On March 25, 2026, President Trump appointed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), a body that will shape federal AI policy for the foreseeable future. The appointment came roughly 14 months after Zuckerberg wrote a $1 million check to Trump's inaugural fund. The council now has the power to recommend deregulation of the industry Zuckerberg dominates. The sequence is not subtle.
PCAST includes Zuckerberg, Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, among others. It is chaired by David Sacks, Trump's AI and crypto czar, and Michael Kratsios, the White House science policy director. The council's stated focus is AI policy, regulation priorities, and investment guidance. According to reporting, its unofficial mandate is to move away from the "precautionary principle" that characterized earlier AI safety discussions and toward accelerationist policies that prioritize scaling and domestic competitiveness.
Meta faces ongoing scrutiny over its advertising practices, content moderation decisions, and data privacy handling. The Federal Trade Commission retains jurisdiction over Meta's conduct. The antitrust case the FTC launched against Meta in 2020 is still proceeding in federal court. Zuckerberg is now helping shape the administration of the agencies that regulate his company.
The $1 Million Inauguration Investment
Zuckerberg's $1 million inauguration donation in January 2026 was a signal, not a gift. Amazon's Jeff Bezos donated the same amount. Elon Musk contributed $288 million to Trump's 2024 campaign. Each donation came from a billionaire with major regulatory exposure. Each was followed by policy decisions that benefited the donor's business interests.
For Zuckerberg specifically, the relationship with the Trump administration has been transactional from the start. He met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago before the inauguration. He reversed Meta's third-party fact-checking program in January 2026, a decision widely understood as a goodwill gesture toward a White House allergic to content moderation. He was rewarded with a seat on the council that advises the president on the policies governing his company.
The Conflict Nobody Is Naming
PCAST appointments carry real policy weight. The council's recommendations go directly to the president and can shape executive orders, agency rulemaking, and federal investment priorities. A council co-chaired by Trump's own AI czar, populated by the CEOs of companies with the most to gain from AI deregulation, is not an independent advisory body. It is a lobbying operation with a White House letterhead.
Zuckerberg's Meta has advocated for federal preemption of state AI regulations, which would block California and other states from imposing safety requirements on large AI models. That position would benefit Meta directly. Meta's Llama models are currently subject to state-level scrutiny in several jurisdictions. A federal preemption order, shaped in part by a PCAST recommendation, would eliminate that scrutiny entirely.
Musk Was Excluded, Which Only Makes It Worse
The notable absence from PCAST is Elon Musk, who ran DOGE and was Trump's closest billionaire ally for the first two months of the term. Musk's exclusion from the tech council, read alongside his visible distancing from the administration in early 2026, suggests that the administration manages its billionaire relationships transactionally: you pay, you serve, you lobby, and when the political calculus shifts, you are out.
Zuckerberg is in right now. The question is what Meta gets while the seat is warm. And who pays the price when the deregulation the council recommends removes the guardrails that protect everyone else.
Sources:
Fortune: Trump appoints Zuckerberg, Huang, Ellison to tech council; Musk and Altman excluded
Bloomberg: Trump Appoints Zuckerberg, Andreessen, Huang to Presidential Tech Council
White House: President Trump Announces Appointments to PCAST
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