WHAT THEY ARE SAYING: Secretary Wright Poised to Unleash American Energy Dominance

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WHAT THEY ARE SAYING: Secretary Wright Poised to Unleash American Energy Dominance

WASHINGTON—This week, Chris Wright was sworn in as the 17th Secretary for the Department of Energy. Nominated by President Donald J. Trump for his leadership and experience in the energy sector, Secretary Wright has been at the forefront of expanding domestic production, strengthening critical infrastructure, and advancing policies that promote American energy independence. His expertise […]

WASHINGTON—This week, Chris Wright was sworn in as the 17th Secretary for the Department of Energy. Nominated by President Donald J. Trump for his leadership and experience in the energy sector, Secretary Wright has been at the forefront of expanding domestic production, strengthening critical infrastructure, and advancing policies that promote American energy independence. His expertise will be essential as the Department returns to regular order and works to advance President Trump’s energy dominance agenda.

Under Secretary Wright’s leadership, the Department will focus on streamlining operations, cutting regulatory burdens imposed by the previous Administration, prioritizing common-sense solutions and unleashing American energy to drive economic growth and strengthen national security.

Secretary Wright’s confirmation has been met with widespread praise from policymakers, industry leaders, and trade associations and others.

What They’re Saying:

“As Secretary of Energy, Chris will be a key leader, driving innovation, cutting red tape, and ushering in a new ‘Golden Age of American Prosperity and Global Peace.'” – President Donald Trump

“America’s extraordinary new Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, will work alongside President Trump to restore American energy dominance. As an entrepreneur and leader in the energy sector, Chris has experienced the crushing weight of bureaucracy and knows that innovation – not regulation – is what drives down energy costs. House Republicans stand ready to work with Chris to advance policies that cut red tape for producers and lower costs for consumers.” – House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.)

“Chris Wright has seen what American-made energy can do to improve human lives, bring people out of poverty, and remake entire societies. He will be an asset to President Trump’s energy team, and I look forward to seeing what he can accomplish to make our nation energy independent once again.” – U.S. Senator John Thune (R-S.D.), Senator Majority Leader

“Secretary Chris Wright will help usher in the golden age of American energy dominance. He understands that affordable, abundant energy is the source of American strength. Under his leadership, we will use all of our nation’s vast energy resources to lower prices for families and grow our economy. I look forward to working with Secretary Wright and Secretary Doug Burgum to promote energy projects in Wyoming and across the country.” – U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Senate Majority Whip

“For the last four years, when Americans opened their energy bills, they didn’t see ‘climate plans’—they saw costs piling up and questions they couldn’t answer. With Chris Wright as Secretary of Energy, I am confident that we can reverse the irresponsible policies of the Biden administration and prioritize affordable and reliable energy. Under his leadership, the DOE will once again support the American worker, the American family, and the American future.” – U.S. Senator Mike Lee, Chairman, Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources (R-Utah)

“Chris Wright is a successful Colorado entrepreneur with deep expertise in energy innovation and technology. He is passionate about strengthening America’s energy independence and lowering costs for Colorado families. While we don’t agree on everything, we look forward to working with him to ensure Colorado continues to lead the country in energy production and innovation.” – U.S. Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colo.)

“Chris Wright’s Liberty Energy company has been integral to the growth of North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields. From our shale play to carbon capture development, Chris knows the importance of energy innovation to the America First agenda.” – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.)

“Christopher Wright has committed to an all-of-the-above domestic energy strategy that will advance and promote innovative solutions to achieve greater American energy excellence, leadership, and independence. He has an extensive background spanning many energy sources. Wright’s commitment to ensuring America is the leader in nuclear energy holds particular value for Idaho, which is home to one of the nation’s leading nuclear laboratories. Under his leadership at DOE, our nation will prioritize affordable, reliable, and secure energy sources that support American innovation and growth and improve the lives of Americans.” – U.S. Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho)

“Time to unleash American energy! I look forward to working with Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to carry out President Trump’s agenda to support domestic energy production and jobs. Let’s get to work!” – U.S. Senator Steve Daines (R-Mont.)

