The Week of July 29, 2024

FYI

Newsletter

WEEK OF JULY 29, 2024

What’s Ahead

Senator Patty Murray visit — Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) on a tour of Pacific Northwest National Lab in her home state in 2019. Murray now chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee and its subcommittee responsible for the Department of Energy and its national labs.

Andrea Starr / PNNL

Senate Wrapping Up Science Budget Proposals

Senate appropriators will meet Thursday to advance their spending bills for the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, and National Institutes of Health, offering a fuller sense of their science priorities for the coming fiscal year. Last week, they released bills for NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Commerce Department that seek higher budgets than those advanced by their counterparts in the House. For instance, the Senate bill seeks to increase NASA’s Science Mission Directorate by 3.3% to $7.6 billion while the House proposes flat funding. The Senate bill also proposes to increase NSF by 5.4% to $9.6 billion while the House seeks a 2.2% increase. For details on other agencies, consult FYI’s Federal Science Budget Tracker.

Congress is unlikely to reach a final agreement on the budget until after the election in November, meaning all science agencies will start the new fiscal year in October on stopgap funding. Some of the main disagreements between Democrats and Republicans that are yet to be resolved are denoted in the statements of administration policy released by the White House. For example, the Biden administration “strongly objects” to the House’s proposal to divert billions in funding from DOE’s loan program toward advanced reactor demonstration projects. The administration also is “concerned” that the House proposed a 1.8% increase for the DOE Office of Science rather than matching the requested increase of 4.2%.

Bundle of AI Bills Advancing in Senate

The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee will meet Wednesday to vote on eight bipartisan bills focused on artificial intelligence:

The Future of AI Innovation Act would formally authorize the U.S. AI Safety Institute run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and would direct NIST to create AI testbeds in partnership with the National Science Foundation and national labs of the Department of Energy.
The CREATE AI Act would formally authorize the National AI Research Resource, an effort by NSF to create a shared national infrastructure for granting scientists access to supercomputers and datasets needed for AI research.
The TEST AI Act would direct NIST to establish testbeds for evaluating AI systems.
The AI Research, Innovation, and Accountability Act would direct NIST to help develop standards for online content authentication, among other guardrails for AI systems.
The Validation and Evaluation for Trustworthy (VET) AI Act would direct NIST to develop recommendations for the certification of third-party evaluators of AI companies.
The NSF AI Education Act would direct NSF to award scholarships in AI and other fields, create Centers of Excellence at community colleges, and support efforts to introduce AI skills into K-12 classrooms.
The Small Business AI Training and Toolkit Act would direct the Commerce Department to help the Small Business Administration make and distribute AI training tools.
The AI Public Awareness and Education Campaign Act would direct the Commerce Department to disseminate information about the risks and benefits of AI.

Other Science Bills Also Moving, With Notable Exception

The committee will also consider various other science-related bills at the Wednesday meeting, including,

Notably absent from the list is the Spectrum and National Security Act, which proposes to channel billions of dollars collected through spectrum auctions toward certain programs authorized by the CHIPS and Science Act and broadband internet subsidies. Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA) canceled a previous vote on the bill, stating that Republicans planned to offer divisive amendments. Meanwhile, Committee Ranking Member Ted Cruz (R-TX) argued the bill would “give free internet to illegal aliens, millions to antisemitic universities, and billions to mega-corporations with no strings attached,” according to reporting by Roll Call.

Research Security Risk Analysis Center Spinning Up

The National Science Foundation awarded $67 million last week to create a network of centers that will share information on research security risks, together called SECURE (Safeguarding the Entire Community of the U.S. Research Ecosystem). Of the total funds, to be allotted over five years, $50 million will go to the University of Washington to operate the main SECURE Center and the remaining $17 million will go to Texas A&M University to perform data-heavy analyses, called SECURE Analytics. The network also includes five regional centers that will work with the SECURE Center. Congress directed NSF to create the center through the CHIPS and Science Act, modeling it on a center that provides cybersecurity risk information to universities.

Also On Our Radar

The Secretary of Energy Advisory Board will meet Tuesday to discuss recommendations concerning the power needs of AI infrastructure, such as data centers, and DOE’s overall role in supporting AI. DOE has been positioning itself to take a leading role among federal agencies through its Frontiers in AI for Science, Security, and Technology (FASST) initiative.
House Science Committee Chair Frank Lucas (R-OK) will deliver opening remarks at a meeting of NOAA’s Science Advisory Board on Wednesday. The next day, the board will consider approving external reviews of four of NOAA’s cooperative institutes.
OSTP Director Arati Prabhakar will speak on the state of U.S. AI research at a Tuesday event hosted by Brookings and will discuss cross-government semiconductor R&D initiatives at a Thursday meeting of NIST’s Industrial Advisory Committee.
The White House has just released an implementation roadmap for the National Standards Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technology.