Nine of the 12 members of a high-level congressional commission charged with advising on the US’ nuclear weapons strategy have direct financial ties to contractors that would benefit from the report’s recommendations or are employed at think tanks that receive considerable funding from weapons manufacturers, the Guardian and Responsible Statecraft have found.
While the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (CCSPUS) purports to recommend steps to avoid nuclear conflict, it has done nothing to disclose its own potential conflicts of interest with the weapons industry in its final report or at rollout events at think tanks in Washington.
The US is soon to face “a world where two nations [China and Russia] possess nuclear arsenals on par with our own,” said the commission’s final report, released in mid-October.
Illustration: Yusha
“The risk of conflict with these two nuclear peers is increasing. It is an existential challenge for which the United States is ill-prepared,” the report said.
This potential doomsday scenario requires the US to make “necessary adjustments to the posture of US nuclear capabilities — in size and/or composition,” the CCSPUS said.
Such a policy shift would steer billions of taxpayer dollars to the Pentagon and nuclear weapons contractors.
“What we’ve consistently seen is the nuclear weapons industry buying influence, and that means we cannot make serious decisions about our security when the industry is buying influence through think tanks and commissioners that are skewing the debate,” International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons program coordinator Susi Snyder said.
“Instead of having a debate about the tools and materials we need to make ourselves safe, we’re having a debate about which company should get the contracts, and that doesn’t make the American people safe or anyone else in the world,” she said.
The CCSPUS was established two years ago via the annual defense policy bill, and conflicts of interest on the commission were apparent from the beginning.
However, an analysis by the Guardian and Responsible Statecraft found deep ties between the commission and the weapons industry.
The most recognizable member of the CCSPUS is vice-chairman Jon Kyl, who served as a senator from Arizona from 1995 to 2013, and again in 2018 after the death of then-US senator John McCain. While this is included in his biography in the commission’s report, what is left out is his more recent employment as a senior adviser with the law firm Covington & Burling, whose lobbying client list includes multiple Pentagon contractors that would benefit from the commission’s recommendations.
In 2017, Kyl was registered to lobby for Northrop Grumman, which manufactures the B-21 nuclear bomber that the commission recommends the US should purchase in greater numbers, at a cost to taxpayers of nearly US$700m each.
Kyl did not respond to questions about his employment status with Covington & Burling, but the former senator was listed as a “senior adviser” on the firm’s Web site until at least Dec. 1 last year, nearly 10 months after the commissioner selections for the CCSPUS were announced in March last year.
Another commissioner, Franklin Miller, is a principal at the Scowcroft Group, a business advisory firm that describes Miller as having expertise in “nuclear deterrence” and acknowledges its work in the weapons sector.
“The Scowcroft Group successfully advised a European defense leader on a strategic acquisition opportunity,” the consulting firm says in the “Defense/Aerospace” section of its Web site. “We have also assisted a major defense firm in pursuing global partnerships and co-production opportunities.”
Miller did not respond to a request for comment about the identity of the Scowcroft Group’s clients.
Kyl and Miller are joined on the CCSPUS by retired general John E. Hyten, who previously served as the vice-chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, the second-highest-ranking member of the US military.
While Hyten’s biography in the commission’s report lauds his extensive military service, in retirement he has worked closely with a number of firms that could benefit immensely from the commission’s recommendations.
In March, he was appointed as special adviser to the CEO of C3 AI, an artificial intelligence company that boasts of working with agencies at the US Department of Defense.
In June last year, Hyten was named executive director of the Blue Origins foundation, called the Club for the Future, and as a strategic adviser to Blue Origin’s senior leadership. Blue Origin is wholly owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and works directly with NASA, the US Air Force and US Space Force on space launch-related capabilities.
Hyten’s ties to these firms are notable given the CCSPUS report’s repeated overtures for improving and investing in space and artificial intelligence capabilities.
Specifically, the report recommends that the US “urgently deploy a more resilient space architecture” and take steps to ensure it is “at the cutting edge of emerging technologies — such as big data analytics, quantum computing and artificial intelligence.”
Hyten did not respond to a request for comment.
The CCSPUS also included think tank academics whose employers receive significant funding from the arms industry. Two commission members work at the Hudson Institute, which, according to its most recent annual report, received in excess of US$500,000 from Pentagon contractors last year.
That includes six-figure donations from some of the Pentagon’s top contractors, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems.
On Oct. 23, the Hudson Institute held an event to highlight the CCSPUS’ report that included the two Hudson Institute employees who also served as commissioners. The event unabashedly promoted recommendations from the report that would be a financial windfall for Hudson’s funders.
