You may think we have too many nuclear weapons. Or you may think we don’t have enough. One thing you most certainly do not think, however, is that we should arbitrarily fire the people who keep these weapons safe and secure. But that is exactly what happened last week when the Trump administration suddenly fired 300 of the 1,800 people working at the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) in Washington, D.C.
Emails went out at 3 p.m. on Thursday announcing immediate firings. Without warning, dozens of people were told to step away from their computers and physically escorted out of the building, their digital access to the agency blocked and all connections to their work wiped away.
Many of those fired are part of the management team overseeing tens of thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians who build, maintain and guard the U.S. arsenal of some 5,000 nuclear weapons.
All of the people fired were probationary employees, meaning they had worked in their jobs for only one to two years. This included some fresh out of graduate school, as well as experienced officials switching to new assignments. Since they have fewer rights than permanent employees, they were apparently seen by Elon Musk and his shadowy “Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE, which conducted the mass firings, as easy targets in their effort to decimate the federal government workforce.
The firings were part of hundreds of termination notices sent to workers at the Department of Energy, the parent organization of the nuclear agency. It appears that DOGE made the decision based purely on their status, without knowing what the workers actually did.
NNSA has two primary missions. Many of those fired are part of the management team overseeing tens of thousands of highly skilled scientists, engineers and technicians who build, maintain and guard the U.S. arsenal of some 5,000 nuclear weapons. Other fired officials work on NNSA’s other, equally vital mission of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and materials.
These threat reduction programs began when the collapse of the Soviet Union triggered fears of “loose nukes” in the hands of terrorists and outlaw nations. The programs took on new urgency after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 raised the specter of nuclear terrorism. They include everything from radiation detectors that help prevent nuclear smuggling to export controls that block, for example, Iran from getting technologies it could use to build a nuclear bomb.
Outcries from experts, officials and members of Congress about the risks to national security forced Trump officials to reverse course. They announced last Friday that they now want to rehire the workers. The problem is that they don’t know how to reach them.
NBC News obtained a memo sent to NNSA employees that reads, in part: “The termination letters for some NNSA probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel.” With the former employees locked out of their email accounts,