by Tom Parker, Reclaim The Net:
Some of these officials have been placed with the goal of focusing on AI and clean energy — two areas where Schmidt has investments.
Eric Schmidt, a former Google CEO who has also advised the United States (US) Congress and the White House, has helped to pay the salaries of more than 24 Biden administration officials via donations from his research and investment firm, Schmidt Futures, to the nonprofit research and advocacy organization, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).
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Schmidt Futures and other organizations help to pay the salaries of these officials by providing funding to a “Talent Hub” which is part of a FAS “Day One Project.” This Day One Project runs a FAS “Impact Fellowship” program that places “Impact Fellows” in influential government posts.
Not only has Schmidt Futures contributed to FAS but Schmidt has considerable ties to top FAS leadership and one of the Impact Fellows who was placed in a federal government role was also listed as an adviser to Schmidt Futures.
Additionally, some of the Impact Fellows are placed in federal departments to focus on areas such as clean energy and artificial intelligence (AI) — fields that Schmidt and the ventures he supports have significant investments in.
For example, FAS’s 2021 Annual Report states that some Impact Fellows were “deployed at or being recruited to enter” the Department of Energy “to support the Undersecretary for Science’s office in driving critical market-based efforts to spur a clean energy revolution” and US Citizenship and Immigration Services “to focus on the intersection of immigration policy & artificial intelligence in advancing the nation’s national security and economic growth.”
Schmidt and the ventures he supports have investments in the clean energy companies WattBuy (an energy marketplace) and Amprius (a high-energy battery company) and the AI company Rebellion Defense (which builds mission-focused AI for national defense and security).
And some of these Schmidt-backed companies have ties to the federal government departments where Impact Fellows have been placed. For example, WattBuy has partnered with the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Amprius has received a funding grant from the Department of Energy.
The Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a nonprofit watchdog organization, reported that Schmidt is “a primary benefactor” of this FAS initiative “that has placed at least 24 fellows in influential government posts, many of which align with Eric Schmidt’s private financial interests.”
According to TTP, two of the fellows placed in the federal government “explicitly identify themselves as Schmidt fellows.”
One Impact Fellow at the Department of Education, John Whitmer, is listed as a “Schmidt Impact Fellow” and an adviser to Schmidt Futures in his speaker bio at the annual Arizona State University and Global Silicon Valley summit.
Another Impact Fellow, Jonathan Lipman, was listed as being deployed to the General Services Administration on March 23 but this listing was removed by March 29. At the same time, Lipman was also working as an Associated Product Manager at Schmidt Futures.
Not only do some of the fellows have ties to Schmidt but Gilman Louie, the Chair of FAS and a member of President Joe Biden’s “Intelligence Advisory Board,” has multiple ties to Schmidt. He was a commissioner at the Schmidt-led National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) and a consultant on the Schmidt-led Defense Innovation Board. Louie is also the current CEO of the Schmidt-supported America’s Frontier Fund.
Additionally, several Schmidt Futures’ executives have ties to the FAS Day One Project. The Chief Innovation Officer at Schmidt Futures, Tom Kalil, and a former Senior Director at Schmidt Futures, Kumar Garg, both spoke at the Day One Project launch event. The Day One Project website also has a section that highlights posts from Kalil and contains a policy paper that was written by Schmidt Futures employees or fellows and cross-posted to a Schmidt Futures-affiliated website.
Furthermore, Kalil worked as an unpaid consultant in the White House science office for four months in 2021 while also working at Schmidt Futures. He left the White House consultancy role after ethics complaints.
According to POLITICO, members of the Biden administration are “well aware that a significant amount of the money for the salaries of FAS’s fellows” comes from Schmidt Futures and that the organization was “critical to the program to fund administration jobs.”
POLITICO added that Schmidt Futures is so influential at FAS that White House officials sometimes conflate the two organizations and view them as “dual vehicles for the funding of jobs” and other departments and agencies regularly refer to FAS personnel as “Schmidt fellows.”
