According to a recent press report, the Energy Department has identified 8,500 employees who are “nonessential” and therefore vulnerable to being laid off by Elon Musk’s chainsaw-welding wrecking crew known as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Of those 8,500 employees, 500 work in the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the agency responsible for maintaining the US nuclear weapons stockpile. This follows on from a chaotic period in February, when 177 NNSA employees were summarily fired by DOGE. Following a bipartisan uproar, DOGE reversed course, rehiring all but about 27 of the staff who had been laid off.
The media coverage of those forced-then-reversed departures was extensive, with the Washington Post and the New York Times each reporting later the details of the Trump administration operation. But all the coverage, including the latest news, misses two important aspects of this debacle.
Creating chaos in an agency responsible for the safety and security of nuclear weapons is already concerning; the early DOGE firing plan and any new layoffs are very inefficient ways to save taxpayers’ money. According to DOGE, the average salary of the Energy Department’s staff, including the NNSA, is $116,739. If the 500 “nonessential” employees are laid off and all those initially let go were not rehired, it would save approximately $79 million—or about one-third of a percent of the NNSA’s $25 billion budget.
More important, the United States could save tens to hundreds of billions of dollars if it had a sensible and sustainable nuclear modernization plan rather than one that seeks to replace every single weapon in the arsenal—and even create new ones.
It is a mistake to believe that new pits and new nuclear weapons are required to keep the United States and its allies safe in this challenging new security environment.
Would Russia not have invaded Ukraine if the United States had been building new types of nuclear weapons? Would China have decided not to build new silos if the United States had already been bulk-producing new plutonium pits? Would Russia not be deploying new types of nuclear weapons if the United States already was?
The answer to all those questions is a clear and resounding no. Russia and China are taking those actions because they already fear the United States and its massive, lethal, and threatening nuclear and conventional military forces. Moving now to resume pit production and make new nuclear weapons only exacerbates the problem, accelerating an already budding nuclear arms race.