After AI Push, Trump Administration Is Now Looking To Robots 58
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: Five months after releasing a plan to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence, the Trump administration is turning to robots. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been meeting with robotics industry CEOs and is "all in" on accelerating the industry's development, according to three people familiar with the discussions who were granted anonymity to share details. The administration is considering issuing an executive order on robotics next year, according to two of the people. A Department of Commerce spokesperson said: "We are committed to robotics and advanced manufacturing because they are central to bringing critical production back to the United States."
The Department of Transportation is also preparing to announce a robotics working group, possibly before the end of the year, according to one person familiar with the planning. A spokesperson for the department did not respond to a request for comment. There's growing interest on Capitol Hill as well. A Republican amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act would have created a national robotics commission. The amendment was not included in the bill. Other legislative efforts are underway. The flurry of activity suggests robotics is emerging as the next major front in America's race against China. "There is now recognition that advanced robotics is crucial to the U.S. in terms of manufacturing, technology, national security, defense applications, public safety," said Brendan Schulman, VP of policy and government relations for Boston Dynamics. "The investment that we're seeing in the sector and the efforts in China to dominate the future of robotics are being noticed."
The Department of Transportation is also preparing to announce a robotics working group, possibly before the end of the year, according to one person familiar with the planning. A spokesperson for the department did not respond to a request for comment. There's growing interest on Capitol Hill as well. A Republican amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act would have created a national robotics commission. The amendment was not included in the bill. Other legislative efforts are underway. The flurry of activity suggests robotics is emerging as the next major front in America's race against China. "There is now recognition that advanced robotics is crucial to the U.S. in terms of manufacturing, technology, national security, defense applications, public safety," said Brendan Schulman, VP of policy and government relations for Boston Dynamics. "The investment that we're seeing in the sector and the efforts in China to dominate the future of robotics are being noticed."
Re: (Score:1)
He will only take robots that burn coal in their bellies [michiganadvance.com]
Damn press is printing every brain fart this guy has.
Too late. (Score:3, Interesting)
China already won this war. They have robot taxis that cost a fifth of Waymo's. Xiaomi has a dark factory that manufactures a smart phone every second. There are already Chinese humanoid robots turning up at trade shows. They're years ahead of us and they have more research universities training more roboticists than the USA ever will. This initiative will fail just like Obama's attempt to beat China at making solar power tech did. Trump needs to pick fights the USA can win.
Re:Too late. (Score:5, Funny)
"Trump needs to pick fights the USA can win."
Trump's definition of "win" is not the same as yours. Trump's winning always ends in bankruptcy.
Re: (Score:3)
Those who try and blame Trump for Americas debt will likely Make Asylums Great Again in order to treat long-TDS
I mean yeah, it's unfair to blame him for more than about a quarter of it.
Re: (Score:2)
Those who try and blame Trump for Americas debt will likely Make Asylums Great Again in order to treat long-TDS
I mean yeah, it's unfair to blame him for more than about a quarter of it.
Not a mathematically sound decision to try and grab the bull debt by the balls and find a point somewhere in the shit.
Obama almost doubled Americas debt during his term, and the DEI regime was burning through trillions (plural) every year.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A quick search shows that the debt increased by 40% during Trump's first term while it rose by 25% under Biden. I will preemptively apologize for violating the cardinal sin under this administration - dare to criticize the president.
Re: (Score:3)
Have you ever sent money to a man who constantly brags about how rich he is?
Re: (Score:2)
TDS? I do not think we need to bring the ability to believe la Presidenta into this.
la Presidenta First Rule: Nothing is done by him until he receives payment.
la Presidenta Second Rule: He destroys everything he touches.
la Presidenta Third Rule: You cannot set the morals and ethics bar so low that he cannot find a way to limbo under it.
Re: Too late. (Score:1)
China is falling apart from within. Demographics bomb, serious civil unrest, currency manipulation, a host of problems. Be careful of quitting the field when your enemy is losing.
Re: (Score:2)
China is falling apart from within. Demographics bomb,
That's happening across the world. It just hit China and Japan a few years earlier than it's hitting us.
serious civil unrest, currency manipulation, a host of problems.
Here too.
Be careful of quitting the field when your enemy is losing.
Unless you're losing faster.
Re: (Score:2)
If you can't fight fairly, then kick below the belt: Use the banks to rape the world then throw in tariffs for good measure.
Grain of Xalt (Score:2)
It's hard to know if China's factory bots are practical, CEO's tell Xi what Xi wants to hear because if the bot plans later fail, the CEO won't be alone in fails and not look as bad.
