Under Trump, the nuclear weapons industry has boomed
BLUF: "Overall, the budget for making and maintaining nuclear warheads has risen more than 50 percent since Trump was elected in 2016, substantially outpacing the rates of increase for the defense budget and overall federal spending during his presidency before the pandemic. On Monday, Congress approved Trump’s proposal to increase spending next year alone for the production of such weaponry by roughly $3 billion."On Feb 10, 2025, at 12:25 PM, Chas Freeman via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:--Want an Easy Way to Cut $2T? Think Nuclear
Dan Vergano calls for ending nuclear weapons modernization![]()
![Want an Easy Way Cut $2T? Think Nuclear]()
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, left, applauds Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., on Oct. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)Elon Musk has an easy task in cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget in the view of Scientific American opinion editor Dan Vergano. But rather than going after the NOAA or the Labor Department, his Department of Government Efficiency should "recommend ending one of the most misguided, wasteful and dangerous programs contemplated by the US government:" its nuclear weapons modernization plans. There's reason for President Trump and his advisor to get on board: After all, it was Trump "nemesis" President Obama who first dedicated $1 trillion to modernizing the force in 2010, Vergano writes, noting the cost of the initiative has nearly doubled since and is likely to climb further by its 2050 end date.
Trump himself has complained of "tremendous amounts of money" spent on "destructive" nuclear weapons, the editor notes. So it won't be the promised $2 trillion in cuts in a single year, "but it wouldn't be the first time one of [Musk's] promises suffered some shrinkage," Vergano writes. And this is about far more than cost. There's a little thing called the risk of nuclear war, which would, at best, "cause global famine," and at worst trigger "hundreds of millions of immediate deaths, followed by nuclear winter starving billions."
What about China and Russia? Vergano counters that question with another. With the coming expiration of the START Treaty, wouldn't Trump love to make a deal that "prevents a three-way rerun of the cold war's fruitless, perilous warhead race?" There's just one, glaring problem, as Vergano sees it. Project 2025, the far-right blueprint for Trump's presidency, calls for expanding and modernizing the US nuclear force, restarting nuclear tests, and deploying space-based weapons—"in other words, start a new arms race." If Trump and Musk can only close the book on Project 2025, the decision will be obvious, Vergano notes. So "have at it, you noble knights of slaying government waste." (More nuclear weapons stories.)
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