Select Technology Investments in the New Reconciliation Bill

Congress passed and the President signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA) into law last week. The bill, labeled H.R. 1, checks in at 940 pages and contains a large number of funding provisions. Many of these concern things such as the building a border wall and procuring weapon systems for the Department of Defense. Others, however, deal with select technology investments. This week’s article examines a few of these.

Cloud Computing and Artificial Intelligence

The title of Section 50404 “Transformational Artificial Intelligence Models” suggests a focus entirely on AI, but a closer look reveals a requirement for what is called an “American Science Cloud’’ or ASC. The ASC is intended to be “a system of United States government, academic, and private sector programs and infrastructures utilizing cloud computing technologies to facilitate and support scientific research, data sharing, and computational analysis across various disciplines while ensuring compliance with applicable legal, regulatory, and privacy standards.”

The section directs the Secretary of Energy to “mobilize National Laboratories to partner with industry” to “curate” scientific data so that it “is structured, cleaned, and preprocessed in a way that makes it suitable for use in artificial intelligence and machine learning models” that can be accessed through the ASC “to accelerate innovation in discovery science and engineering for new energy technologies.”

Funding for the ASC effort is $150M through September 30, 2026.

Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence

Section 20005 “Enhancement of DOD Resources for Scaling Low-Cost Weapons into Production” includes investments related to cybersecurity and AI. All of the funding listed below is available until September 30, 2029.

• $1.7B for military cryptographic modernization activities.
• $250M apiece for 1) the advancement of the artificial intelligence ecosystem and 2) the expansion of U.S. Cyber Command’s artificial intelligence lines of effort.
• $124M for improvements to Test Resource Management Center artificial intelligence capabilities.
• $145M for the development of artificial intelligence to enable one-way attack unmanned aerial systems and naval systems.
• $90M for APEX Accelerators, the Mentor-Protege Program, and cybersecurity support for small non-traditional contractors.

Section 20006 also contains hundreds of millions of dollars for “Improving the Efficiency and Cybersecurity of the Department of Defense,” including:

• $150M for business systems replacement to accelerate the audits of DOD financial statements.
• $200M to deploy automation and artificial intelligence capabilities for the DOD’s audits.
• $10M to improve the budgetary and programmatic infrastructure of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
• $20M for cybersecurity programs at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Artificial Intelligence

• Section 20002 “Enhancement of DOD Resources for Shipbuilding” adds $450M for the application of autonomy and artificial intelligence capabilities to naval shipbuilding.
• Section 20008 on the “Enhancement of Resources for Nuclear Forces” includes $115M for accelerating nuclear national security missions through artificial intelligence.

Conclusion

This brief summary scratches the surface of investments listed in the OBBBA. Many additional investments are listed under program names, making it difficult to determine exactly where funding might flow to specific technologies. Industry partners would be wise, therefore, to touch base with government program personnel in the coming weeks to sort out where this funding is going and for what purpose.