“Chris Wright is a scientist who has dedicated his life to the study and use of energy. He believes in science and supports the research that will deliver the affordable, reliable, and clean energy that will not only lower costs but make our country more secure. While we don’t always agree, we will work together because none of us have four years to wait to act.” – U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.)

“Chris Wright is another great addition to the Trump administration, bringing a wealth of knowledge and real-world experience to the job of Energy Secretary. He knows what it takes to develop new technologies and make them commercially viable. In North Dakota, we’ve seen firsthand his success in the private sector with the growth in the Bakken. We look forward to working with him in his new role to build upon that record of innovation and unleash America’s energy potential, including through North Dakota’s leadership in CCUS technologies.” – U.S. Senator John Hoeven (R-N.D.)

“Maintaining affordable and reliable energy will be key to both our economic success and national security in the years ahead. Secretary Wright understands the importance of utilizing our domestic energy resources to secure the grid, lower prices, and create family-sustaining jobs. I congratulate Secretary Wright on his confirmation and look forward to working with him to restore American energy dominance.” – U.S. Representative Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), Chairman, House Committee on Energy and Commerce

“President Donald Trump made an excellent decision to nominate Chris Wright to be our next Secretary of Energy–I am confident that Secretary Wright will be a close ally and partner with me as Chairman of Energy and Water Appropriations to expand civil nuclear energy, modernize our nuclear deterrent, revitalize America’s defense industrial base, bring back critical mineral supply chains, and unleash all forms of American-made energy to get our economy back on track, lower costs for workers and families, and make the United States the number one energy producer and exporter in the world.” – U.S. Representative Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), Chairman, House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development

“Southeast Texas, the energy capital of the world, welcomes Secretary Chris Wright as our new leader of the Department of Energy. With his expertise and leadership, I am confident we will reverse the damage done to our energy industry, unleash American energy, and restore the United States as the dominant force on the world stage.” – U.S. Representative Randy Weber (R-Texas), Vice Chairman, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy

“I am greatly looking forward to working with Chris Wright in his new role as Secretary of Energy. Secretary Wright deeply understands the undeniable link between energy security and national security, the importance of reliable energy infrastructure, and how overregulation has killed innovation. I am eager to work alongside him to unleash domestic energy production, advance critical technologies, and restore American dominance on the global stage.” – U.S. Representative August Pfluger (R-Texas), Chairman, Republican Study Committee

“I’m glad to see the Senate confirm Secretary Chris Wright. Under the Trump administration, reliable and proven energy sources such as liquefied natural gas and nuclear will thrive, and costs will decline. The Congressional Western Caucus is committed to supporting Secretary Wright’s efforts to ensure a golden age for American energy.” – U.S. Representative Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.), Chairman, Congressional Western Caucus

“Congratulations, Chris Wright! You understand the importance of affordable, reliable, AND sustainable energy. I’m excited for your forward-thinking leadership at the Department of Energy, which will help secure our grid, lower costs, reduce emissions, and help our allies around the world.” – U.S. Representative Julie Fedorchak (R-N.D.)

“Congratulations to Chris Wright on his confirmation as President Trump’s Secretary of Energy! Under the Trump administration, we will unleash American energy—including biofuels—to lower prices at the pump and end our reliance on foreign countries for our energy needs.” – U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa)

“Chris Wright’s strengths as an innovator and strategic thinker will be invaluable in bringing new ideas to the National Energy Council.” – Gale Norton, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior

“Congrats to our next Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright. With his background in engineering and developing the Bakken, Chris understands how innovation drives production—making America safer with abundant, affordable, and reliable energy. Good for our state, good for the nation.” – Governor Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.)

“Secretary Chris Wright’s experience in the American energy sector gives him an important perspective that will inform his leadership of the Department of Energy. We look forward to working with him to bolster American geopolitical strength by swiftly approving new LNG export permits and ensuring the open access of American energy for our allies around the world.” – Mike Sommers, President and CEO, American Petroleum Institute

“Throughout their confirmation hearings, Governor Burgum, Congressman Zeldin, and Chris Wright have each proven their expertise and made clear they intend to advance an America-first, all-of-the-above energy strategy. With their leadership, I am confident we can collaborate on pragmatic, conservative policies to lower energy costs for American families and businesses and create good-paying jobs across the country—all while ensuring a cleaner future for generations to come.” – Heather Reams, President, Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions

“We look forward to working with Mr. Wright to prioritize programs that help keep the lights on for families and businesses across America. We also look forward to working with Mr. Wright and DOE to make effective and efficient use of the remaining infrastructure funding appropriated by Congress that supports investments in electric infrastructure and helps co-ops harden their systems.” – James Matheson, CEO, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association

“We applaud the Senate’s confirmation of Chris Wright as Secretary of Energy. In this new role, Secretary Wright will play a pivotal role in furthering our nation’s energy and national security goals through prioritizing reliable, 24/7/365 energy generation, like clean nuclear energy. We look forward to working with Secretary Wright to continue our progress toward building the resilient, reliable, and affordable energy grid of the future.” – Maria Korsnick, President and CEO, Nuclear Energy Institute

“On behalf of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) community, I’m pleased to congratulate Chris Wright on his confirmation as the U.S. Secretary of Energy. ASME continues to have strong alignment with the Department of Energy’s mission to advance our national energy goals, and we look forward to working with Secretary Wright to advance technology development, strengthen our energy workforce, and promote affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy.” – Thomas Costabile, Executive Director and CEO, American Society of Mechanical Engineers

“With the Senate’s confirmation of Chris Wright, Doug Burgum, and Lee Zeldin, the United States is poised for a new era of energy leadership. These individuals are proven champions of energy development, job creation, and technological innovation. Under their leadership, we are confident that the United States will lead in energy and technology advancement, which will continue to become more hand in glove over time. The Digital Energy Council looks forward to working alongside the administration to ensure continued progress in the digital energy sector.” – Thomas Mapes, President, Digital Energy Council

“PLASTICS extends our sincere congratulations to Chris Wright on his confirmation to serve as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy. Mr. Wright’s leadership in the energy sector, combined with his unwavering commitment to economic growth and job creation, aligns closely with the priorities of the plastics industry. We look forward to collaborating with Mr. Wright to implement practical, forward-thinking policies that will not only enhance the plastics industry but also promote sustainability, circularity, and responsible growth throughout the supply chain.” – Matt Seaholm, President and CEO, Plastics Industry Association

“Congratulations to Chris Wright on his confirmation as U.S. Secretary of Energy! With his expertise across nuclear, oil & gas, and renewables, America’s energy future is in strong hands.” – America First Policy Institute

“Congratulations to Chris Wright on his confirmation as U.S. Secretary of Energy! With his deep expertise in energy innovation and commitment to affordability and reliability, we look forward to his leadership in shaping America’s energy future.” – The Colorado Business Roundtable

“Chris is the right choice to reorient DOE toward a mission of bettering human lives—his passion has been evident for years.” – Western Energy Alliance

“On behalf of EPSA and its members, I extend our congratulations to Secretary Chris Wright, Secretary Doug Burgum, and Administrator Lee Zeldin on their confirmations. We look forward to working with them to advance policies that enable infrastructure development and ensure Americans have access to reliable and cost-effective energy to meet the demands of a growing and evolving economy.” – Electric Power Supply Association

“Chris Wright as Secretary of Energy is a total game changer for American energy policy. We as a country are lucky that Chris’s vast energy knowledge, leadership abilities, and commitment to energy freedom will guide our energy policy.” – Alex Epstein, Author and Energy Advocate

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“In disruptive or destructive attacks, attackers can leverage the often heterogeneous environments in data centers to potentially send malicious commands to every other BMC on the same management segment, forcing all devices to continually reboot in a way that victim operators cannot stop,” the Eclypsium researchers said. “In extreme scenarios, the net impact could be indefinite, unrecoverable downtime until and unless devices are re-provisioned.” BMC vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, including hardcoded credentials, have been of interest for attackers for over a decade. In 2022, security researchers found a malicious implant dubbed iLOBleed that was likely developed by an APT group and was being deployed through vulnerabilities in HPE iLO (HPE’s Integrated Lights-Out) BMC. In 2018, a ransomware group called JungleSec used default credentials for IPMI interfaces to compromise Linux servers. And back in 2016, Intel’s Active Management Technology (AMT) Serial-over-LAN (SOL) feature which is part of Intel’s Management Engine (Intel ME), was exploited by an APT group as a covert communication channel to transfer files. OEM, server manufacturers in control of patching AMI released an advisory and patches to its OEM partners, but affected users must wait for their server manufacturers to integrate them and release firmware updates. In addition to this vulnerability, AMI also patched a flaw tracked as CVE-2024-54084 that may lead to arbitrary code execution in its AptioV UEFI implementation. HPE and Lenovo have already released updates for their products that integrate AMI’s patch for CVE-2024-54085.

