Can you compare and contrast how you saw the Trump and Biden administrations approach China?
Keith Krach:
There has been more strategic continuity than the political debate often suggests. The first Trump administration changed the baseline by confronting forced technology transfer, strengthening export controls and investment screening, treating Huawei and critical infrastructure as national-security issues, and working with allies on trusted supply chains. The Biden administration largely continued and, in several areas, expanded that framework through additional semiconductor controls, domestic chip investment, outbound-investment restrictions, and allied coordination. President Trump’s second administration has continued many of those policies while putting greater emphasis on speed, energy, permitting, full-stack AI exports, domestic manufacturing, and reciprocity. The lesson is that trusted technology, supply-chain resilience, and strategic competition with China have become durable elements of American policy. The administrations differ in emphasis and execution, but the strategic direction has shown substantial continuity.
Washington Reporter:
In Trump’s second term, he has focused on China in a variety of ways, including with artificial intelligence. We just hit the one-year mark of the administration’s national AI strategy rollout; how is that going so far? And what needs to be done during the rest of his term to set America up for success?
Keith Krach:
The architecture of the AI Action Plan is right, and President Trump’s administration has moved from strategy into execution. The plan correctly treats AI as a full ecosystem, with action on innovation, data-center permitting, power and grid capacity, cybersecurity, full-stack AI exports, and adoption across the national-security enterprise. Now comes the harder phase: delivery. Projects must move from announcements to operating systems. America needs faster permits, more reliable power, secure semiconductor capacity, a larger technical workforce, strong protection for models and data, and allied deployments that are commercially successful. I would also put a public scorecard behind the plan — milestones for infrastructure, energy, talent, security, adoption, and international partnerships. We will not win the AI race with a document. We will win by building, deploying, and exporting the most trusted and trusted, capable ecosystem in the world.
Washington Reporter:
The Trump administration focused heavily on Huawei in similar ways during his first term; you were at the forefront of that. What lessons can be taken from that?
Keith Krach:
The biggest lesson from Huawei is that a warning is not a strategy. We made progress by translating a complex technical threat into clear trust standards, aligning government and the private sector, working country by country, and pairing security requirements with credible alternatives. Partners needed a positive proposition, not simply a demand to say no. That approach became the Clean Network, built on integrity, transparency, reciprocity, the rule of law, property rights, and national sovereignty. It grew to include more than 60 countries, hundreds of telecommunications companies, and many leading technology companies. I was honored to help lead it, but its success came from an extraordinary team across the State Department, our embassies, allied governments, telecommunications companies, and the private sector. The same model applies to AI, but AI is far more complex than 5G. It spans chips, power, data centers, cloud, data, models, applications, cybersecurity, talent, and standards. The coalition must be modular, measurable, and built for continuous innovation. The United States should define what trusted means, help partners finance and deploy the right systems, and respect their sovereignty. Countries will choose the trusted network when it is also the best-performing network.
Washington Reporter:
What does “victory” look like vis-a-vis China and AI?
Keith Krach:
Victory is not one benchmark, one model, or the permanent isolation of China. It means the United States and our allies remain the world’s preferred technology ecosystem — the best place to invent, invest, build, deploy, and set standards. We should measure that through talent, research, capital, secure infrastructure, allied adoption, resilient supply chains, and commercially superior products. AI strategy is a central pillar of the broader China strategy because AI multiplies every other source of power. It accelerates semiconductor design, energy discovery, advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, cyber operations, quantum research, logistics, and defense. This is therefore a competition between entire innovation systems, not simply between individual AI models. America’s enduring advantage is our combination of freedom, entrepreneurship, universities, capital markets, and allies. At the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue, we are advancing that advantage through the Global Trusted Tech Network, which brings governments, companies, and institutions together to move trusted technology from shared principles to practical deployment. No country, company, or institution can win this competition alone.