Musk tried using lots of bots to make Teslas, but found they were not flexible enough, and required too much tech staff babysitting that was better spent solving car problems. Xi might not care because the recent high unemployment of Chinese engineers means bot repair is a make-work program for them. The crazy things dictators c
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
It might not be a sustainable economic model once engineering employment returns to normal there. They may be tuning the bots to fit the current car model, but changing models later may result in problems similar to Tesla's, when they no longer have low-wage engineers to de-glitch them again. Time will tell...
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah let's just roll over and die?
Re: (Score:1)
I'm too fat to do the first part.
Re: Too late. (Score:2)
Itâ(TM)s easier fat.
Re: (Score:2)
The issue is that China understood how to automate things like assembling phones, because they are making all the phones. In the West, there was a lot of steady progress towards automation before we started moving everything to China in the early 2000s. Then all that institutional knowledge got lost because it was cheaper to just get some Chinese workers to make it for us.
IMHO this is such a huge problem for the west. I have tried to make things in the west and you quickly run in to issue where some part ca
I for one welcome our new (Score:1)
politically-indebted robot overlords.
Re: (Score:3)
More socialism for the rich oligarchs.
Musk finally has a sucker to buy his robots.
Thieves don't invest (Score:2)
"Five months after releasing a plan to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence..."
LOL
"...the Trump administration is turning to robots."
LOLOL
What about robots enables Trump to steal billions of dollars without effort?
Re: (Score:2)
What about robots enables Trump to steal billions of dollars without effort?
An autonomous (or semi-autonomous) robot could be used for robbing banks, and it would be more bullet-resistant than a human.
Re: (Score:2)
It is even worse than that. el Bunko and his witless slaves are slathering the bullshit around that they are bring manufacturing back to America for American jobs. Pushing robots just mean peopleless factories, no jobs, just another con job. And the robots or their parts will be made in China.
MAGA? (Score:5, Insightful)
What about all the rhetoric of bringing back good paying American jobs? Robots are not going to create 100K-1M middle class jobs. FTFA, it's simply to siphon off automation already taking place in China.
Reminder for many who voted for Trump: He doesn't care about you or your problems!
Trump is transactional. All he cares about is money and ego.
Re:MAGA? (Score:4, Insightful)
Lutnick is also the guy who thought Americans would get really excited at the possibility of millions of new jobs screwing tiny screws into iPhones all day.
These administration billionaires really do think everyone else exists basically to be their slave labor, and the slaves should be happy about it.
Re: (Score:1)
Trump is transactional. All he cares about is money and ego.
* glances over at the combined fiscal and narcissistic worth of the Pelosis, Clintons, and OBidens *
Maybe if it were only slightly less blatantly fucking obvious..
Re:MAGA? (Score:4, Informative)
Trump is transactional. All he cares about is money and ego.
* glances over at the combined fiscal and narcissistic worth of the Pelosis, Clintons, and OBidens *
Maybe if it were only slightly less blatantly fucking obvious..
You can glance at them all you want, but they're not even close to Trump - by an order of magnitude, or two.
This discusses recent presidential net worth before and after and how they made their money: Chart Shows Net Worth of US Presidents Before and After Office [newsweek.com] (2024) with Obama and Clinton making most of it after leaving office, and Biden from real-estate . Trump lost money after his first term due to the economic downturn during the pandemic and $590M in loan repayments and is currently raking it in via various, putting it politely, avenues (link below).
The net worth as of 2025 (various Google results):
Bidens: $10M - mostly property
Obamas: $70M - mostly books
Clintons: $300M - books, speaking, investments, consulting
Trump: $6.2B (down from $7.3B) - most while *in* office: Presidency Boosts Trump’s Net Worth By $3 Billion In A Year [forbes.com]
Pelosis: $280M - investments (big-cap tech stocks) and real estate (most probably during her 40 years in office) and her husband is a venture capitalist.
List of presidents of the United States by net worth [wikipedia.org]: #1: Trump, #4 Clinton, #12: Obama, #25 Biden.
Re: (Score:2)
Trump is transactional. All he cares about is money and ego.
* glances over at the combined fiscal and narcissistic worth of the Pelosis, Clintons, and OBidens * Maybe if it were only slightly less blatantly fucking obvious..
Out of the list of the ten richest politicians in America, 3 are Democrats and 7 are Republicans. So looks like Republicans have the edge. https://247wallst.com/politics... [247wallst.com]
Biden and Obama would need to be about an order of magnitude richer to make the list.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Robots will bring back high paying jobs. With robots, more things can get done cheaper. Projects can be at larger scale and fancier.
