While President Trump's second term has churned through high-stakes battles over AI regulation, an Energy Department undersecretary has been laying groundwork for a fundamentally different strategy: getting the federal government to shape emerging technologies before crises force the issue.
Darío Gil, who spent decades running IBM's research division before joining the administration, believes Washington has it backwards on artificial intelligence. Rather than wait for the next alarming breakthrough to trigger panic and piecemeal state laws, Gil wants the government to lead, not follow.
"The posture that the U.S. government should have towards AI is much more proactive," Gil told Axios.
His vehicle for this vision is the Genesis Mission, an Energy Department initiative designed to funnel federal research and development dollars while breaking down barriers between government labs, universities, and private industry. The program just notched a symbolic win: a $1 billion information-sharing partnership with Japan announced this week, marking the first international expansion of the effort.
The domestic response has been striking. Gil said the program drew over 5,000 unique proposals from universities and research institutions in its opening push, shattering previous Energy Department solicitation records by more than two and a half times.
"It is the record in the history of the Department of Energy," Gil said.
But Gil's ambitions face a collision course with reality. The same administration pushing his research agenda has signaled deep cuts to federal science agencies across the board. Critics from the Center for Strategic and International Studies argue that ramping up American scientific leadership is mathematically incompatible with the four-decade decline in public R&D spending.
To survive political winds and budget pressures, Gil has identified two non-negotiable requirements. Congress needs to appropriate significantly more money for science research. Lawmakers also need to pass a bipartisan bill that would codify the Genesis Mission into law, insulating it from shifting political tides.
"I'm having very active discussions again in this philosophy in a bipartisan manner, talking to everybody who's interested," Gil said of his Capitol Hill outreach.
Gil has flagged fusion energy and quantum computing as the scientific moonshots that consume him most. He views fusion as civilization-scale in impact, essentially recreating stellar processes on Earth. For quantum computing, he's targeting a fault-tolerant machine that functions reliably despite inevitable errors, ideally within the next few years.
The department plans to announce its first Genesis awardees this summer, with hundreds of research teams potentially joining the program's inaugural cohort.
Author James Rodriguez: "Gil's playing the long game while Washington cycles through its usual theater, but no strategy survives a budget axe."
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