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[Kin5290]

Vanity Fair recently released a great long form piece on just how smoothly the Trump administration has taken to running the Department of Energy. Did a search and didn't find anything.

WHY THE SCARIEST NUCLEAR THREAT MAY BE COMING FROM INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE

Donald Trump’s secretary of energy, Rick Perry, once campaigned to abolish the $30 billion agency that he now runs, which oversees everything from our nuclear arsenal to the electrical grid. The department’s budget is now on the chopping block. But does anyone in the White House really understand what the Department of Energy actually does? And what a horrible risk it would be to ignore its extraordinary, life-or-death responsibilities?

The one concrete action the Trump administration took before Inauguration Day was to clear the D.O.E. building of anyone appointed by Obama...

But there was actually a long history of even the appointees of one administration hanging around to help the new appointees of the next. The man who had served as chief financial officer of the department during the Bush administration, for instance, stayed a year and a half into the Obama administration—simply because he had a detailed understanding of the money end of things that was hard to replicate quickly. The C.F.O. of the department at the end of the Obama administration was a mild-mannered civil-servant type named Joe Hezir. He had no particular political identity and was widely thought to have done a good job—and so he half-expected a call from the Trump people asking him to stay on, just to keep the money side of things running smoothly. The call never came. No one even let him know his services were no longer required. Not knowing what else to do, but without anyone to replace him, the C.F.O. of a $30 billion operation just up and left.

This was a loss. A lunch or two with the chief financial officer might have alerted the new administration to some of the terrifying risks they were leaving essentially unmanaged. Roughly half of the D.O.E.’s annual budget is spent on maintaining and guarding our nuclear arsenal, for instance. Two billion of that goes to hunting down weapons-grade plutonium and uranium at loose in the world so that it doesn’t fall into the hands of terrorists. In just the past eight years the D.O.E.’s National Nuclear Security Administration has collected enough material to make 160 nuclear bombs. The department trains every international atomic-energy inspector; if nuclear power plants around the world are not producing weapons-grade material on the sly by reprocessing spent fuel rods and recovering plutonium, it’s because of these people. The D.O.E. also supplies radiation-detection equipment to enable other countries to detect bomb material making its way across national borders. To maintain the nuclear arsenal, it conducts endless, wildly expensive experiments on tiny amounts of nuclear material to try to understand what is actually happening to plutonium when it fissions, which, amazingly, no one really does. To study the process, it is funding what promises to be the next generation of supercomputers, which will in turn lead God knows where.

The question on the minds of the people who currently work at the department: Does [Rick Perry] know what it does now? D.O.E. press secretary Shaylyn Hynes assures us that “Secretary Perry is dedicated to the missions of the Department of Energy.” And in his hearings, Perry made a show of having educated himself. He said how useful it was to be briefed by former secretary Ernest Moniz. But when I asked someone familiar with those briefings how many hours Perry had spent with Moniz, he laughed and said, “That’s the wrong unit of account.” With the nuclear physicist who understood the D.O.E. perhaps better than anyone else on earth, according to one person familiar with the meeting, Perry had spent minutes, not hours. “He has no personal interest in understanding what we do and effecting change,” a D.O.E. staffer told me in June. “He’s never been briefed on a program—not a single one, which to me is shocking.”

Since Perry was confirmed, his role has been ceremonial and bizarre. He pops up in distant lands and tweets in praise of this or that D.O.E. program while his masters inside the White House create budgets to eliminate those very programs. His sporadic public communications have had in them something of the shell-shocked grandmother trying to preside over a pleasant family Thanksgiving dinner while pretending that her blind-drunk husband isn’t standing naked on the dining-room table waving the carving knife over his head.

This is some terrifying reading. Despite its name, the Department of Energy is the nation's premiere watchdog against a nuclear related catastrophe or terrorist attack, that happens to also manage other energy sources on the side. And the Trump administration either doesn't give a shit about it or is trying to tear it down in the name of destroying big government. What are the stakes? These are actual things that happened:

The list of things that might go wrong inside the D.O.E. was endless. The driver of a heavily armed unit assigned to move plutonium around the country was pulled over, on the job, for drunken driving. An 82-year-old nun, along with others, cut through the perimeter fence of a facility in Tennessee that housed weapons-grade nuclear material. A medical facility ordered a speck of plutonium for research, and a weapons-lab clerk misplaced a decimal point and FedExed the researchers a chunk of the stuff so big it should have been under armed guard—whereupon horrified medical researchers tried to FedEx it back. “At D.O.E. even the regular scheduled meetings started with ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ ” says former chief of staff Kevin Knobloch.

TDLR: the people overseeing the nation's nuclear security either don't give a shit or are trying to sabotage the mission. Good luck sleeping tonight!

 

[Brandon F]

Spoilers for season 2...

