Emil Michael
Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering
Emil Michael was born in September 1972 in Cairo, Egypt. His family came to the U.S. when he was a young child. He earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School.
Michael began his career as a strategy consultant in Massachusetts, then became an associate with Goldman Sachs in New York. He later served as an executive with an internet-telephony startup, which developed speech recognition technology.
Michael was a White House fellow during President Barack Obama’s first term, serving as a special assistant to the Secretary of Defense. He went on to work as a technology consultant in New York. He served as chief operating officer of Klout and was a member of the company’s board of directors. He became an executive at Uber in 2013. He was involved in ride-sharing development in China and Russia.
President Donald Trump nominated Michael as Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering in December 2024.
Michael is married to Julie. He is a Coptic Christian.
In the News…
Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael reported that the Pentagon is removing red tape to provide more drones to U.S. troops.
The under secretary said that bureaucratic barriers are being reduced to produce the quantities and types of drones that the U.S. military can use. He said, “A lot of the regulations around what you could build and how you could build it, and even how you could test it, were limited in the last administration.”
The Pentagon chief technology officer stated that the United States is “going for dominance,“ citing President Trump’s executive order, Unleashing American Drone Dominance, that instructed federal agencies to accelerate approvals for drone manufacturing. The order also calls for supply chain protections to prevent “undue foreign influence.“
