I.T. News – November 23, 2024

1 - Raimondo’s urgent mission - Leave no cash for Trump

With a massive legacy program hanging in the balance, the Commerce secretary wants to get billions in microchip money out the door in the next two months.

By Steven Overly. Politico. November 21, 2024.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is on an urgent mission: get as much high-tech spending out the door before Donald Trump takes office.

The Biden administration is aiming to commit nearly every unspent dollar in its $50 billion microchip-subsidy program before President-elect Donald Trump takes over in January, an effort that would effectively cement a massive industrial legacy before the GOP can reverse course.

“I’d like to have really almost all of the money obligated by the time we leave,” Raimondo said in an interview with POLITICO. “That’s the goal, and I certainly want to have all the major announcements done as it relates to the big, leading-edge companies.”

The effort to spend her department’s full CHIPS Act budget would put a capstone on a signature Biden economic policy.

It also speaks to the urgency facing a host of Biden’s historic raft of spending programs, many of which could be vulnerable to a Republican White House and Congress eager to pare back the most ambitious Democratic spending packages.

The Chips money alone is a massive undertaking. Congress allocated $50 billion in subsidies for semiconductor manufacturing and R&D. So far only two companies have received binding awards from the Department of Commerce’s manufacturing program. To hit her target, Raimondo still needs to nail down contracts with Intel, Micron, Samsung and SK hynix — multibillion-dollar deals that have, at times, been rocky and required renegotiations.

Raimondo said she recently directed staff to work through the weekend — and even made personal calls to tech CEOs — to speed the talks along.

The forthcoming change in administration is “a clear deadline” that “focuses the mind,” Raimondo said, but added she’s not overly concerned about budget-conscious Republicans clawing back money from the program next year, despite their threats to do so.

The CHIPS and Science Act passed both chambers of Congress with bipartisan support, and Raimondo said she expects that will withstand Trump’s arrival.

The Chips program is a key plank of Raimondo’s legacy at Commerce, which has morphed from something of a trade-promotion agency to one much more focused on national security under her watch.

When Trump’s administration takes the reins — Trump nominated financier Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary Tuesday — it will inherit an agency significantly different from even four years ago.

In a wide-ranging interview on the POLITICO Tech podcast, Raimondo took a long view of the shifts at Commerce, which under Biden has helped develop a significant chunk of the Washington tech agenda.

The department has handled not just microchip spending, but also the evolving rules around the powerful new artificial intelligence models, and organized the global AI safety summit being held Wednesday and Thursday in San Francisco.

“Now some people call me the Sec of Tech,” she said, “which is accurate.”

Though she didn’t specifically make predictions about Trump — and was interviewed before Lutnick was named — her end-of-term agenda is clearly shaped by the looming presence of the next president.

“The Commerce Department is somewhat unique in so far as everything we’ve done and are doing is bipartisan, and the CHIPS Act is a national security program and still has great bipartisan support to this day,” Raimondo said, adding she’s spoken with Hill Republicans, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn, as recently as last week.

In the interview, Raimondo described how Commerce has changed, what the challenges are, and how it has leaned into technology and security as touchstones — and why she doesn’t expect the GOP to radically reshape the agenda.

2 - DOJ asks judge to break up Google

By Brendan Bordelon.