Clearview’s technology was introduced during Trump’s first administration, after securing funding from right-wing billionaire Peter Theil. While Theil has played a more prominent role during Trump’s second run as president, many Americans are unaware he was also active in the shadows during the earliest days of Trump’s first term.

In fact, Theil actually pitched deregulating the FDA to Trump, long before Trump decided to partner with RFK Jr. Theil also helped select several of Trump’s cabinet members, including Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) member, Michael Kratsios.

In a June 2018 article, ominously subtitled, The president’s most senior technology advisor claims the White House is quietly pursuing an aggressive AI plan, Kratsios explains

Speaking at EmTech Next, a conference held at MIT, Kratsios, who is deputy assistant to the president and deputy US chief technology officer, said the government is looking for ways to open up federal data to AI researchers. “Anything that we can do to unlock government data, we’re committed to,” Kratsios told MIT Technology Review. “We’d love to hear from any academic that has any insights.”

Data has been a key factor behind recent advances in artificial intelligence. For example, better voice recognition and image processing have been contingent on the availability of huge quantities of training data. The government has access to large amounts of data, and it’s possible that it could be used to train innovative algorithms to do new things. “Anything we can do to figure that out, we will work very hard on,” Kratsios added.