Recently I was summoned to DC for discussions
with Senate and House of Representative offices and the Pentagon about the
semiconductor crisis of the early 2020s.
Before I entered the first office was a plaque at the entrance
that read “Former Senate office of Barak Obama, President of the United States”. And then there I sat at the mahogany conference
table where policies of the country were conjured up the decade before. These were hallowed grounds.
That day I got to see politics
play out before my eyes. It reeked of
personal agendas and misuse of taxpayer money.
The Virginia Senator office could only give us fifteen minutes huddled around a
tiny table because of a flight to the United Nations to catch. Ultimately, politics is all about hallway side deals, as our lobbyist smirked “often the fruitful discussions are the stand-up ones in the corridors”.
In the afternoon we got notice
that our meeting at the Pentagon would now be held in the lobbyist office – a marvelously
architected marble building owned by a law firm in a layout and culture mimicking
Suits.
The senior level representatives
from the Pentagon arrived at 1:59PM. And
in a room full of C-suite executives with sharp suits and bipartisan ties walks
one man. A short, stubby, undergroomed
old man with white fluffy hair with a remarkable resemblance to the man from
Up, minus balloons. “Don’t mind if I don’t wear a
jacket, do you”? were his first words as he proceeded to shuffle off his worn
backpack and jacket.
He was a physicist from the Navy
detailed to the Department of Defense to coordinate a taskforce for semiconductors. He came across as friendly but stern. After thirty minutes it
was clear that he was party to a Top-Secret priority, and we were being ghosted. Later that day it was published by Politico about a suspicious
redirection of congress CHIPS Act funding.
I was sitting at important tables,
and I was giving input to important discussions, and somehow, I was in the middle of a highly political situation. My formula for career success was in action.