Cole Donovan

MAAAS Policy Fellowships Science & Technology 2026-2027 AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships, Executive Branch Committee F Briefing Memorandum Assignment Each semi-finalist must provide a briefing memorandum as part of the interview with the Selection Committee. At the beginning of the interview, you will be asked to make a five-minute presentation to the Committee about your memo. You will field approximately five minutes of questions from the Committee members about the memo following your presentation. The context for the memo is as follows: In an era of budget constraints, federal agencies are challenged to increase efficiencies amid funding cuts. Artificial Intelligence has been deemed a priority for your agency under the new budget constraints. Your task: You are a policy analyst at a federal agency of your choosing, and your job is to brief the head of your agency to prepare them to testify before the Congressional Appropriations committee. Prepare a one-page memo explaining how and why your agency will prioritize Al in a way that does not minimize other crucial projects/programs within your agency and what impact it will have on reducing costs. Provide your rationale for what issues and factors you considered when arriving at your conclusions. Consider the following possible topics: • Al regulations in healthcare • Al regulations in research • Al for drug discovery • Al and understanding the aging process • Al and addressing chronic disease • Al and approaches to reducing drug costs. The memo must adhere to the following requirements: • Be no longer than one typed page in length, with a minimum of 0.8 inch margins, a minimum font size of 11 points, and must be in PDF format. Do not include citations. • Include your name and the topic you address at the top of the memorandum. • It should be written as a document for a senior decision-maker. • Concisely and clearly lay out the technical and policy aspects of the issue, the status in each area, and any …

New AAAS STP fellow semifinalists getting to write a memo where they explain how to help cut budgets by using AI instead, while also being barred from using any generative AI to write the memo.

🫠

Several hours of trying to figure out if I should go out to dinner or run to the grocery store.

It turned out the superior answer was always indomie and a fried egg.

There have been a lot of discussions in DC about strengthening scientific accountability and public impact.

I keep coming back to the necessity of functioning democratic systems as a precondition for achieving and maintaining that impact.

“Oh.”

We are watching in real time who some scientists are willing to sacrifice in favor of access to funding: early career researchers, trainees, scientists from historically excluded groups and immigrants.

Also, this is treated as a somewhat unhinged take in government management and budgeting circles, but:

The government needs clean up the mess it leaves (and be held liable) when abandoned facilities leave behind the below-mentioned asbestos, radioactive materials, and other dangerous chemicals.

Failures due to aging RDI can result in costly and significant interruptions in research activities lasting weeks or months. For example, failures over a nine-month period that led to inadequate back-up power and power conditioning at one NIST research facility cost an estimated $9 million and loss of 47,000 researcher hours. These failures can be compounded by the need to repair outdated equipment with scarce replacement parts as well as a lack of personnel familiar with older components and systems. These older systems also lack modern safety and security protection features that are standard in equipment purchased and installed today. For example, modern electrical switchgear often incorporates optical arc flash reduction systems, and today's natural gas distribution systems have built-in safety features absent in older systems. Moreover, the configurations of old steam, chilled water, natural gas, compressed air, sewer, and other types of support systems make it difficult to maintain sections of pipe or valves without extended outages. Another looming issue is that older buildings do not meet today's more stringent seismic standards, and the failure of susceptible buildings could indefinitely halt research activities. Finally, many of these older buildings are contaminated with materials that pose significant environmental and health concerns, including radioactive materials, beryllium, asbestos, and lead.

I will not stop talking about this:

bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/u...

Lawmakers reject cuts in passing US science and health budgets - Research Professional News Universities welcome preservation of funding, but “close monitoring” recommended to halt facilities’ decline

TLDR: science funding is great until you realize that you’re not allowed to use the funding to fix the rotting platform you’re literally standing on.

Literally means literally. This is how a safety researcher died at NIST in 2022. We restricted science in Antarctica so things could get repaired.

My job at OSTP involved, at a minimum, Googling every foreign official who wanted to visit the Director and then warning them if the person was sus and if meeting them might undermine their work, the office, and the admin.

People with similar positions exist in the front office of every major lab.

For example: if 84% of people already agree that scientific research aimed at advancing knowledge is usually a worthwhile investment over time...

Why are you so sure that the real problem is that people "just don't know enough about why research matters"
www.pewresearch.org/science/2026...

6/7 - The Federation of American Scientists was founded by the scientists who invented the nukes because they understood the risks they create. Going forward, our work to monitor the status of nuclear forces is as important as ever as we continue to inform the public.

Thread.

Ok I was initially turned off by the cliche’d main character in Starfleet Academy but it recovered VERY quickly.

It embraces what it is pretty clearly, does it pretty well, and seems to enjoy its characters.

Kate working hard to go through the list of -tisms

Sadly I can’t bring in an airbrush to paint a qilin

The US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government every year from 1994 to 2023.

The Cato study provides the first-ever 30-year analysis of the fiscal effects of immigration on government budgets.

https://ow.ly/jy8a50Y8kM3

The V for Vendetta 20th anniversary trailer just played.

It’s pretty impressive how much work Lana and Lilly Wachowski put in trying to warn everyone!