Any Jobs (Score:2)
Even completely automated factories large-scale need a few thousand employees to maintain and ship stuff.
70% of middle class jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
The Trump administration is heavily pushing even more automation.
His commerce Secretary has already admitted that even if tariffs magically brought the factories back the jobs wouldn't come with them because they would be automated.
We are going to have to do something about this. In the very near future, in the life of most of the people reading this, about a quarter of the population is going to be rendered completely useless. We will not have any useful work they are capable of doing.
We are not going to give them money to sit around playing Xbox and getting drunk on Friday night. Nobody is going to tolerate going to work for 40 to 60 hours a week when somebody else doesn't have to. It won't feel Fair and it will make people very angry.
At the same time we are talking about 30 to 40 million people we just have no use for. It's too many to stick in work camps or to kill.
We are going to have a huge conflict between the people who still need to do work and the people who there is no useful work to do. And there is no magical super job that's going to come along and employ them. Read the history on the two industrial revolutions, we had massive amounts of technological unemployment during both of them that your high school history books glossed over. We had 25% unemployment in the lead up to world war II.
I don't know what the solution is. I think what's going to happen is we're going to have another world war and it's going to go nuclear possibly ending the species. But if there's a third option we better figure it out and fast.
The billionaires have decided we're going to have feudalism and are working on dismantling capitalism so that they know longer depend on consumers and employees for their wealth and prestige and power. They are creating a world where they do not need you to buy their products. So they already have a solution to the problem it's just their solution doesn't include you.
Re: (Score:2)
At the same time we are talking about 30 to 40 million people we just have no use for. It's too many to stick in work camps or to kill.
Both Fascism and efficient mass killing have come a LONG way since the 30's and 40's. And given the current situation in the US, I don't think a 'cull' of merely 10% of the population is beyond even their means, let alone their ambitions.
They'll already make a sizable dent in that figure via cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Old Age assistance, as well as by demonizing vaccinations and gutting food inspection and associated regulations. Not to mention the depression they seem to be ushering in even as I writ
I'm not saying we *wouldn't* try (Score:2)
When the violence starts we all get dragged into it. Nobody gets to sit back and watch the 'parasites' get taken out to their amusement. It doesn't work like that.
Although about 30-40% of the country seems to think it does.
Re: (Score:2)
The billionaires have decided we're going to have feudalism and are working on dismantling capitalism so that they know longer depend on consumers and employees for their wealth and prestige and power. They are creating a world where they do not need you to buy their products. So they already have a solution to the problem it's just their solution doesn't include you.
If the billionaires were actually smart, they would have found a way to curb their incessant Greed and find balance in Capitalism to keep the peace they need.
They're so blinded by greed that they fail to realize they're the first on the fucking menu after the collapse they're creating. A person can easily defeat an ant. That same person can easily be defeated by underestimating what a few hundred million ants will do.
It's a gamble (Score:2)
If they lose they just go to their graves insanely wealthy.
There is a *very* small chance they get thrown out of a window or poisoned by a Stalin or a Mao, but it's very, very unlikely. They have their own private armies to protect them.
Re: You see basically they want to turn (Score:2)
But is there a name for this form of society?
lower the full time hours and make extreme OT cost (Score:2)
lower the full time hours and make extreme OT cost a lot
Re: (Score:1)
If you are looking for logic in a President with a cartoon brain, you've come to the wrong ballroom.
Some options I put together in 2010 (Score:2)
https://pdfernhout.net/beyond-... [pdfernhout.net]
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and
Re: (Score:2)
We are going to have to do something about this. In the very near future, in the life of most of the people reading this, about a quarter of the population is going to be rendered completely useless.
We are doing something about it, but it's not very good. Look at what is happening to the economy - there is a proliferation of low wage (minimum wage if your country has it) jobs that do not generate enough income to support the worker. The state then taxes the remaining middle class workers to top up the wages of those workers so that they can survive on those low wages. Everyone is getting smushed into a barely surviving precariat group - it's the death of the middle class.
The thing you have to remember
Anything to avoid paying the people. (Score:2)
One L after another (Score:2)
Don wants to embed himself (Score:2)
...in a bot because of his failing health, and run another 50 terms as a cyborg: Darth Vapor.
Pull those levers, Donny (Score:2)
Makes sense (Score:2)
If you can get your AI-powered robots to commit your war crimes for you, I think you get out of jail free?