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Alright, so Monday something happened that you probably missed because the headline sounded boring. Trump signed an executive order called Project Genesis, and it’s basically the biggest handoff of public assets to private tech companies in decades. I’m going to walk you through why this matters and why you should be pissed.
Here’s what just happened. The federal government is taking every piece of scientific research your taxes paid for over the last fifty years and putting it into one giant database. Climate data, nuclear fusion experiments, biotech breakthroughs, semiconductor designs, all of it. Then they’re inviting companies like Nvidia, Meta, and OpenAI to come train their AI models on it. For free. And whatever they build with your data? They own it. You get nothing.
They’re calling this the Genesis Mission and comparing it to the Manhattan Project. Except the Manhattan Project didn’t hand bomb blueprints to private contractors and say go make money. This does. It’s right there in the executive order, section five, subsection c. They’re developing policies for “commercialization of intellectual property developed under the Mission.” Translation: private companies get to patent and profit from discoveries made using taxpayer-funded research and taxpayer-funded supercomputers.
Let me break down how this actually works. The Department of Energy is building something called the American Science and Security Platform. It’s going to connect all seventeen national laboratories, connect the world’s best supercomputers, integrate decades of federal datasets. Then they’re establishing “standardized partnership frameworks” and “cooperative research and development agreements” with external entities. That’s government speak for giving tech companies the keys to the kingdom.
And here’s where it gets wild. They’re saying this will lower your energy bills. You know what’s driving up energy costs right now? AI data centers. The exact same companies getting free access to federal research are the ones making your electricity more expensive. They’re literally selling you the solution to a problem they created, using research you already paid for.
The order talks about using AI to optimize the electric grid, to accelerate scientific discovery, to solve energy challenges. Cool. How much compute does that require? Because right now AI training runs are consuming enough electricity to power small cities. So the plan is to use massive amounts of energy to train models that will maybe eventually help us use less energy. You see the problem here?
Let’s talk about what you actually funded. You paid for climate research at NOAA. You paid for nuclear fusion experiments at national labs. You paid for biotech research at NIH. You paid for materials science, quantum computing research, semiconductor development. Decades of investment. Billions of dollars. Now companies get to train foundation models on all of it and own whatever comes out the other end.
The order requires the Secretary of Energy to identify at least twenty “science and technology challenges of national importance” within sixty days. These span advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, critical materials, nuclear energy, quantum computing, semiconductors. Notice something? Those are all massively profitable commercial sectors. This isn’t about curing cancer or solving climate change. It’s about giving private industry free R&D using public infrastructure.
And the security angle is a joke. The order mentions “risk-based cybersecurity measures” and “security requirements” maybe six times. Zero specifics. Just vague promises that they’ll be careful with the most valuable scientific database ever assembled. These are the same government contractors who’ve had breach after breach. Now they’re building a centralized honeypot and calling it secure because they wrote “secure” in the document.
Here’s what really gets me. Section seven, general provisions. “This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States.” Translation: if something goes wrong, if your data gets misused, if these partnerships turn into pure giveaways, you have zero legal recourse. They wrote immunity into the order.
Let’s talk about who decides which companies get access. The order says they’ll establish “procedures to ensure the highest standards of vetting and authorization.” Who’s doing the vetting? The same political appointees who benefit from being friendly with tech companies? The same revolving door between government and industry that’s been going on for decades? There’s no independent oversight here. It’s the Secretary of Energy deciding who gets billion-dollar access to public research.
And the timeline is absurd. They’re rushing this through before anyone can ask hard questions about who benefits and who gets left holding the bill.
