SIIA Supports Genesis Mission

By Paul Lekas and Bethany Abbate

The United States stands at a pivotal moment in the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) for scientific discovery, energy innovation, national security, and economic leadership. The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), representing hundreds of companies at the forefront of AI, information, analytics, software, and technology, has long supported U.S. efforts to build the infrastructure needed to harness the full potential of AI. The AI Action Plan released in July 2025 provided a first step toward this goal, outlining a roadmap for the Administration's vision for advancing AI leadership. SIIA was encouraged by the plan's strategy to support innovation and security, strengthen U.S. competitiveness, and ensure the benefits of AI are broadly shared. SIIA is excited about the launch of the "Genesis Mission" which will serve as a dedicated coordinated national effort to unleash a new age of AI-accelerated innovation and discovery to solve the greatest challenges of this century.

The Department of Energy (DOE) and its 17 national laboratories have a critical role in advancing AI-driven scientific discovery and applications, owing in part to the tremendous potential value of DOE's datasets and advanced computational resources that DOE has developed. The Genesis Mission directs the Secretary of Energy to facilitate the build-out of an integrated AI platform to harness federal scientific datasets to train scientific foundation models, create AI agents to test new hypotheses, automate research workflows, and accelerate scientific breakthroughs. We believe this work can collectively strengthen U.S. leadership in AI-driven research and applications.

High-quality, robust datasets are the fuel that will power next-generation AI models and discovery. The U.S. government and the national labs possess troves of valuable data that can power scientific discoveries and unlock completely new dimensions of AI's potential. But the value of data depends not simply on volume, but on accessibility, governance, and the ability to effectively and securely combine data across silos. As SIIA has previously recommended, DOE can achieve this by establishing muti-cloud and hybrid-cloud environments that leverage commercial cloud technology alongside national lab and government assets and by promoting interoperability across systems.

This approach is core to the Genesis Mission's vision. Traditional procurement and infrastructure models have often created silos: legacy on-premises systems, single-vendor lock-in, and non-interoperable cloud environments. These limit innovation and agility. The hybrid, multi-cloud approach will provide resiliency, competition among vendors, and access to cutting-edge secure capabilities. Building this infrastructure not only supports large-scale training of foundation models and deployment of advanced AI, but also serves as a model for across-government modernization and for U.S. leadership in AI infrastructure more broadly. We commend the EO's emphasis on ensuring secure access to appropriate datasets, consistent with applicable laws and classification, privacy and intellectual property protection, and federal data access and data management standards.

We are pleased to see that the Genesis Mission will be a collaborative initiative that will bring together a variety of stakeholders including scientists, industry, universities, and existing research infrastructure to accelerate AI development and utilization. Industry looks forward to working with the Administration under the auspices of the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST). The APST is well situated to coordinate interagency and private sector engagement through National Science and Technology Council (NSTC).

We are encouraged by the launch of new competitive programs for research fellowships and internships focused on the application of AI to scientific domains These types of fellowships will create opportunities for industry experts to bring their skills to bear on the efforts of the National Labs, for government researchers to embed in industry environments where so much cutting edge AI work is taking place, and for government employees who will use, govern, or procure AI systems to develop professional skills.

The opportunity before us is immense: to enable AI-driven discovery, accelerate innovation in energy and infrastructure, secure U.S. leadership in global competition, and unlock societal benefits across science, industry, and government. The Genesis Mission lays out the vision to achieve this. SIIA looks forward to working with the administration to bring this vision to fruition. By advancing interoperable data practices, hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure, science-oriented foundation models, and robust talent pathways to support the federal government in its efforts, we can build a lasting AI ecosystem that delivers for the nation.