Opinion | Likening Trump’s AI mission to the Manhattan Project is sadly mistaken
Rather than owning the engine of innovation, Washington is standing in line like a customer to buy tech services it doesn’t control or understand
US President Donald Trump last month signed an executive order for the “Genesis Mission”, a national campaign to use artificial intelligence (AI) to boost scientific breakthroughs. In the opening section, the mission is explicitly described as “comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project”.
The comparison is compelling, but also misleading. At first glance, the order evokes the image of America in the 1940s, muscular and confident, mobilising the whole nation to end World War II. A close reading, however, reveals a different reality.
With the Genesis Mission, the relationship is inverted. Section 3 of the executive order requires that the secretary of energy secure access to “proprietary” data sets; Section 5 demands the establishment of “clear policies for ownership … and commercialisation of intellectual property”. Evidently, Washington is not creating knowledge at the frontier of science, but standing in line like any other customer, seeking to buy tech services it does not own, control or even understand.
Worse, Washington cannot guarantee the money. The phrase “subject to available appropriations” appears six times in the order, revealing the mission as an unfunded mandate. This explains why section 3 instructs the DOE to ““identify … resources available through industry partners.”