‘I don’t know how this happened’: A $3B secret program undermining Biden’s tech policy |The Commerce Department was expecting to hand out new federal money to high-tech research. (Congress sent it to a secretive natsec program instead)

Politico ^ | 5/24/2024 | Christine Mui

[ransomnote]

A backroom Washington deal brokered two years ago is undercutting a key part of President Joe Biden’s policy to grow the national high-tech manufacturing base — pushing more than $3 billion into a secretive national-security project promoted by chipmaker Intel.

In recent weeks, Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have been taking victory laps for the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, a law intended to create jobs and fund innovation in a key global industry. It has already launched a series of grants, incentives and research proposals to help America regain its cutting-edge status in global semiconductor manufacturing.

But quietly, in a March spending bill, appropriators in Congress shifted $3.5 billion that the Commerce Department was hoping to use for those grants and pushed it into a separate Pentagon program called Secure Enclave, which is not mentioned in the original law.

The diversion of money from a flagship Biden initiative is a case study in how fragile Washington’s monumental spending programs can be in practice. Biden’s legacy is bound up in the fate of more than $1 trillion in government spending and tax incentives aimed at transforming the economy — but even money appropriated for a strategic national goal can wind up being rerouted for narrow or opaque purposes.

Several members of Congress involved in the CHIPS law say they were taken by surprise to see the money shifted to Secure Enclave, a classified project to build chips in a special facility for defense and intelligence needs, and they worry it will hurt the law’s other policy goals.

[ransomnote]

Of course I don't believe that Biden didn't know about/didn't want this diversion. I think it's interesting that Biden's handlers thought it was important to make it look like it was Congress's idea.

Because of Intel's involvement, I suspect it is back pay for the development and, going forward, mass production of a Big Brother computer chip to drive the Big Brother software developed by Microsoft. Microsoft's technology will, if implemented, put an end to anonymity on the Internet.

• "Satya Nadella says Windows PCs will have a photographic memory feature called Recall that will remember and understand everything you do on your computer by taking constant screenshots"

  5/20/2024, 10:34:03 PM · by ransomnote · 50 replies

  X ^ | 5/20/2024 | @Tsarnick; Satya Nadella CEO, Microsoft; WSJ’s Joanna Stern

 

[Right_Wing_Madman]

But quietly, in a March spending bill, appropriators in Congress shifted $3.5 billion that the Commerce Department was hoping to use for those grants and pushed it into a separate Pentagon program called Secure Enclave

The wasn't enough space in this Politico article to mention the fact that the money was diverted because there were no takers for the free grant money. It was loaded with too many DIE requirements.

DEI killed the CHIPS Act
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4222844/posts

[ckilmer]

the US is going to need chips for national security purposes if China tries to take Taiwan.

[Kriggerel]

the US is going to need chips for national security purposes if WHEN China tries to takeS Taiwan.

There, FTFY.

[Paul R.]

Heck, the US should have an internal source for these chips for national security purposes regardless of whether China tries to take Taiwan.

I utterly scorn these tools and the idiots who think we are some warmongers who then fail to spend enough domestically: Not only is Federal* domestic spending 6x higher, all told, than defense / the MIC, the latter is at nearly a post WW2 low, as a % of GDP.

Only Bubba spent a bit less for defense for a few years of the "peace dividend", and as a ratio of total spending, he was a "warmonger" too... (eye roll)

*Count in Local and State gov't spending and the ratio is far higher...