Washington Reporter:
What characteristics make a country a strong partner in a trusted AI ecosystem, what practical barriers make alignment difficult, and what must the United States offer?
Keith Krach:
A strong partner shares more than a political preference. It protects intellectual property and sensitive technology, secures data, enforces agreed safeguards, supports transparent procurement, respects the rule of law and national sovereignty, and invests alongside us for the long term. The barriers are usually practical: cost, financing, legacy infrastructure, power shortages, workforce gaps, incompatible rules, and concern about being forced to choose sides. That is why the American offer has to be more than a warning about China. We should bring the full package — superior technology, financing, implementation support, cybersecurity, training, interoperable standards, and a durable relationship that strengthens the partner’s own economy and sovereignty. The objective is not to force countries into a binary political choice. It is to make the trusted choice the most secure, capable, affordable, and economically attractive choice.
Washington Reporter:
How does the focus on AI fit into the broader push by the Trump administration to ensure that China does not supplant America on the world stage?
Keith Krach:
AI is not a narrower or separate track. It is one of the central pillars of the administration’s broader China strategy because it will shape economic growth, military capability, scientific discovery, manufacturing, energy, cybersecurity, and global standards. AI leadership also depends on everything beneath it — semiconductors, power, data centers, cloud infrastructure, critical minerals, talent, capital, and trusted supply chains. That is why AI strategy has to be integrated with trade, export controls, investment screening, energy, manufacturing, research, workforce policy, and alliances. Export controls can protect the most sensitive technologies, but America also has to build faster, invest more, and offer allies a complete technology ecosystem. The objective is not simply to slow China down. It is to ensure that the American system — built on freedom, trust, innovation, private enterprise, and strong alliances — remains the system the world chooses.
Washington Reporter:
What should CEOs and corporate boards be doing now to prepare for the intersection of artificial intelligence, supply-chain dependence, and geopolitical competition?
Keith Krach:
Boards should treat geopolitics and AI as operating issues, not annual briefings. Start by mapping critical dependencies beyond first-tier suppliers: chips, cloud, data, energy, logistics, software, and specialized talent. Identify which dependencies are controlled by a strategic competitor, which have no substitute, and which could stop the business. Then assign ownership. Every board should require a geopolitical and supply-chain contingency plan, protect sensitive data and intellectual property, test disruption scenarios, establish clear AI governance, and invest in trusted alternatives before a crisis. They should also examine where AI creates new dependencies, where it can reduce existing ones, and which suppliers or platforms are becoming mission-critical. The most important boardroom questions are straightforward: What do we depend on? Who controls it? What happens if it disappears? What can AI change? And what are we doing now to create options? Resilience is not an insurance policy. It is a competitive capability.
Washington Reporter:
What will it take for the United States to rebuild leadership in advanced manufacturing — especially in semiconductors, robotics, and AI-enabled production?
Keith Krach:
America does not need to make everything. We do need the capacity to make and scale what matters. That requires five things working together: abundant and affordable energy; faster and predictable permitting; long-term capital and demand; a world-class technical workforce; and a stronger bridge from research and prototypes to high-volume production. I have seen that challenge firsthand — from helping launch GMF Robotics at the beginning of the industrial-robotics revolution to building supply-chain and digital-transformation companies, working on trusted technology and semiconductor strategy at the State Department, and helping bring leading-edge chip manufacturing back to the United States. I was recently honored with the M. Eugene Merchant Manufacturing Medal, and the lesson across those experiences is the same: technology leadership matters only when we can translate innovation into production and adoption at scale. We also have to help small and mid-sized manufacturers adopt robotics, AI, digital twins, and modern production systems. Innovation that never reaches the factory floor does not strengthen the industrial base. Trusted allies are a force multiplier, especially in semiconductors, critical minerals, equipment, and specialized materials. The objective is not autarky. It is resilience — domestic capacity at the critical nodes, diversified allied supply chains, and the ability to surge when the country needs it.
