The Biden administration has designated 31 locales around the country as “Regional Innovation and Technology Hubs.”

The hubs are intended to spur research that will draw investment in commercializing new technologies, creating jobs, and growing regional economies while improving national security and U.S. economic competitiveness, the White House said.

Technologies the hubs will focus on include advanced computer chips, clean energy, developing domestic supplies of strategic minerals, biotechnology, precision medicine, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing, among other fields. 

In a competitive process, areas seeking to be designated as tech hubs brought together research universities, businesses, state and local governments, labor groups, tribal communities, and nonprofit organizations. 

Each group presented a plan to specialize in developing its expertise in a particular technological field. The 31 hubs will share $75 million in implementation funds set aside in the 2022 Chips and Science Act.

The funds are to be used to “make transformative investments in innovation, supply chain resilience, and job creation,” the awards notice said.

The hubs are spread across the U.S. with the intention of decentralizing technological expertise and economic development from the U.S. West and Northeast.

Among the winning applicants:

• The Tulsa Hub for Equitable & Trustworthy Autonomy aims to become a global leader in creating and commercializing autonomous systems for agriculture, pipeline inspections, regional transportation, and other industries.
• Headwaters Hub in Montana will focus on automating advanced manufacturing and similarly complex processes.
• Elevate Quantum Colorado will develop quantum information technologies.
• The ReGen Valley Tech Hub in New Hampshire will specialize in biofabrication of cost-effective regenerative therapies to combat chronic disease and organ failure.
• In Puerto Rico, the PRBio Tech Hub will develop, manufacture, and market next-generation biotechnology and medical devices. 

TREND FORECAST: The grants averaging about $2.4 million to each hub serves as seed money to leverage investments by area businesses and governments.

A key goal is to develop and keep technologically skilled workers all across the U.S., raising the economic prospects of a broad swath of the country instead of allowing a relatively few areas to cement their places in the country’s technological hierarchy.

The goal for this act to raise incomes and living standards in places still suffering from manufacturing’s migration abroad is a sick joke. As the United States sends over $115 billion to keep bloodying the killing fields in Ukraine and now another to $100 billion to ramp up the Israel War and keep the Ukraine War going, $75 million to generate manufacturing and jobs for the plantation workers of Slavelandia adds up to a bit above zero.