 

[RoyaleDuke]

A giant rock of plutonium innocuously shipped through Fedex, what possibly could go wrong?

 

[Boney]

Yeah I remember hearing about this around the time he had the "football" scandal. How many scandals ago was that?

It is terrifying. Not because of nuclear retaliation being neutered but on the lax regulations and mal practices that are going to lead to worse disasters than Fukushima.

 

[Ovid]

Will read this later.

 

[Vagabundo]

Spoilers for season 2...

lol yeah spolier that shit.

 

[astroturfing]

craziest thing i've read today, and that is saying a lot.

 

[Kin5290]

Also, yes, the Michael Lewis who wrote this article is that Michael Lewis who wrote Moneyball and The Big Short.

 

[5taquitos]

Of all the things Trump doesn't bother to understand, this is probably the scariest.

 

[bodyofanamerican]

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

Yeah I remember hearing about this around the time he had the "football" scandal. How many scandals ago was that?

It is terrifying. Not because of nuclear retaliation being neutered but on the lax regulations and mal practices that are going to lead to worse disasters than Fukushima.

Thats the plan.

 

[HotHamBoy]

 

[Mael]

And I thought Browder was the biggest story of the week...

 

[Shauni]

Thats the plan.

I doubt that is really the plan, to be honest. Nothing is gained for anyone, including the administration, if there is a domestic meltdown or similar disaster of that nature. I honestly think it just comes down to the fact that the majority of people in this admin doesn't really understand what the DOE does, and doesn't really care.

 

[adj_noun]

Take a drink every time you run into some variation of

The Trump people didn’t seem to grasp

 

[Shauni]

Take a drink every time you run into some variation of

Yeah, that's what it all comes down to. The Trump administration doesn't understand any of this, and it's filled with people who just don't care. Like, there is no reason whatsoever to not maintain the DOE, not even to Steve Bannon's vague plan to 'dishandle the administrative state.' It's just careless stupidity by careless and stupid people.

 

[KevinRo]

craziest thing i've read today, and that is saying a lot.

That America is really the World's police?

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

I doubt that is really the plan, to be honest. Nothing is gained for anyone, including the administration, if there is a domestic meltdown or similar disaster of that nature. I honestly think it just comes down to the fact that the majority of people in this admin doesn't really understand what the DOE does, and doesn't really care.

A lot is gained for Russia.

 

[Bakercat]

I guess the government working on a metal gear could be out of the question for now?

 

[Nerdkiller]

 

[Hackworth]

Take a drink every time you run into some variation of

I've only got one liver.

 

[ShaunBRS]

I guess the government working on a metal gear could be out of the question for now?

How are they going to design a bipedal tank without a bitter, 63-year-old, alcoholic, ex-research director whose name rhymes with Granin?

 

[Kremzeek]

I love VF's in depth articles.

Thanks for the link! Scary scary stuff. Perry is a buffoon.

 

[Madness]

Vanity Fair known for pop culture and fashion primarily has a good article on nuclear threats, arms and politics? Maybe I've been out of the loop on them.

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

Trevor Noah is right- by the end of the presidency everyone would know how the US government works.

We are learning how to government the same time Trump does.

 

[Insane Metal]

...it just keeps getting worse, Jesus H Christ.

 

[Earthbound64]

A giant rock of plutonium innocuously shipped through Fedex, what possibly could go wrong?

Wonder if it was next to that USB charger I got recently.

 

[Earthbound64]

How are they going to design a bipedal tank without a bitter, 63-year-old, alcoholic, ex-research director whose name rhymes with Granin?

 

[KingV]

Yeah I remember hearing about this around the time he had the "football" scandal. How many scandals ago was that?

It is terrifying. Not because of nuclear retaliation being neutered but on the lax regulations and mal practices that are going to lead to worse disasters than Fukushima.

That's actually a completely different department. Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulates the safety programs of the Nuclear Power Plants in the US. They are not part of the DOE...


However, I'm sure that Trump is fucking up the NRC too.

 

[Ether_Snake]

Trump is there to reck the US. That's his mission.

 

[Little Green Yoda]

In just the past eight years the D.O.E.’s National Nuclear Security Administration has collected enough material to make 160 nuclear bombs.

that sounds scary as fuck

 

[Earthbound64]

In just the past eight years the D.O.E.’s National Nuclear Security Administration has collected enough material to make 160 nuclear bombs.

that sounds scary as fuck

Does it sound more or less scary than the 1000+ "nuclear bombs" that we already have?

 

[KillLaCam]

Anyone with common sense would know this lol

 

[Stinkles]

A giant rock of plutonium innocuously shipped through Fedex, what possibly could go wrong?

The fact that the only people aware of how dangerous that was simply wrote "return to sender " on the envelope is somehow scarier.

 

[BigJonsson]

Does it sound more or less scary than the 1000+ "nuclear bombs" that we already have?

Enough loose material to make 160 bombs is very terrifying, terrorists just need to make 1 and use it to cause cataclysmic damage

 

[KingV]

This is frightening and makes me think it's almost inevitable that some government agency breaks in the next year with big consequences.

Take this and spread it out across all of Government and realize that the entire government is basically now just coasting off the Obama administrations fumes.

Like what happens when the fumes run out, or old established policy is no longer appropriate? It will be fucking chaos.

 

[FF Seraphim]

We are fucked huh? Like the level of fucked is beyond my comprehension.

 

[jkanownik]

I shared this on FB and Twitter as soon as I read it. There are great lessons there beyond the Trump administration's incompetence. Pretty damning anecdote for the Heritage Foundation as well. I was just trying to dig into their energy pricing model yesterday because it seemed sketchy as hell. How could repealing the Paris Agreement result in an immediate 20% drop in energy prices? It gets a lot easier if you are just making shit up.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

Take a drink every time you run into some variation of

suing your for my liver transplant

 

[Harrison Bergeron]

Never disappointed by Michael Lewis' VF work. Wish I was in this case.

Treacherous times where ignorance is virtue.

Surprisingly was the most alarming and fucked up thing I came into contact with this week—from Bill Browder to the three ring circus in D.C., this takes the cake and should be shared extensively.

I wish I could just...

 

[JCizzle]

They kept on the guy who actually runs the nuclear agency within DOE.

 

[Balphon]

They kept on the guy who actually runs the nuclear agency within DOE.

They initially fired him, and recalled him only after the outgoing Energy Secretary lobbied congresspeople on the notion that maybe having someone in charge of the NNSA was a good idea.

It's probably one of the more disturbing things in the article.

 

[JCizzle]

They initially fired him, and recalled him only after the outgoing Energy Secretary lobbied congresspeople on the notion that maybe having someone in charge of the NNSA was a good idea.

It's probably one of the more disturbing things in the article.

It's not like the place would have fallen apart without him. There's so many layers in place that these agencies can basically run on auto pilot between permanent leadership changes.

 

[Harrison Bergeron]

It's not like the place would have fallen apart without him. There's so many layers in place that these agencies can basically run on auto pilot between permanent leadership changes.

Except the article talks about how this is presently a widespread problem within the bureaucracy. There is simply no direction and no replacing of leadership. Stuff isn't getting done and Federal programs are falling apart because of it.

And their interest in the D.O.E. is rooting out all the hippie climate change believers instead of understanding it does stuff like this

”Broken Arrow" is a military term of art for a nuclear accident that doesn't lead to a nuclear war. MacWilliams has had to learn all about these. Now he tells me about an incident that occurred back in 1961, and was largely declassified in 2013, just as he began his stint at D.O.E. A pair of four-mega-ton hydrogen bombs, each more than 250 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, broke off a damaged B-52 over North Carolina. One of the bombs disintegrated upon impact, but the other floated down beneath its parachute and armed itself. It was later found in a field outside Goldsboro, North Carolina, with three of its four safety mechanisms tripped or rendered ineffective by the plane's breakup. Had the fourth switch flipped, a vast section of eastern North Carolina would have been destroyed, and nuclear fallout might have descended on Washington, D.C., and New York City.

”The reason it's worth thinking about this," says MacWilliams, ”is the reason that bomb didn't go off was [because of] all the safety devices on the bombs, designed by what is now D.O.E."

 

[Ourobolus]

The only saving grace is that due to the NNSA Act/Title 32, NNSA operates as a semi-autonomous agency, so Rick Perry probably can only do minimal damage to that area.

 

[Kin5290]

It's not like the place would have fallen apart without him. There's so many layers in place that these agencies can basically run on auto pilot between permanent leadership changes.

People say this, but it isn't any more true than it is for something like the Department of State. Good leadership is necessary, among other things, for protecting an agency's mission or budget, maintaining the morale of the agency's employees, and protecting against brain drain.

Government agencies aren't automated factories. Institutional knowledge is worth more than gold, and once you lose that you can't just get it back in an instant.

 

[-Plasma Reus-]

You let Rick be in charge of the Nuclear arsenal?
Rick?

 

[RoyaleDuke]

The fact that the only people aware of how dangerous that was simply wrote "return to sender " on the envelope is somehow scarier.

You're totally right, that is way more fucking scary than the fact someone shipped a giant fucking rock of plutonium, through the mail, like a box of chocolates.

Or the amount of Nuclear Material being seized in these operations that seem completely necessary to the security of many nations including our own.

 

[Alucrid]

honestly one of the most depressing things i've read

 

[Jmanunknown]

Its crazy how much of much a threat Donald Trump's arrogance,stupidity, and corrupt administration is putting the world at risk. He put Rick Perry in charge of the department that basically keeps the world safe from nuclear weapons a guy who wanted to eliminate the department of energy.