Adam Cassady is the United States ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital policy, confirmed by the Senate on August 7, 2026 by 51 votes to 47 as part of a package of more than seventy nominees carried in Senate Resolution 817 of the 119th Congress. He is only the second person to hold the post, which had been vacant since the State Department's first cyber diplomat stepped down at the start of the current Trump administration (Source: therecord.media).
Background
Before the appointment Cassady was a senior official at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and earlier served at the Federal Communications Commission (Source: therecord.media).
Role and its scope
Cassady heads the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy. The bureau was divided into three entities in a 2025 State Department reorganization, among them a new Bureau of Emerging Threats, and lost staff in the same reshuffle. The Record reported that it is unclear how much influence the post now carries given that reorganization (Source: therecord.media).
Positions and statements
Cassady faced limited scrutiny at his April 2026 confirmation hearing. He said the United States should work with "trusted partners who share our commitment to secure, resilient and open digital ecosystems" (Source: therecord.media).
Asked whether the United States should send advanced semiconductor chips to China, he declined to take a position: "I don't have a strong point of view on that topic yet. Certainly I will very, very quickly develop one." He described the administration as aiming to "balance very important competing considerations as it relates to both economic prosperity and national security," and said that if confirmed the question would be one he would "dig very deeply into" (Source: therecord.media).
That question was live at the time of confirmation. Jeffrey Kessler, undersecretary of Commerce for industry and security, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in July 2026 that "very few" of Nvidia's H200 AI chips had been shipped to China and Hong Kong, which The Record characterised as an indication that shipments are underway (Source: therecord.media). On the underlying policy see Export Controls (AI) and US-China AI Competition: Different Races, Different Metrics.