Microsoft will invest $80B in AI data centers in fiscal 2025

And Microsoft isn’t the only one that is ramping up its investments into AI-enabled data centers. Rival cloud service providers are all investing in either upgrading or opening new data centers to capture a larger chunk of business from developers and users of large language models (LLMs). In a report published in October 2024, Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that demand for generative AI would push Microsoft, AWS, Google, Oracle, Meta, and Apple would between them devote $200 billion to capex in 2025, up from $110 billion in 2023. Microsoft is one of the biggest spenders, followed closely by Google and AWS, Bloomberg Intelligence said. Its estimate of Microsoft’s capital spending on AI, at $62.4 billion for calendar 2025, is lower than Smith’s claim that the company will invest $80 billion in the fiscal year to June 30, 2025. Both figures, though, are way higher than Microsoft’s 2020 capital expenditure of “just” $17.6 billion. The majority of the increased spending is tied to cloud services and the expansion of AI infrastructure needed to provide compute capacity for OpenAI workloads. Separately, last October Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said his company planned total capex spend of $75 billion in 2024 and even more in 2025, with much of it going to AWS, its cloud computing division.

John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Self-driving tractors might be the path to self-driving cars. John Deere has revealed a new line of autonomous machines and tech across agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping. The Moline, Illinois-based John Deere has been in business for 187 years, yet it’s been a regular as a non-tech company showing off technology at the big tech trade show in Las Vegas and is back at CES 2025 with more autonomous tractors and other vehicles. This is not something we usually cover, but John Deere has a lot of data that is interesting in the big picture of tech. The message from the company is that there aren’t enough skilled farm laborers to do the work that its customers need. It’s been a challenge for most of the last two decades, said Jahmy Hindman, CTO at John Deere, in a briefing. Much of the tech will come this fall and after that. He noted that the average farmer in the U.S. is over 58 and works 12 to 18 hours a day to grow food for us. And he said the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually; and the agricultural work force continues to shrink. (This is my hint to the anti-immigration crowd). John Deere’s autonomous 9RX Tractor. Farmers can oversee it using an app. While each of these industries experiences their own set of challenges, a commonality across all is skilled labor availability. In construction, about 80% percent of contractors struggle to find skilled labor. And in commercial landscaping, 86% of landscaping business owners can’t find labor to fill open positions, he said. “They have to figure out how to do

2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for enterprise AI. The past year has seen rapid innovation, and this year will see the same. This has made it more critical than ever to revisit your AI strategy to stay competitive and create value for your customers. From scaling AI agents to optimizing costs, here are the five critical areas enterprises should prioritize for their AI strategy this year. 1. Agents: the next generation of automation AI agents are no longer theoretical. In 2025, they’re indispensable tools for enterprises looking to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions. Unlike traditional software, agents powered by large language models (LLMs) can make nuanced decisions, navigate complex multi-step tasks, and integrate seamlessly with tools and APIs. At the start of 2024, agents were not ready for prime time, making frustrating mistakes like hallucinating URLs. They started getting better as frontier large language models themselves improved. “Let me put it this way,” said Sam Witteveen, cofounder of Red Dragon, a company that develops agents for companies, and that recently reviewed the 48 agents it built last year. “Interestingly, the ones that we built at the start of the year, a lot of those worked way better at the end of the year just because the models got better.” Witteveen shared this in the video podcast we filmed to discuss these five big trends in detail. Models are getting better and hallucinating less, and they’re also being trained to do agentic tasks. Another feature that the model providers are researching is a way to use the LLM as a judge, and as models get cheaper (something we’ll cover below), companies can use three or more models to

OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

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