Bryton Shang dbag

dogebags ocean sensors?

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E&E News: Backlog of unsigned contracts paralyzes NOAA

Backlog of unsigned contracts paralyzes NOAA

An agency official said “everything has ground to a halt,” waiting for Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to review more than 200 agreements.

Avatar of Scott Waldman

By: Scott Waldman | 05/20/2025

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick listens as President Donald Trump speaks during an April 17 event at the White House.

CLIMATEWIRE | A growing backlog of hundreds of unsigned NOAA contracts has slowed agency operations to a crawl — so much so that even Sen. Ted Cruz, a staunch ally of the Trump administration, has raised concerns about the gridlock.

The bottleneck is due largely to one man: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose portfolio includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. After taking office in February, Lutnick insisted that he personally review any contract in excess of $100,000.

Intended as an attempt to identify waste and redundancy, the policy instead has sown chaos at the nation’s preeminent climate and weather agency, say former and current NOAA officials.

More than 200 NOAA contracts — including one aimed at helping local communities prepare for extreme weather events — are now stuck in limbo, waiting for Lutnick to make a decision. The impasse has forced NOAA to furlough employees, and it has created a work environment where NOAA staffers spend much of their time trying to justify their work — rather than doing it, they say.

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Experts on everything. DOGE whiz sought to dump water farmers will need this summer, and take a selfie doing it.

These are the same guys rifling thru your financial and medical data.

Independent:]

A group of Department of Government Efficiency agents repeatedly pressured a federal official to open a large water pump system in California — and then flew there to do it themselves, according to a new report.

DOGE staffers attempted to pressure the acting head of the Bureau of Reclamation to open a water pump system, CNN reports. The staffers wanted to send the water to Los Angeles amid the devastating wildfires in January — even though the system wouldn’t have allowed it to reach the scorched city, CNN reports.

Despite this, they still decided to take matters into their own hands.

In January, DOGE staffers called the Bureau of Reclamation claiming President Donald Trump wanted water pumps turned on at the Jones Pumping Plant, which sends water to the state’s Central Valley, CNN reports.

But when the official didn’t give in, staffers Tyler Hassen and Bryton Shang flew to California to open the pumps themselves and get a photo while doing so, CNN reports. But two issues stopped them.

First, the power was off due to planned maintenance. Second, Shang wasn’t an official federal employee yet, meaning he couldn’t access the pump. Hassen couldn’t do it either, CNN reports, because he had to fly back before the power would be restored.

“They didn’t get their photo op,” an unnamed source with knowledge of the incident told CNN, adding it represented “what DOGE has been this entire time — this slapstick operation of 20-somethings they’re seeing as whiz kids but have zero knowledge.”

Instead, the DOGE X account posted a photo of Shang and Hassen in front of a map, along with other pictures of the plant.

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Soon after the visit, Trump ordered the US Army Corps to open up two Southern California dams at the end of January. This release sent water rushing toward farmland in the San Joaquin Valley, the Los Angeles Timesreports, prompting concern from farmers.

“This is going to hurt farmers,” water consultant Dan Vink told the outlet. “This takes water out of their summer irrigation portfolio.”

ABC 30 Fresno:

But word of a water release out of both Terminus Dam at Lake Kaweah and Schafer Dam at Lake Success came as a shock to many.

South Valley farmers weren’t happy to see the outward flow. That stored water represents their spring and summer supply, and irrigating crops isn’t their priority right now.

“There’s enough snow above Lake Kaweah to, essentially if it all melted off, fill it halfway full. So the idea to release any was questionable,” Zack Stuller with the Tulare County Farm Bureau said.

Stuller says farmers usually get a 10-day to two-week heads up when water will become available.

“But the fact to release that much that quick where we can’t use it was bizarre,” Stuller said.

The Hill:

Jay Lund, an environmental engineer at the University of California, Davis, also noted the breadth and complexity of water management efforts in California, which involve diverse water demands; hydrology and infrastructure; substantial decentralization; and numerous laws, regulations and contracts. As such, he continued, state and federal projects that proceed without intergovernmental and local coordination can falter in terms of effectiveness and wastefulness.

“The recent federal orders to release additional water from some small Tulare basin reservoirs did not have substantial benefits for farmers, who it seems would have preferred to have these releases later and coordinated with them for summer irrigation or groundwater recharge,” said Lund, who is also vice director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis.

“The releases were disconnected from and had no effect on water availability in the Los Angeles region,” he added. “The releases seem to have been more symbolic of some rough longer-term federal intention.

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Bryton Shang | DOGE / NOAA | Citizen Analyst

Bryton Shang — NOAA Senior Advisor

PostedJune 24, 2026

UpdatedSeptember 16, 2026

ByCitizen Analyst

Role: Senior Advisor to the NOAA Administrator (focus on AI applications at NOAA), confirmed publicly April 2025; previously Founder/CEO/Executive Chairman of Aquabyte, an aquaculture AI startup.

Status: Active at NOAA as of mid-2025 reporting; cited in E&E News and Undercurrent News coverage of NOAA contract approval delays.

Basis for Inclusion

Subject classification: Public Official (senior advisor to a federal agency administrator).

Anchor met: Public Official acting in formal federal capacity.

Background

Shang graduated at the top of his engineering class at Princeton University (B.S.E.) and founded Aquabyte, an aquaculture technology company using computer vision and AI to monitor fish health, growth, and sustainability at fish farms. Aquabyte attracted institutional venture funding before Shang transitioned to government service.

