In 2009 Obama’s Secretary of Commerce, Gary Locke, announced that the Economic Development Agency (EDA) had awarded Pensacola, Florida a grant of $2 million dollars to attract tech businesses to the Panhandle city. The grant was estimated to create 670 jobs and attract $27 million in private investment. The project, a “tech campus” set in the middle of the city's rapidly gentrifying downtown, was finished in 2012. When I moved to Pensacola in 2016, it was a green field that homeless people hung out at. When I moved in 2022, it was being used as a practice field for youth soccer. The “tech campus” has yet to attract a single tenant, a single job, or a single dollar of private investment. 

Despite past failures, the federal government is once again attempting to build new tech hubs outside of the big coastal cities where they have previously been concentrated. This time, they’re going even bigger. The EDA recently finished accepting applications for its new Regional Technology and Innovation Hub Program (known colloquially as “Tech Hubs”), a large grant program created by the CHIPS Act which will see 20 regions designated as Tech Hubs. Of these 20, three to eight will be given grants averaging $65 million dollars for programs meant to develop the local tech sector. The convoluted details of this program demonstrate a clear commitment to DEI principles, naked political patronage, and are littered with self-erected barriers to the programs own success. 

Let's start with DEI: