this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2025
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The US government needs to buy influence? And they are doing that by giving grants that organizations apply for?
Do you think this is an isolated instance? They're probably trying to do this a lot.
And if course they're trying to influence other orgs to their will. Why else would you do this?
I think you are severely underestimating the level of influence the US government already has. NIST is a US Agency. Much of research in the US is done at the behest of the government. My local university had to comply* with anti-DEI policy to continue receiving federal funds ( it's primary source of income).
Influencing the foundation of a, quite frankly bad, programming language is not really that impactful, especially considering that the foundation apparently only has 14 employees.
*In case you were wondering the only change they had to make was discontinuing LGBT work anniversaries. So you can probably see why I view this anti-anti-DEI fear mongering with some skepticism. The reality is that racial bias in an organization is very difficult to actually prove, regardless of whether it is pro or anti minority, so anti-DEI constraints simply prohibit explicit biasing.
That still doesn't answer why do it then.
They're literally attaching conditions to money. That's one of the fundamentals of buying influence is attaching strings.