NYT hit piece on NNSA and Labs

 NYT hit piece on NNSA and Labs

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/science/brandon-williams-nuclear-weapons-nnsa.html

(Apparently it is now a sign of incompetence and desperation to promote the idea of keeping nuclear secrets protected. Can somebody explain this to me?)

U.S. Nuclear Arms Chief Warns Against Leaks of Secret Information

The email sent to atom bomb officials by Brandon Williams highlights the managerial challenge faced by the former one-term congressman.

Brandon M. Williams was just weeks into his job of supervising the nation’s arsenal of thousands of nuclear bombs and warheads when President Trump put him at the center of a storm over whether the United States should change its posture on nuclear weapons testing.

Now, Mr. Williams, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, has ordered his subordinates to step up their vigilance against leaks of classified information, signaling a need to preserve the secrets that empower the world’s deadliest weapons.

“This is not a suggestion,” he wrote on Saturday in a memo emailed to the heads of the nation’s nuclear weapons labs and their associated physical plants. “It is an order. Our national security permits no alternative.” The subject line of the note read: “URGENT: Upholding Our Oath.”

The message seemed unusual for its harsh tone and wide distribution.
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Unlike many of his predecessors, Mr. Williams has no deep technical roots or experience in running the nation’s nuclear weapons complex. The former Navy officer and one-term congressman from upstate New York was described in a lengthy 2022 Syracuse.com profile as a multimillionaire who starts each morning by reading a section of the Bible.

In taking the N.N.S.A. job, Mr. Williams inherited what some federal and private experts consider an aging world of incompatible parts that can verge on ungovernability. The agency has a budget this year of roughly $25 billion, and its facilities employ some 65,500 people at sites from coast to coast.

“Look at how many contractors they have,” said Henry D. Sokolski, formerly a nuclear policy official in the Defense Department. He added, “You have to accept that your ability to control information, and how the money is spent, takes a hit when you contract out.”
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Last month, President Trump made a surprise announcement that the United States would resume explosive testing, throwing the nuclear complex into disputes over his proposed agenda. Among the objections were those by officials at the N.N.S.A., according to CNN.

Mr. Williams has made no public comments on the swirling controversy, and his letter seems to be directed primarily at the institutional failings and missteps of the giant weapons complex he now oversees rather than on media leaks.

Among the letter’s recipients was the head of a sprawling plant in Kansas City that makes the mechanical guts of America’s nuclear warheads and is bigger than the Pentagon. An investigation concluded this summer found that secret information on the design and production of nuclear arms was compromised in three separate incidents at the site. No criminal charges were filed
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Another recipient of the Williams letter was Thom Mason, the director of Los Alamos, the lab where the atomic bomb was born and where weapons are now designed. He has served in that role since November 2018. Last year, the organization was cited for a security breach.

The violation was characterized as recurring incidents in 2023 and 2024 that involved the introduction of unauthorized items into secure areas. They included cellphones, earbuds with microphones and coffee makers equipped with Bluetooth for remote operation.