WASHINGTON (Diya TV) — Balaji Srinivasan, the Indian-American chief executive of the bitcoin startup 21.co, has reportedly met with President-elect Donald Trump regarding the top post at the Food and Drug Administration.
Srinivasan has direct ties to PayPal co-founder and Trump transition team member Peter Thiel, a libertarian who has advocated for disrupting society with technology in order to improve it.
He co-founded Counsyl Inc. and helped to develop a pregnancy test that quickly detects Down syndrome and other severe, chromosome-related birth defects. This has been viewed as something that could potentially put Srinivasan at odds with Republicans, since such tests are used early in pregnancy to help couples make decisions about abortion.
The startup was created in his Stanford dorm room and now tests four percent of all births in the United States.
Srinivasan’s personal views of the federal government — the Food and Drug Administration in particular — could also cause a multitude of challenges regarding his confirmation, if nominated. When speaking of the FDA, Srinivasan said the agency “sets the incentives” for allowing “big bad pharma” to exist.
He’s previously called for giving Silicon Valley entrepreneurs the privilege to secede from the U.S. They should instead be allowed to “build an opt-in society, ultimately outside the U.S., run by technology.”
He was seen at Trump Tower Thursday meeting with the President-elect’s team about leading the agency, according to multiple reports. Srinivasan has pulled ahead of another Thiel associate, Jim O’Neill, for consideration to lead the FDA, members of the transition team, who asked not to be named since the talks were private, told Diya TV. Scott Gottlieb, a former senior official at the FDA who’s now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, is also being considered for the role.
Srinivasan holds a B.S., M.S. and doctorate in electrical engineering and an M.S. in chemical engineering from Stanford University, where he also serves as a professor.
