The Trump administration today announced it’s within the strategy of hiring an “elite corps of engineers” to affix federal agencies and work on artificial intelligence infrastructure and other technology projects.
The corps of about 1,000 engineers and other tech specialists will form the “U.S. Tech Force.” Throughout the two-year program, they may work in collaboration with firms corresponding to Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Nvidia Corp., Salesforce Inc., Oracle Corp., Palantir Technologies Inc. and OpenAI Group PBC, amongst other big names in tech.
The personnel, who shall be earning somewhere between $150,000 and $200,000, could have the chance to work with said firms after their two-year service with the Tech Force is finished. This system won’t have a “political mission.”
The work shall be focused on improving government technology capabilities, an area where the federal government could possibly be lacking after scores of staff were fired or resigned initially of Trump’s term. “We have now some resources, but definitely it’s an area that we’d like to construct out more,” Scott Kupor, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, which is leading this system, told reporters today.
The news comes just days after Trump signed an executive order that can limit the power of states to manage AI, a move the White House says is obligatory to make the U.S. competitive with China. The Tech Force puts much more deal with modernizing U.S. government infrastructure because it competes with China’s own tech ambitions.
“Bringing Silicon Valley operators into federal agencies is a practical strategy to compress timelines,” Darren Kimura, chief executive of AI Squared, told SiliconANGLE. “Tech Force concept is directionally right whether it is mission-driven: Embed talent directly inside agencies with clear mandates, measurable deliverables and the authority to modernize data and workflows.”
This just isn’t the primary time the U.S. government has attempted to encourage specialists from the general public sector to bring their acumen to federal agencies. The U.S. Digital Service was established under the Obama administration to bring experienced technologists into government for fixed, short-term stints. On his first day in office, Trump repurposed the group to accommodate the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, triggering an exodus of staff within the early months of his administration, either through dismissals or resignations.
Critics have asked if there is perhaps a conflict of interest when private employees finish their two years with the federal government and return to their corporate jobs, after working on government systems and accessing potentially very sensitive data.
“We feel like we’ve run down all the assorted conflict issues and don’t imagine that that’s actually going to be an impediment to getting people here,” Kupor told NextGov. “The massive profit to the federal government shall be getting people who find themselves very expert within the private sector at managing engineering teams.”
Photo: Pexels
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