I’ve been wanting to have Kathryn Mitchell on The Friday Reporter for a while. She’s one of those people in Washington who has earned the right to have a real opinion about one of the most consequential policy debates of our time — and she’s generous enough to explain it in terms the rest of us can understand.
Kathryn spent nearly a decade in government, moving from Capitol Hill to the Pentagon to the Department of Commerce, where she served as chief of staff for the CHIPS R&D office at NIST. She helped stand up the $50 billion CHIPS for America program — essentially from scratch. Earlier this year she moved to DLA Piper, where she now helps tech companies navigate the government landscape she used to sit inside.
This conversation covers a lot of ground. We talked about the origin story of the Chips and Science Act — passed bipartisan under Biden, now being implemented differently under Trump — and what Kathryn is watching to gauge whether the U.S. is actually getting this right. (She says we won’t know for a decade or two. But she knows exactly what signals to track right now.)
We also got into something I find genuinely fascinating: the role of relationship-building in Washington. Before you can change a policy, before you can land a government contract, before your innovation can make it out of the garage and into a lab — you build the relationships. That’s what Kathryn does every day for her clients, and she explains why it’s the foundation of everything else.
A few things I’m still thinking about from this conversation:
Her point that AI and semiconductors are “inexplicably tied” — but that AI won’t solve the physical-world challenges of building fabs, navigating permitting, or standing up domestic production. That nuance matters a lot right now.
Her career advice: “Wear your honors lightly.” Don’t aim to be the smartest person in the room. Aim to be the one who keeps learning. I’m going to borrow that one.
And her lightning round answer on Washington: “It is both a marathon and a sprint every day.” That about sums it up.
This episode drops today — wherever you listen to podcasts. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did recording it.
— Lisa