NOAA CSL: 2025 News & Events: Within 15 years, plummeting satellites could release enough aluminum to alter winds, temps in the stratosphere NOAA CSL 2025 News & Events: Archives of news, features, highlights, meetings, events, workshops, symposiums

And the planet by extension

For context: NIH’s in-house (intramural) research operations are larger than most other government science agencies, even if their extramural funding is larger.

The NIH Clinical Center is one of the crown jewels of the federal research enterprise.

UKRI shelves physics infrastructure projects worth £280m - Research Professional News Exclusive: Major international collaborations with Cern and US Department of Energy in jeopardy

Well, shit.

With the U.S. is also on track to significantly underfund ITER, it looks like the globally integrated physics effort is under greater strain.

Looking at this, as well as the cited emails, I think it’s more likely that this was a group of folks who were riding the front of a reactionary wave and poured gasoline on the fire rather than orchestrating all of this.

Did they design the change? Probably not. Make it worse? 💯

Europe begins its slow retreat from US dependence The EU aims to reduce reliance on America in areas such as technology, energy, payments and defense. That will take some time.

Derisking has come for U.S. platforms after the use of sanctions against European Parliamentarians on U.S. travel booking software and the host of other actions against Europe. We are losing access to one of the world’s largest markets and will be poorer and worse off for it.

Completely avoidable.

Placing AI in the role of “decision maker” when it comes to whether or not to launch a nuclear weapon should stay science fiction.

Join us on February 10 from 6-8 pm for our AI x Nuclear Weapons reception in partnership with @futureoflife.org

🔗 luma.com/ecpzdn2x

From: Jeffrey Epstein <jeevacation@gmail.com> To: Subject: Re: thank you Date: Tue, 15 May 2012 11:34:30 +0000 you have done well, and i am grateful. however it seems these articles are few and too much time between, I m sure you have more important things to do.. I am willing to entertain the idea, but ther should be an article a day or every two days. not one in two weeks .. I will be back from paris in two weeks we can sit and discuss, I understood that this would be a real focus, i am aware that home developments overtook the demands On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 7:17 AM, wrote: Hi Jeffrey, My article today on Martin Novak's RNA replication work, got picked up by The Wall St. Journal, Reuters and CNBC amongst others. See links: Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/14/idUS233533+14-May-2012+PRN20120514 Wall St. Journal: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/harvard-university-and-the-jeffrey-epstein-foundation-search-for-the- origin-of-life-2012-05-14 Rich told me today that you would like to stop. I completely understand because I haven't been able to get the bad stuff off of the 1st page and that was your objective. I am terribly sad because I really enjoy working with you and love writing about these subjects. My press releases have done well in that they get accepted by the top newspapers and media sites. Isn't there anyway that I could be your media /pr person? I would write about your work and maintain your website with all press, photos, archives etc of everything that you have done. I would have one website for your science work and one for general philanthropy. After this RNA article, I was going to finish one on Eric Lander, George Church and Seth Lloyd. I also wanted to write a piece about the language conference, taking Stephen Hawkings under water for the first time and another on The Rick Hooper Distingushed Fellowship Fund. All of these stories are wonderful things to document. I know the answer is no but it's so worth my asking.

Out of all the awful stuff in there (and there is far, far worse stuff than this), I think this is one of the more important emails for folks in the science community to read.

Lord Mandelson resigns from Labour Party over Epstein links The former cabinet minister says he does not want to "cause further embarrassment" by his links to the late convicted paedophile.

Again, the United States distinguishes itself as a country where accountability doesn’t happen.

Algorithmic child welfare scandal targeting minorities? Dutch government resigns.

Network of pedophilia in elite circles? A royal family member gets kicked out and party members resign in the UK.

One of my minor takeaways is that this is also why robust government support for science is essential.

In a number of emails, Epstein clearly wanted to use scientists for PR purposes to claiming credit for their work. Most just let him do it. Being subject to ulterior donor motives is an issue.

Here’s How the AI Crash Happens The U.S. is becoming an Nvidia-state.

I think anyone who’s been a hobbyist following Nvidia or connected with folks who worked on their cards knows that they’ve never fully been on the up and up.

They’re a gaming GPU company that accidentally happened to be best suited to AI tools. Becoming center of the economy is wild.

Tesla's own Robotaxi data confirms crash rate 3x worse than humans even with monitor Tesla’s nascent robotaxi program is off to a rough start. New NHTSA crash data, combined with Tesla’s new disclosure of...

Not now they’re trying to cover up Robotaxi crash data

Almost feels more like a pretext to sue the FCC over their authority to regulate space debris

A group of dark eyed juncos look for food under my son’s new bird feeder

My wife manages to find the deal of a lifetime in a house. We put up a bird feeder.

I am now ready to go full Cicero and write about my garden, its birds, and scorning the sword of Cataline.

#journalists - Expert briefing on future of US-Russia nuclear arms control as 💣 New START expires, including @scientistsorg.bsky.social's @mattkorda.bsky.social Wed, Feb 4, from 9-10am ET. Register here: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...