In brief
- The executive order established the Genesis Mission as a national AI-for-science program.
- The Department of Energy is tasked with building a unified platform that connects supercomputers, cloud AI systems, and scientific datasets.
- Agencies face deadlines to identify computing resources and demonstrate early capabilities.
President Trump signed an executive order on Monday that establishes the “Genesis Mission,” a national AI-for-science initiative that officials described as the largest federal research effort since the Manhattan Project.
The order directs agencies to connect federal datasets, national laboratory supercomputers, and new AI systems that the administration said would accelerate scientific discovery across several fields and strengthen U.S. technological competitiveness.
The order also creates a centralized system called the American Science and Security Platform. The Department of Energy said the platform would link supercomputers, secure cloud AI environments, scientific datasets, simulation tools, and automated laboratory systems to support model training and AI-directed experimentation.
“The Genesis Mission will bring together our nation’s research and development resources—combining the efforts of brilliant American scientists, including those at our national laboratories, with pioneering American businesses; world-renowned universities; and existing research infrastructure, data repositories, production plants, and national security sites—to achieve dramatic acceleration in AI development and utilization,” the order said.
Officials from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Department of Energy said the Genesis Mission aims to cut research timelines “from years to days or even hours” by combining federal data with neural networks trained to generate predictions, direct experiments, and run simulations.
They said the program would preserve copyright protections and national security restrictions, with open data available to researchers and proprietary or classified material limited to approved users.
“We operate 28 user facilities and support 40,000 scientists and engineers. Some of the data sets are proprietary and bilateral with each party,” a White House official said. “We also hold some of the most confidential and classified data sets the nation has, which are not available to third parties. All three categories will be used, and we will continue to advance partnerships based on each of them.”
The order requires DOE to apply federal classification, export-control, and cybersecurity standards to the new platform and to vet outside researchers or companies seeking access.
When asked how the government planned to prevent hallucinations in the models used for the Genesis Mission, a White House official said that every prediction would be tested against experimental results.
“These models are going to be used to issue predictions and formulate plans,” the official told Decrypt. “If those predictions don’t match what scientific instruments tell us, the predictions are wrong. Through that iterative process, we will make them work with the accuracy required to advance the Genesis Mission.”
Though the speakers used the term AI throughout the call, the official said the administration was not referring to consumer chatbots like ChatGPT or Grok.
“When we talk about AI, what we’re talking about is being able to encode the knowledge that is present in physics and chemistry and engineering in very massive neural networks,” they said. “These neural networks are not just your traditional LLMs. We are going to combine that with physics, chemistry, and engineering-based models.”
Trump’s AI actions
The Genesis Mission follows several AI actions earlier in 2025. In January, the White House revoked a Biden administration order requiring companies to submit model-safety testing and evaluation results, arguing the policy slowed innovation. In July, the administration moved to ban so-called woke AI by directing federal agencies to support the development of AI systems free from ideological bias.
The administration also reorganized federal oversight bodies, shifting them toward evaluation and competitiveness rather than the broader safety-testing framework used under the prior administration. Most recently, in an attempt to block state-backed AI regulations, the administration said it is considering an executive order to establish a federal AI regulatory framework.
Monday’s order directs national laboratories to expand existing supercomputers and connect them directly to scientific instruments, allowing AI systems to generate and validate predictions in real time. Officials said the United States already operated several of the world’s highest-ranked machines.
Under the order, the Department of Energy has 90 days to identify federal and cloud-based computing resources, 120 days to select initial datasets and models, and 240 days to review robotic and automated laboratory systems. The department is required to demonstrate an initial operating capability within 270 days.
According to the White House, private sector interest in the Genesis Mission program had been “overwhelming,” with an official noting that several companies—including Nvidia, Dell, and AMD—agreed to expand AI-focused computing capacity at national laboratories.
Responding to questions about rising electricity demand from data centers, an official said increased load would drive new generation capacity and eventually lower per-unit costs. The official said the long-term effect would be to “reduce the price of electricity in the United States and increase the reliability of our grid.”
“Ultimately, AI and the buildout of hyperscalers will be a force to reduce the price of electricity in the United States and to increase the reliability of our grid,” they said.
The order also directs agencies to propose new scientific challenges and create a structure to coordinate research, data access, and partnerships across government, universities, and industry. The National Science and Technology Council would lead this work, with support from federal data and AI councils.
It also creates research fellowships at national laboratories and requires the Department of Energy to file annual reports on platform performance, research progress, participation, and partnership outcomes.
“In this pivotal moment, the challenges we face require a historic national effort, comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project that was instrumental to our victory in World War II and was a critical basis for the foundation of the Department of Energy (DOE) and its national laboratories,” the order said.
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