The Genesis Mission

An AI Manhattan Project for Science and Biotech

Yesterday the White House dropped an Executive Order creating the “Genesis Mission,” a DOE-led national push to use AI and federal scientific data to accelerate discovery. The order is explicit about its ambition, comparing this effort to the Manhattan Project and tying it directly to national security, economic competitiveness, and “technology dominance” and “energy dominance.” For research broadly (with biotechnology being called out in particular) this looks like an attempt to turn scattered federal data, supercomputing, and lab infrastructure into a single integrated AI platform for science.

The EO has 6 sections.

• Sec. 1. Purpose. Frames the Genesis Mission as a historic, Manhattan Project–scale effort to harness AI for scientific discovery using the federal government’s massive trove of scientific datasets and computing infrastructure. It sets the goal of accelerating breakthroughs in areas such as energy, national security, and productivity while multiplying the return on public investment in research and development.

• Sec. 2. Establishment of the Genesis Mission. Formally creates the Genesis Mission as a national initiative to apply AI to pressing scientific and technological challenges, with the DOE in charge of implementation. It gives the White House science advisor overall leadership and interagency coordination authority to keep DOE, other agencies, national labs, our “world-renowned universities”, and industry aligned.

• Sec. 3. Operation of the American Science and Security Platform. Orders DOE to build and operate a new “American Science and Security Platform” (“the Platform”) that integrates national lab HPC, secure cloud AI compute, AI agents, and domain specific foundation models with experimental and manufacturing facilities. It lays out timelines for inventorying compute, pulling in curated and synthetic datasets under strict security and data governance rules, evaluating robotic and autonomous lab capabilities, and demonstrating working capabilities on several “national challenges.”

• Sec. 4. Identification of National Science and Technology Challenges. Directs DOE to propose, and the White House to finalize, a list of at least 20 national science and technology challenges that the Mission will target. These must span priority domains that explicitly include biotechnology alongside advanced manufacturing, critical materials, nuclear fission and fusion, quantum information science, and semiconductors, with annual updates as progress is made and new needs emerge.

• Sec. 5. Interagency Coordination and External Engagement. Uses the National Science and Technology Council and federal data and AI councils to align agency AI programs, datasets, and R&D activities with the Genesis Mission, avoiding duplication and promoting interoperability. It also calls for coordinated funding calls and prize competitions, workforce programs that place fellows and interns at national labs with access to the platform, and standardized mechanisms for public private and international partnerships with strong rules on data access, cybersecurity, and intellectual property.

• Sec. 6. Evaluation and Reporting. Requires DOE to report annually on the Platform’s capabilities, degree of integration across labs and agencies, user engagement and training, and research outputs such as scientific advances, publications, and prototype technologies. It also demands updates on partnership outcomes and any additional authorities or resources needed to achieve the Mission’s objectives.

Taken together, the Genesis Mission is an attempt to stand up a unified AI platform for science on top of decades of federal investment in data, HPC, and research infrastructure. For biotechnology, it puts the field on a short list of national priority domains and explicitly links AI, secure federal datasets, autonomous laboratories, and public private partnerships. As always, the impact will depend less on the rhetoric and more on appropriations, implementation details, and how open the resulting ecosystem is to the broader research community. But as a signal, it is clear: AI accelerated science, with biotech at the center, is now official federal strategy.