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Elon Musk Can Find His $2-Trillion Federal Spending Cut in Nuclear Weapons

DOGE’s Elon Musk should turn his $2-trillion hatchet to wasteful and perilous U.S. nuclear weapons modernization plans

Scientific American, By Dan Vergano edited by Jeanna Bryner, 5 Feb 25

Famously fortunate, Elon Musk now faces a rare opportunity—delivering on one of his signature overblown promises. From his newly created White House cost-cutting desk, all Musk must do is recommend ending one of the most misguided, wasteful and dangerous programs contemplated by the U.S. government, one that Scientific American has pushed for elimination.

Last November Musk set an ambitious target for his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the meme-coin-joke name for his cost-cutting office, his reward for bankrolling Trump’s campaign. Under DOGE, Musk said he would trim $2 trillion from the federal budget. That’s a hefty sum even for the space mogul now regarded as the $400-billion-worth wealthiest man on Earth. (Musk subsequently downplayed $2 trillion as a “best-case outcome.”)

Luckily for him, there is one big, fat target with just that price tag, already sitting in Uncle Sam’s shopping cart, and it’s ripe for cutting: nuclear weapons. In 2010 Trump’s nemesis, then president Barack Obama, first proposed “modernizing” the U.S. triad of land-, sea- and air-based weapons over more than three decades. Almost unnoticed outside of national security circles, the initiative’s $1-trillion sticker price has nearly doubled and, as American University national security scholar Sharon Weiner wrote last year, “is likely to escalate even further by 2050—the supposed end date for modernization.”

Conveniently enough for Musk, his new boss, Trump, called in January for talks on reducing nuclear weapons with China and Russia, while speaking to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear, and the destructive capability is something that we don’t even want to talk about today, because you don’t want to hear it,” Trump said. “It’s too depressing.”……………………. more https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/elon-musk-can-find-his-usd2-trillion-federal-spending-cut-in-nuclear-weapons/

February 7, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war