Donald Trump wants the U.S. to be a leader in artificial intelligence.
In January, he signed an executive order intended to enhance America’s “dominance” in AI. In early April, his Administration directed every federal agency to find and hire more people with experience designing and deploying artificial intelligence. On Wednesday, he signed yet another executive order on AI, this one about integrating it into the nation’s schools. “AI is where it seems to be at,” Trump said.
But Trump’s erratic purge of the federal workforce has undermined those very efforts. The Biden Administration moved aggressively in its final 18 months to convince more than 200 AI technology experts to forgo the private sector for the federal workforce, through what was called the ”National AI Talent Surge.” The new hires were deployed throughout the government and used AI to find ways to reduce Social Security wait times, simplify tax filings, and help veterans track their medical care. Most of them were quickly pushed out by the new administration, multiple former federal officials tell TIME.
The shift, say the former officials, represents an enormous waste of federal resources, as agencies across the Trump Administration are looking to draw workers with the very experience they just let go. It also means agencies may have to increasingly rely on costlier outside companies for that expertise. The White House and the Office of Management and Budget did not respond to requests for comment.
Much of the loss of those AI experts came about when Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency fired hundreds of recent technology hires as part of its broader termination of thousands of employees on probation or so-called “term” hires, former officials who worked in those offices said. Others were fired when Musk’s team subsumed the U.S. Digital Service and when Musk eliminated a technology office at the General Services Administration. That office, called 18F, had helped various government agencies spin up new services, including the IRS’ popular free tax-filing program Direct File.
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Federal agencies are routinely on the lookout for tech workers, whose skills are in high demand and who can often draw far better salaries in the private sector. Hiring AI experts into government has been a major challenge, says Julie Siegel, who was a senior official in Biden’s Office of Management and Budget. “Everybody is trying to hire AI specialists, so AI was really hard, but we did this big push,” Siegel says.
The Trump administration has laid out its own ambitious goals for recruiting more tech talent. On April 3, Russell Vought, Trump’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, released a 25-page memo for how federal leaders were expected to accelerate the government’s use of AI. “Agencies should focus recruitment efforts on individuals that have demonstrated operational experience in designing, deploying, and scaling AI systems in high-impact environments,” Vought wrote.
Putting that into action will be harder than it needed to be, says Deirdre Mulligan, who directed the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office in the Biden White House. “The Trump Administration’s actions have not only denuded the government of talent now, but I’m sure that for many folks, they will think twice about whether or not they want to work in government,” Mulligan says. “It’s really important to have stability, to have people’s expertise be treated with the level of respect it ought to be and to have people not be wondering from one day to the next whether they’re going to be employed.”
In early 2024, Biden officials hired Angelica Quirarte, who had spent years pitching tech experts on becoming public servants. Quirarte says that coders and engineers are natural problem-solvers and are attracted to the challenge of working with huge data sets that can improve services for millions of people. Previously, she orchestrated a non-profit effort called Tech to Gov that recruited hundreds of technologists to work in federal and state government.
In less than a year, Quirarte tells TIME, she helped hire about 250 AI experts. After Trump’s actions, she estimates about 10% of that cohort are still with the federal government.
“It’s going to be really hard” for the Trump administration to hire more tech workers after such haphazard layoffs, Quirarte says. “It’s so chaotic.”
Quirarte had initially intended to stay on during the Trump Administration and continue working to help improve federal hiring and expand AI training for the federal workforce. She had previously spent years in senior roles in California state government under different administrations. “I think transitions are healthy for democracies, when they’re approached with good intent and honor, and most of my work is not political,” Quirarte says.
After 23 days in the Trump Administration, Quirarte decided she had had enough and resigned. “It was not an environment where you assumed good intent—you’re operating out of fear,” she says. “That’s not an environment where you can get good policy and good governing work done.”
