For more than six decades, the Peace Corps has presented itself as an agency focused on helping underserved communities around the world. But a new initiative called “Tech Corps” threatens to destroy the agency’s original mission by hiring de facto Silicon Valley businessmen to promote the biggest names in AI — many of whom have ties to President Donald Trump.
Founded by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, the Peace Corps recruited skilled Americans interested in helping developing countries in sectors such as education, health and agriculture. As the Brookings Institution noted, the agency was created to “win the hearts and minds” of countries not aligned with the US during the Cold War. The version of diplomacy he will now pursue is a vision of American-made AI tools to “enhance opportunity and prosperity” in developing countries.
According to the Tech Corps website, the program will recruit volunteers to “support the adoption of America’s artificial intelligence in the last mile.” The qualifications are broad; Tech Corps says volunteers must have an associate or bachelor’s degree in science, technology, engineering or mathematics or relevant work experience.
It will place volunteers, based on requests from countries, into the US AI Export Program, which is designed to help foreign businesses “partner with or buy US AI.” One example of a Tech Corps task describes volunteers helping to integrate an AI healthcare system into a local hospital, training staff and developing privacy protocols. Another describes volunteers working with a country’s education ministry to “identify gaps in services for students, teachers and parents where AI education tools could have the greatest impact.”
Kelsey Quinn, project leader and technology sovereignty and security analyst at the New Lines Institute, says The Verge that while it is “not entirely unusual for Peace Corps to wade into the field of technology”, the “commercial structure” of technical Corps is different. “This program deploys volunteers to support the specific adoption of US AI products that countries have purchased, not just generally increase digital literacy as a skill,” says Quinn.
Some of Peace Corps’ previous technology initiatives have included teaching STEM skills to girls in Zambia, Thailand and Albania, as well as offering communications technology training in Vanuatu. But the Tech Corps is tying its aid directly to U.S. AI systems purchased by developing countries because the program’s launch date depends on the first sales made through the U.S. AI export program, according to its website.
Like America’s AI export program, Tech Corps appears to be another asset to the AI industry. Between dinners with tech CEOs and their gifts to the White House’s Golden Hall, Trump has championed OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank’s plans to build multiple data centers across the US. Trump also signed an executive order to discourage states from passing laws regulating artificial intelligence.
At the same time, Trump has dramatically changed the US government’s system for providing aid abroad. Last year, the Department of Government Efficiency abolished the US Agency for International Development, a move that has already led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people from infectious diseases and malnutrition, according to the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Message from Atlantic reveals that the Trump administration plans to cut funding to seven African countries and divert funding from two others.
“These Tech Corps recruits will act as promoters of American technology.
The question remains whether the Tech Corps will even achieve its goal. China has already laid the groundwork to support the deployment of its own artificial intelligence systems through the Digital Silk Road initiative, which brings Chinese technology to developing countries such as Egypt, Zambia, Pakistan, Serbia, Ecuador and many others. “These Tech Corps recruits will act as promoters of American technology in these emerging markets, where China has already maintained, if not expanded, its leadership in marketing and promotion,” says Meicen Sun, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an MIT FutureTech affiliate. The Verge.
China’s AI models also have an advantage when it comes to operating in areas that don’t have vast data centers and a power grid to support more demanding systems. Quinn says these models are already “gaining traction in developing economies because they’re simply cheaper and can run on local infrastructure.” Microsoft researchers also recently found that the popularity of AI models made by DeepSeek — a Chinese company that develops powerful and effective artificial intelligence systems — has skyrocketed in Iran, Cuba and Belarus, as well as across Africa, where Microsoft notes that China’s Huawei has “actively promoted and deployed the platform.”
Quinn says failure is “entirely possible” for the Tech Corps, as drastic aid cuts and reductions in the Office of Cyberspace and Digital Policy put it on “weak institutional foundations.” That, coupled with its ties to America’s AI export program, could end up pushing countries away. “This combination may very well make target countries suspicious of the Tech Corps and ironically encourage more hedging behavior from target countries, which is the exact opposite of what the administration wants.” And the main goal of this administration is pretty clear: to make Big Tech’s partners happy.