A federal worker with a PhD in computer science opened up about 500 expected firings at NIST as part of the broad DOGE job-cutting sweep led by billionaire Elon Musk under the direction of President Trump.
“I voted for Trump but I’m not happy with what he’s doing now. This isn’t what I signed up for,” said the veteran at NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). He spoke in an interview on Thursday on condition his name not be revealed. “I don’t need this job, but I love it and hope to keep it.”
The 15-year NIST employee said promulgating standards about computing and cyber security are central to the NIST mission, but that mission could be threatened if Trump and Musk aren’t careful with their cuts. He personally knows of NIST professionals, some with 30 years of experience, who left when DOGE offered workers pay through September in exchange for departing. Already gone due to DOGE cuts are summer interns and so-called research faculty who work at universities but devote eight hours a week to important NIST work, some of which is connected to work by international standards groups like the IEEE.
“I know an intern who is gone, just brilliant, who will do just fine. NIST is already suffering some cuts and a lot of the oldest said ‘screw it’ and took the fork in the road.
“The cuts are really freaking people out. I don’t know how the HR people don’t go to the roof of the highest NIST building, number 101, and jump off.”
When DOGE, acting through OPM, asked 2 million federal workers last week to send an email saying what they did the prior week, he followed through and was told by a NIST manager to send the email to NIST managers and not to OPM. “Send your five bullets to your supervisor and they’ll handle it,” was what he was told.
Yesterday, he learned President Trump had said an estimated 1 million workers who did not send the requisite email to OPM would be on the “bubble” but could still be fired. “I guess I’m on the bubble, whatever that is,” the NIST worker said.
NIST is overseen by the Commerce Department, now headed by Howard Lutnick, a billionaire and immediate past CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services firm.
The NIST veteran sees Lutnick as a big backer of crypto technology and potentially a national crypto currency, and noted that Lutnick has objected to the OPM email and other DOGE tactics. “It’s all not sitting well with the Commerce Secretary,” he said.
(Separately, at an Oval Office appearance with President Trump and other cabinet members on Wednesday, Lutnick seemingly endorsed, in concept, Trump’s immigration gold card valued at $5 million apiece, which Lutnick said could raise $1 trillion to pay off national debt if 200,000 gold cards were purchased by companies hoping to keep top technology talent in the US.)
With fears of job cuts at NIST, "uncertainty is the killer," worker says
Lutnick and other cabinet members concerned about DOGE operations could be falling in line with the president even with their personal reservations over job cuts and policy, the NIST professional suggested.
“They talk out of one side of the mouth and then the other side,” the NIST veteran added. “NIST is going to be OK for a while, but you’re already lost great talent…Uncertainty is the killer.” He said he expects to hear soon of 500 reported job cuts at NIST. “March 12 or 13, the ax is coming, and 500 positions are going to be cut,” he said, based on rumors share at his office. Other reports have said the cuts will be announced this week, perhaps late on Friday, when President Trump often announces major news. The White House, Commerce Department and NIST have not commented.
NIST currently employs about 3,400 people, including scientists, engineers, technicians and support staff. Most work at the primary locations in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Boulder, Colorado. The Gaithersburg site, a large 500-acre campus, is the official headquarters. The NIST worker who spoke to Fierce lives and voted for Trump in Virginia, around the busy Capitol Beltway and Interstate 270 from Gaithersburg.
“With the amount of mass confusion at work, there’s a lot less email,” he said. “People don’t know what to say. Is the guy next door a whistleblower? People are suspicious of people. NIST was never very political, in fact democrat-leaning. I mean, science is democrat-leaning. Academia is democrat- leaning. Everybody gets that. At NIST, nobody ever wore their politics on their sleeve. You research and write documents.”
While recent reports said job cuts at NIST could heavily hurt the CHIPS Act office located there, the NIST veteran said it appears that the CHIPS Act office is already “gone or soon will be.” He said the CHIPS office was known to be populated with lawyers and policy professionals but shy on engineering chops.
What is happening at NIST with job cuts is bigger than the impact on the CHIPS Act, he argued, and could reduce the US ability to set standards for how computers work and interact, potentially submitting to standards imposed by China.
NIST worker says China is 'chomping at bit' to co-opt standards role from US
“What if the US political establishment decides it wants to get out of the standards business and says what do we need it for? Well, China is chomping at the bit. China would love to be the country that defines all technology standards and would love to take that over. Once written, we’d do what China says. If the US capitulates and gives standards away and does not support NIST, well, we’re not real expensive considering what we do.”
The current NIST fiscal 2025 discretionary budget request is $1.498 billion, down by $128.8 million from the current year, according to the Department of Commerce.
He joined NIST 15 years ago after selling a business to a large tech company, giving him enough money to live on. But he was young enough to consider becoming a professor, but wanted to do research without needing to teach classes. Coming to NIST was a “perfect blend.” He added, “I don’t need to work here, but I want to.”
And he feels he is contributing to essential work in service to the US. As a life-long conservative, it made sense to vote for Trump, partly out of concerns over the alternatives with Biden and Harris. He sees the future of NIST and standards as vitally connected to the future of all technology, with AI as “the biggest innovation ever” and the arrival of AGI, the singularity, coming sooner than once thought.
As for the CHIPS Act, he said he has in the past been concerned about its central rationale, even as he understands it came about during a chip shortage during Covid, but also due to fears about China invading Taiwan and essentially crippling the ability of TSMC located there to provide high-end chips such as GPUs to the world.
“Did you know Taiwan needs a ton of water to make chips and they actually use water tankers to bring in the fresh water? China doesn’t even need to invade Taiwan to cut the chip supply down. They can just shut down the fresh water and then they can’t make chips needed to run data centers.”
He supports Trump’s push for more electricity for data centers, but water will be vitally important as well. “If we are going to win the AI battle, if we have any chance of winning, it is basically between the US and China and a few other players. But it comes down to just the US and China and the future is based on energy and water and who makes the chips.
“We know we are all going to need innovation, and AI is the biggest innovation ever. The singularity is going to happen faster than people think. It is coming down the pipe a lot sooner than people think. Energy and chips and water are how you do it.”
This NIST man hopes to be around for what’s next.
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