President Donald Trump’s new “Genesis Mission” unveiled Monday is billed as a generational leap in how the United States does science akin to the Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb during World War II. The executive order directs the Department of Energy (DOE) to build a “closed-loop AI experimentation platform” that links the country’s 17 national laboratories, federal supercomputers, and decades of government scientific data into “one cooperative system for research.” The White House fact sheet casts the initiative as a way to “transform how scientific research is conducted” and “accelerate the speed of scientific discovery,” with priorities spanning biotechnology, critical materials, nuclear fission and fusion, quantum information science, and semiconductors. DOE’s own release calls it “the world’s most complex and powerful scientific instrument ever built” and quotes Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil describing it as a “closed-loop system” linking the nation’s most advanced facilities, data, and computing into “an engine for discovery that doubles R&D productivity.”What the administration has not provided is just as striking: no public cost estimate, no explicit appropriation, and no breakdown of who will pay for what. Major news outlets including Reuters, Associated Press, Politico, and others have all noted that the order “does not specify new spending or a budget request,” or that funding will depend on future appropriations and previously passed legislation. That omission, combined with the initiative’s scope and timing, raises questions not only about how Genesis will be funded and to what extent, but about who it might quietly benefit.“So is this just a subsidy for big labs or what?”Soon after DOE promoted the mission on X, Teknium of the small U.S. AI lab Nous Research posted a blunt reaction: “So is this just a subsidy for big labs or what.” The line has become a shorthand for a growing concern in the AI community: that the U.S. government could offer some sort of public subsidy for large AI firms facing staggering and rising compute and data costs.That concern is grounded in recent, well-sourced reporting on OpenAI’s finances and infrastructure commitments. Documents obtained and analyzed by tech public relations professional and AI critic Ed Zitron describe a cost structure that has exploded as the company has scaled mo …
