Jan 6, 2026

Ph.D. Student Lauren Chambers Discusses Trump’s New Tech Force in Op-Ed

From The Hill

Trump’s Big Tech takeover of the federal workforce

By Lauren Chambers

The Trump administration recently announced the creation of a new “Tech Force” to bring talent into the government. This initiative will bring 1,000 tech workers in for temporary two-year stints, working inside federal agencies in collaboration with companies like Amazon, OpenAI and Palantir. At the end of the two years, they can either transition to working full-time for the government or for those companies.

What many people might not realize is that this program is a sorry replacement for programs this administration already decimated in early 2025.

As a researcher at Berkeley studying new jobs in what’s called “public interest technology,” I watched in dismay as the incoming Trump administration destroyed almost all the existing federal programming for young and talented government tech workers — often, dream jobs for young people who explicitly don’t want to work for Big Tech companies... 

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Lauren Chambers is a Ph.D. candidate at the UC Berkeley School of Information.

Last updated: January 28, 2026