Republican Senator M. Michael Rounds may have a straight-up good idea. The only thing he gets wrong is the title: what Rounds and his Democratic co-sponsor Senator Mike Heinrich from New Mexico title the “Homestake AI Act” isn’t focused on building Ultron under the Black Hills but rather on establishing “an extremophile whole genome sequencing initiative“.
What’s that, Mike?
The Homestake AI Act would establish a pilot program in the Department of Energy (DOE) focused on the collection, cataloguing and sequencing of whole genomes and metabolites from samples collected in unique locations. This includes locations exposed to extreme properties such as high heat or pressure, locations at extreme risk of destruction in coming decades and other locations that hold potential for finding useful organisms to help advance health care treatments.
The Homestake AI Act was inspired by the case of the Gila monster. The Gila monster, native to the deserts of North America, can survive on just a few meals a year due to a digestion-slowing hormone in its venom. This discovery helped pave the way for Ozempic, a drug for diabetes patients to manage blood sugar.
“The Homestake AI Act would take great strides to accelerate scientific research on diseases here in the United States,” said Rounds. “Evidenced by the Gila monster, species who survive in extreme environments usually hold an interesting secret to doing so. Increasing the amount of data we collect from these specimens could unlock cures to diseases such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes and different types of cancers. I’m pleased to be unveiling our first piece of legislation related to our ASAP initiative. Thank you to everyone who provided information to make this legislation possible” [Senator Mike Rounds, press release, 2026.07.15].
Rounds’s bill doesn’t designate Homestake as the home of this future genomic sample repository. It does direct the Secretary of Energy to pick at least five mines or former mines that are deeper than 4,500 feet and already house an underground science facility. (I guess Reptile Gardens is out.) The bill gives preference to facilities that check all of Homestake’s boxes: existing facility owned or funded by DOE, remote, able to withstand natural disasters. But Rounds doesn’t prevent DOE from considering locations other than Homestake.
The bill also mentions artificial intelligence only once, including “private sector… artificial intelligence industries” in the many groups with which DOE may coordinate in selecting and building a site and collecting, storing, and cataloguing the samples. But artificial intelligence is pretty good at genomic sequencing, and I’m not nearly as queasy about using AI for hard data-crunching like genomic sequencing as I am about using chatbots to write speeches, legislation, literature, and educational material.
This facility would be kind of like Norway’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which stores 200,000 seed samples out of its capacity for 4.5 million a hundred meters deep in solid rock bored specifically for this purpose. But where Svalbard is focused on preserving lots of species, Rounds’s big vision is to store extremophile DNA mostly to cure what ails us humans. Rounds’s bill also directs the DOE not to share data from the probably-Homestake facility with “adversary nations or foreign persons”.
Seriously, Senator Rounds? If we get data from geothermal bacteria that can cure diabetes, we’re not going to share that information with Iran, Cuba, or apparently, Canada?
Rounds’s extremophile genomic sequencing lab may have the “global” mission of Svalbard, but it at least represents an effort by Senator Rounds to sneak some science under Trump’s nose and do some good for disease research. Let’s pass fastgtrack this bill and stockpile some tardigrade DNA under Lead-Deadwood before Trump figures out we’re doing science!
In South Dakota’s Black Hills the US Department of Energy, New Mexico’s Sandia Labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory, South Dakota School of Mines and others are collaborating on the potential for generating electricity using Enhanced Geothermal Systems.
Naming a dark matter lab 5000 feet below Lead, South Dakota after a lecherous, usurious Republican billionaire sticks in plenty of craws in my home state yet real science is getting done there. The Sanford Underground Research Facility in the former Homestake Mine under Lead represents 8000 feet closer to the geothermal potential capable of powering much of the region.