DOGE Role

Bureau of Reclamation publicity stunt (January 2025): While his federal background check was still pending, Shang accompanied DOGE operator Tyler Hassen to the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation in an effort to order release of Northern California reservoir water in response to the January 2025 Los Angeles-area wildfires — wildfires hundreds of miles from those reservoirs. The episode was widely characterized as a publicity stunt with no operational nexus between the reservoirs targeted and the fires.

NOAA transition (April 2025): Named Senior Advisor to the NOAA Administrator after the Reclamation episode. NOAA officials were instructed to pitch contract renewal requests to Shang and another DOGE-affiliated official; Shang was involved in decisions about which NOAA contracts were approved or rejected.

Documented Actions

Participated in the Reclamation reservoir-release stunt while still in pre-clearance status (Revolving Door Project; DOGE Track, 2025).

Held contract-approval gating authority over NOAA contract renewals during the 2025 NOAA contracting paralysis (E&E News, 2025).

Real-World Impacts

Federal Employees

NOAA workforce reductions and a documented backlog of unsigned contracts during the period of Shang’s contract-approval gating role (E&E News, 2025).

American Citizens (Public Services)

NOAA-administered weather, climate, hurricane forecasting, and fisheries-management services all depend on the contractor pipeline routed through Shang’s approval authority.

Decisions affecting Aquabyte’s sector of expertise (aquaculture / fisheries AI) raise the appearance of prior-industry alignment in regulatory and procurement decisions.

Vulnerable Populations

Coastal residents dependent on NOAA hurricane warnings; aviation and marine industries; commercial and tribal fisheries dependent on NOAA stock assessments.

Privacy and Data Security

NOAA-held research data and partner-agency data subject to DOGE-coordinated access during this period.

Other Documented Harms

Public-safety communications concerns raised by climate and weather science community.

The Reclamation reservoir-release demand contradicted the operational guidance of career water-management staff and was reported as politically rather than operationally motivated.

Conflicts of Interest

Aquabyte founder/CEO history: Direct prior commercial position in an AI/aquaculture firm whose sector intersects NOAA Fisheries authority.

Investigative trail pointers (public records)

Education only — verify independently. Absence of hits is not proof.

Channel	Starting points
Federal courts	CourtListener / PACER party and attorney searches (spelling variants)
Campaign finance	FEC + OpenSecrets for committees and donors tied to documented roles
Corporate / LLC	State secretary of state; OpenCorporates for cross-border shells from reporting
Sanctions / PEP	OpenSanctions when international business context is already sourced
Contracts / grants	USAspending.gov for named entities from investigations

Use public-records-research-specialist, corporate-intelligence-investigator, and public-corruption-ombudsman evidence tiers.

Sources

Undercurrent News, “AI tech startup founder hired as senior NOAA advisor,” April 8, 2025

SalmonBusiness, “Aquabyte founder Bryton Shang joins NOAA leadership,” 2025

E&E News (POLITICO), “Backlog of unsigned contracts paralyzes NOAA,” 2025

Revolving Door Project, “DOGE: From Meme to Government Erosion Machine,” 2025

DOGE Track (Key Enablers), 2025

NOAA leadership page (noaa.gov)

Factual correction requests: Contact factcheck@citizenanalyst.ai.

Cross-References

DOGE — Department of Government Efficiency Policy Tracker

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/brytonshang/

Bryton Shang is a serial entrepreneur, technologist, business leader, and senior government official.

Bryton was the Founder, CEO, and Executive Chairman of Aquabyte, a pioneering aquaculture technology company leveraging AI and robotics to improve fish farming, which he led to a multi-hundred million dollar acquisition. He grew Aquabyte from a smart camera prototype built in his bathtub to a global leader in aquaculture innovation.

Previously, Bryton was Senior Advisor and Founder & Executive Director of the National AI Center at the U.S. Department of Commerce leading efforts to advance AI adoption in the government through the National AI Center and globally as Deputy Director of the American AI Export Program. He was also a Senior Advisor at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Bryton has led several venture-backed companies. Prior to Aquabyte, he served as CTO at HistoWiz, a biotechnology firm where he developed deep learning algorithms for cancer diagnosis. He also co-founded and served as CTO of iQ License, and was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in Manufacturing & Industry for his work at the intersection of technology and industry.

Bryton graduated at the top of his engineering class at Princeton University with a B.S.E. in Operations Research and Financial Engineering.

Experience

U.S. Department of Commerce

Full-time · 1 yr 1 mo

Founder and Executive Director, National AI Center
2026 – 2026
Senior Advisor
2025 – 2026
Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Leading efforts to advance US and global AI adoption as the founding Executive Director of the National AI Center and Deputy Director of the American AI Export Program.

Term Member

Council on Foreign Relations

2026 – 2026

Executive in Residence

Princeton University

2026 – 2026

Senior Advisor

NOAA: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration

2025 – 2025

Washington, District of Columbia, United States

Directing technology and AI initiatives across fisheries, weather, and satellite programs, with particular emphasis on artificial intelligence and autonomous systems.

Founder, CEO, Executive Chairman

Aquabyte

2017 – 2025

San Francisco, CA | Norway | Chile

Founded and led Aquabyte from inception to a multi hundred million dollar exit with tens of millions in revenue. Raised $50M with a 100+ person team to build underwater AI systems for global fish farms.

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