The occasion was a summit titled "Science: A New Golden Age." The White House said the money comes from government, industry, universities and philanthropy together. Of the total, $2.4 billion is in computing resources and technology support pledged by 11 industry partners. A separate $1 billion investment is aimed at computing infrastructure and workforce training in Georgia and other regions of the country.
The summit followed a report from Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. At the event the President presented the National Medal of Science to Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang and Lisa Su. Michael Dell and Satya Nadella received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, according to the White House.
Supporters of the administration say the push is meant to keep American research and manufacturing ahead of foreign rivals and to train a new generation of skilled workers at home. The medals are the nation's highest honors for achievement in science and technology.
What a nation does with what it learns
Whatever one thinks of any single program, the scene is plain enough. The most powerful office in the world stood in a room full of people who know how to build things that were unimaginable a generation ago. Billions of dollars were pledged to computers, laboratories and training. Medals were hung around necks.
There is nothing wrong with learning. The man who studies the stars, or the cell, or the circuit, is looking at a world God made. It was the Lord who set the laws that every scientist spends a lifetime discovering. A nation that honors its inventors and trains its young people to work is doing something good, and a Christian can say so without apology.
But my friend, a country can know a great deal and still be lost. History is full of learned people who built marvelous things and could not tell right from wrong. A man can split the atom and not know why he is alive. He can map every gene and have no answer for his own guilty conscience. Knowledge tells us how a thing works. It does not tell us what a thing is for, and it cannot tell us what to do with a human life, born or unborn, old or sick.
The Bible puts the order of things plainly:
"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction." (Proverbs 1:7)
The beginning, not the ending. Reverence for God is where real learning starts, because it settles the first question: whether there is a Maker to whom we answer. Take that away and the finest laboratory only multiplies our power without steadying our hands.
The psalmist knew the same thing as he looked up at the night sky. He did not say the heavens were an accident waiting to be explained. He wrote that "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork." (Psalm 19:1) The more a researcher sees of the order of creation, the more reason he has to bow.
So let the laboratories be built, and let the young be trained. Let those in authority be honored for the good they try to do. But the soul of a nation is not kept by computing power. It is kept by a people who know that every discovery is borrowed from the Creator, and that every one of us will stand before Him someday.
You may be a person who has mastered your trade, your field, your small corner of the world. Ask yourself the question no medal can answer: do you know the One who made it all? The Son of God came into this world, died on a cross for sinners, and rose again on the third day. That is the knowledge that matters when the lights go out and the work is done. It is offered freely to the scientist and the plowman alike.