The landing page for the event features a photograph of a B-21 stealth bomber, the same image used in the commission report that also recommended that the US strategic nuclear posture be modified to “increase the planned number of B-21 bombers and tankers an expanded force would require.”
Neither at the event nor in the report is it noted that the plane’s manufacturer, Northrop Grumman, is in the Hudson Institute’s highest donor tier, contributing in excess of US$100,000 last year.
The Hudson Institute staff who served as commissioners did not respond to requests for comment.
Another commissioner, Matthew Kroenig, is a vice-president at the Atlantic Council, a prominent Washington-based think tank which, according to the organization’s most recent annual report, is funded by several top Pentagon contractors, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon (now RTX), General Atomics, Saab and GM Defense.
The Atlantic Council also receives more than US$1 million a year directly from the Defense Department and US$250,000 to US$499,999 from the US Department of Energy, which helps manage the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
These seeming conflicts of interest were not mentioned at any point in the CCSPUS’ report or at an Atlantic Council event promoting the report and featuring the same photograph of the B-21 used by the Hudson Institute and the commission.
Kroenig did not respond to a request for comment.
Even commissioners whose careers had included positions that were notably critical of nuclear weapons have recently established ties with firms that profit from the nuclear and conventional weapons industry.
Commissioner Lisa Gordon-Hagerty worked for years at the pinnacle of nuclear weapons policy in the US, including positions on the national security council, the US House of Representatives and the Energy Department. She was also the director of the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit organization known for advocating for reductions in nuclear weapons globally.
Her last government position before joining the commission was serving as the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is responsible for military applications of nuclear science. She resigned from the post in 2020, allegedly after heated disagreements with the secretary of energy, who tried to cut NNSA funding.
While much of her career is mentioned in the commission report, what is left out is that Gordon-Hagerty has also been cashing in on her nuclear expertise. After leaving the NNSA, in 2021 she joined the board and became director of strategic programs at Westinghouse Government Services, a nuclear weapons contractor that has been paid hundreds of millions of dollars for work with the defense and energy departments.
Gordon-Hagerty did not respond to a request for comment.
Like Gordon-Hagerty, fellow commissioner Leonor Tomero had a distinguished career at the highest levels of nuclear weapons policy.
Her bio in the commission report says that she was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy and served for more than a decade on the House Armed Services Committee as counsel and strategic forces subcommittee staff lead, where her portfolio included the establishment of the Space Force, nuclear weapons, nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear cleanup, arms control and missile defense.
Tomero was also director of nuclear non-proliferation at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, an organization that has repeatedly called for reductions in the US nuclear weapons arsenal.
Tomero is also on the board of the Council for a Livable World, which explicitly states that its goal is to eliminate nuclear weapons.
Yet, in September, Tomero became a vice-president of government relations at JA Green & Co, a lobbying firm whose client list includes a host of military contractors that could see revenues soar if the CCSPUS’s recommendations are adopted.
SpaceX, for example — which pays US$50,000 every three months to JA Green for lobbying related to “issues related to national security space launch” — would probably benefit mightily from the commission recommendation that “the United States urgently deploy a more resilient space architecture and adopt a strategy that includes both offensive and defensive elements to ensure US access to and operations in space.”
“No clients of JA Green & Company sought to influence the work of the Commission or the Commission’s recommendations in any way,” JA Green president Jeffrey A Green wrote in an e-mail. “We follow all applicable ethics rules and there are no conflicts of interest.”
None of the potential conflicts of interest between commissioners’ financial interests and the policy proposals laid out in their final report were disclosed by the CCSPUS within its final report or at any public event highlighting its findings.
While many commissioners did not respond to requests for comment, CCSPUS executive director William Chambers provided a statement on behalf of the commission and its members.
“Members of [the commission] were chosen and appointed by Members of Congress based on their national recognition and significant depth of experience in such professions as governmental service, law enforcement, the Armed Forces, law, public administration, intelligence gathering, commerce, or foreign affairs,” Chambers wrote. “Before they began performing their role as Commissioners, they were instructed on the ethics rules that govern congressional entities and were required to comply with rules set forth by the Select Committee on Ethics of the Senate and the Committee on Ethics of the House of Representatives.”
Chambers did not respond to a request for a copy of the ethics rules.
However, the opacity about potential conflicts of interest leaves some experts questioning the CCSPUS’ recommendations.
“There’s a huge argument raging over what is security, how much does it rely on transparency and, especially when it comes to nuclear weapons, there is a call for greater transparency,” Snyder said. “That light they’re asking to shine on China, North Korea and Iran is a light they also need to shine on their own decisionmaking.”
Copublished with Responsible Statecraft
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