Instead of satirising nuclear war – a possible if difficult thing to do – the time has come to satirise the laying off and furlough of those who solemnly monitor and maintain such machinery fit, not for preserving life so much as ending it at a fiery, radiated terminus. If it’s not possible to totally disarm a nuclear inventory, it might be possible to reduce the forces behind them or render some idle. It turns out that this is happening in Freedom’s Land itself, the United States of America.
Those responsible for maintaining the US nuclear weapons arsenal have not been having the best of years. In February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the heads of agencies to “promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force, consistent with applicable law”. This was part of the now-infamous Department of Government Efficiency Workforce Optimization Initiative. Within a few days, 300 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), located within the Department of Energy, were fired. Prior to that, it had 2,000 staff and 55,000 contractors at its disposal.
The NNSA describes, as one of its “core missions” ensuring that the US “maintains a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear stockpile through the application of unparalleled science, technology, engineering, and manufacturing.” Easy to forget, on reading this, that we are not talking about agricultural supplies or lifesaving medicines, but over 3,000 nuclear warheads and ongoing production specific to that agency. “The Office of Defense programs,” the description goes on to say, “carries out NNSA’s mission to maintain and modernize the nuclear stockpile through the Stockpile Stewardship and Management System.”
NNSA deputy division director, Rob Plonski, was understandably upset that his citadel was being thinned. Ego, reputation and prowess in the nuclear field was at stake. “We cannot expect to project strength, deterrence and world dominance while simultaneously stripping away the federal workforce,” he moaned in a post on LinkedIn. He would have taken heart by the subsequent rescinding of the termination decision for all but 28 of the staff by NNSA acting director Teresa Robbins.
Trump, on the other hand, was having one of his more lucid moments, telling reporters on February 13 that nuclear forces should not be exempt from budgetary trimming. “There’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons. We already have so many, you could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over.” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, was having none of that. DOGE employees, he charged, were storming “in with absolutely no knowledge of what these departments are responsible for.” They barely realised that the purge was less to do with the Department of Energy than “the department of nuclear weapons”.
In October, the NNSA was again revisited by crisis, with the decision to furlough 1,400 employees due to that event distinct to US politics, the government shutdown. Till that point, the shutdown had lasted almost three weeks, with the Senate failing to pass a continuing resolution bill since October 1. Only 400 essential employees are being retained, labouring in patriotic sweat without pay. A spokesperson for the DOE explained that they would be working “to support the protection of property and safety of human life.”
Since its creation in 2000, the agency has had few such hiccups. “This has never happened before,” noted Energy Secretary Chris Wright during a news conference at the Nevada National Security Site on October 20. “This should not happen.” Wright, however, spoke of pursuing “creative ways” in paying the vast number of contractors, at least till the end of October.
Particular concern centres on the Pantex plant in Texas, the assembly and disassembling site for nuclear weapons, and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, responsible for, according to the DOE, the retrieval and storage of nuclear materials, fuelling of naval reactors, and the performance of “complementary work for other government and private-sector entities.”
The NNSA had tried to argue that money be made available from previously passed spending bills to prevent the furlough. A DOE spokesperson proved icy in remarking that, “While the administration was able to identify funds to keep NNSA weapons laboratories, plants, and sites operating with our contractors, legal and budgetary limitations required the administration to begin furloughing NNSA federal employees”.
Therein lies the problem. To maintain and reproduce an arsenal of mass death and thanatotic desire, you need people of suspended moral principles. “Oversight matters,” Plonski remarks. “Reducing the federal workforce means increased risk in ensuring the reliability and safety of our nuclear stockpile.” With the support of 26 lawmakers, Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) in her October 23 letter to Wright and NNSA administrator Brandon Williams similarly argued that the federal employees in question “play a critical oversight role in ensuring that the work required to maintain nuclear security is carried out in accordance with long-standing policy and the law.” Trump has also been fuzzy on the matter of nuclear weapons, acknowledging the nonsense of increasing the pile, yet simultaneously wanting tighter deadlines to deliver ever more modern weapons to the Pentagon.
This fantastically confused state of affairs throws up an interesting question: Why not turn the attention to reducing the stockpile itself and pause the euphemistically named modernisation process? A slimmer, sharper workforce for a more diminished, manageable arsenal of death that should never be used in any case. The National Security State remains, however, a tough, insatiable customer.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
