Emil Michael

Emil Michael is a first-generation immigrant to the United States. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry and in 1998 received a J.D. with honors from Stanford Law SchoolStanford Law SchoolStanford Law School is Stanford University’s law school. Its law curriculum began in 1893, and it offers JD and advanced law degrees. Its alumni include technology-media entrepreneur Michael Arrington.Open the full entry.⁠[1][2]

Michael began his career as an investment banking associate at Goldman SachsGoldman SachsGoldman Sachs is an American financial services group headquartered in New York whose businesses include investment banking, securities trading, asset management, and wealth management. It traces its origins to the commercial paper business Marcus Goldman founded in 1869; it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1999 under the ticker GS and became a bank holding company in 2008. David Solomon serves as chairman and chief executive officer.Open the full entry and was a founding team member of Tellme Networks, which MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft is a technology company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with businesses spanning Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, enterprise software, artificial intelligence, gaming and devices.Open the full entry acquired in 2007; he also helped build D-Wave Systems and, before UberUberUber is a technology company headquartered in San Francisco, United States, whose legal name is Uber Technologies, Inc. Co-founded by Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick, it uses digital platforms to connect riders with drivers, delivery consumers with merchants, and shippers with carriers, with main businesses in Mobility, Delivery, and Freight. Dara Khosrowshahi has been chief executive officer since 2017.Open the full entry, served as chief operating officer of the social media analytics company Klout.⁠[3][1]

He was a White House Fellow and served as special assistant to the Secretary of Defense, managing projects in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan and overseeing the “tooth-to-tail” reform effort; he received the Secretary of Defense Award for Outstanding Public Service and later served on the Defense Business Board.⁠[1]

From 2013 to 2017 Michael was chief business officer of Uber, where he launched UberMilitary and helped create Uber’s Advanced Technology Group; he also oversaw the company’s fundraising from private investors.⁠[1][4]

In 2014, at a dinner party, Michael suggested that Uber could hire opposition researchers to look into the personal lives of critics and journalists and said the company could spend about a million dollars on it; BuzzFeed made the remarks public. Michael later said the comments “do not reflect my actual views and have no relation to the company's views or approach.” Then-CEO Travis KalanickTravis KalanickTravis Kalanick is an American entrepreneur, a co-founder of the ride-hailing platform Uber, and Uber’s chief executive officer from 2010 to 2017. He drove Uber’s expansion to hundreds of cities worldwide with a hard-line approach to taxi regulation, resigned as CEO in 2017 amid scandals over company culture and pressure from investors, and left the board in 2019. He went on to lead City Storage Systems, the parent company of CloudKitchens, which he reorganized in 2026 into the robotics and artificial intelligence company Atoms.Open the full entry called the comments “terrible” but kept Michael in his role.⁠[5][4]

In June 2017 Uber confirmed that Michael had left the company. His departure came during internal investigations into workplace culture: Uber fired 20 employees after one investigation, and a separate review led by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was about to release its recommendations; in his farewell email he wrote that David Richter would become SVP of Business.⁠[4][5]

Michael was selected by President Donald Trump’s second administration as Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USD(R&E)). On May 14, 2025, the U.S. Senate confirmed him by a vote of 54 to 43.⁠[1][3]

In written testimony in March 2025 he wrote that it is “critical that the Department innovates more quickly and with more efficiency,” and listed artificial intelligence, quantum computing, autonomous systems, hypersonic capabilities and directed energy as his top priorities.⁠[3]

Michael also serves as the Department of Defense’s chief technology officer and as acting director of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).⁠[1]

On March 13, 2026, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry (a16z) released Michael’s conversation with a16z partner David Ulevitch recorded at the a16z American Dynamism Summit in Washington, D.C.; the a16z website titled it “Emil Michael: Iran, AnthropicAnthropicAnthropic is an artificial intelligence research and product company founded in 2021 that develops the Claude models, assistant, and tools such as Claude Code, and operates as a public benefit corporation. Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei are its co-founders, and its research covers model safety, interpretability, and steerability.Open the full entry and the Future of AI at the Pentagon,” and the YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry video is titled “Emil Michael: The Department of War Is Moving Faster Than Silicon Valley on AI | The a16z Show.”⁠[6][7]

On the program Michael said he inherited a department with 14 undefined technology priorities, cut them to six and made applied AI the top priority; he also discussed a vendor lock-in problem he attributed to commercial AI contracts signed under the previous administration and its effect on active military operations. The video’s chapters include wartime speed, applied AI across defense, democratic oversight and guardrails, fixing procurement bureaucracy and what startups must deliver.⁠[6][7]