It seems like she has a background in EE and physics, but almost all of her work is policy oriented and not actually hands-on building things, at which point, "when all you have is a hammer" seems relevant. From the article:
> [Interviewer:] It’s almost predestined that you’d be in this job. As soon as you got your physics degree at Caltech, you went to DC and got enmeshed in policy.
I'd be inclined to trust an engineer-turned-policymaker more to decide if and what to do about an emerging technology more than the researchers/engineers developing it or the "entrepreneurs" pushing for its development.
Sure, but you could probably still find someone with a deep understanding of the tech who is not directly working in the field.
Or. Maybe you can't - the article also mentions how the US still lacks a CTO and they've tried to find one for the entire Biden administration.
My main issue is that policy makers love to...make policies. Which is exactly what EO14110 is all about. My major concern is that the US is going to box itself in with these regulations, and lose the race to China(or others), and our lives will ultimately be much worse because of it.
My piping hot take is that you want an expert policy builder in a job building policy. So you want someone with a lot of hands-on experience building policy. A senior SWE would have a steep ramp to get qualified for her job, because they do not have hands-on experience building policy.
For example: do they have contacts in the relevant organizations? Do they even know what the relevant organizations are? Do relevant Congresspeople know them and listen when they have something to say? None of the relevant skillset involves being hands-on with e.g. Python or vector databases.
> [Interviewer:] It’s almost predestined that you’d be in this job. As soon as you got your physics degree at Caltech, you went to DC and got enmeshed in policy.