Ron DeSantis Would Radically Change How U.S. Handles Nuclear Weapons

As part of his battle against the so-called "woke" agenda, Florida governor and 2024 hopeful Ron DeSantis recently vowed to abolish four federal agencies if elected president, including the Department of Energy—which could have major implications for U.S. nuclear capabilities.

In a June 28 interview with Fox News's Martha MacCallum, DeSantis said that he was "in favor" of eliminating the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), as well as the Education, Commerce, and Energy departments once president in order to "reduce the size and scope" of the federal government.

"But what I'm also going to do is be prepared if Congress won't go that far, I'm going to use those agencies to push back against woke ideology and against the leftism we see creeping into all institutions of American life," DeSantis, who is currently behind former president Donald Trump in the 2024 GOP primary polls, said.

As several people noted on social media after a clip of the interview went viral, DeSantis' vow to scrap the Department of Energy (DOE) could have a knock-on effect on the country's nuclear deterrent, with the agency currently overseeing the United States' nuclear facilities and stockpiling of weapons.

"Should someone tell Ron DeSantis that Department of Energy's responsibility is nuclear security?" tweeted David Michaels, a professor in the Departments of Environmental and Occupational Health and Epidemiology at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

"DOE's job is to produce our nuclear weapons, maintain a reliable nuclear stockpile, and clean up the mess we made making nuclear weapons," he wrote.

DeSantis vowing to abolish the DOE as part of cost-cutting measures and plans to downsize federal bureaucracy does not mean that he intends to scrap the U.S.'s nuclear program or eliminate its stockpile of weapons, though.

Instead, control of the country's nuclear weapons program and facilities could move to the authority of the Department of Defense, or another agency that oversees arms.

"DOE's nuclear weapon facilities would transfer to Department of Defense's control without much disruption," Owen Cote, Associate Director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told Newsweek.

"Arguably, the biggest effect would be political in that the not inconsiderable budget associated with our nuclear weapon enterprise would be folded into the defense budget," he said.

"Historically, the belief has been that spending on nuclear weapons has been 'protected' because [the] DOD has been free to develop requirements for nuclear weapons that it did not have to then pay for out of its own budget.

"If DOE were eliminated that would no longer be the case and in theory funding for nuclear weapons etc. would come into competition with other DOD programs," Cote said.

Such a move could have the potential to change how resources are allocated to nuclear weapons. The Congressional Budget Office is required to project the 10-year costs of nuclear forces every two years. Under its projections from 2021-2030, requests by the DOD and DOE submitted in 2020 would cost a total of $634 billion during that period, an average of just over $60 billion a year.

It said that around two-thirds of the cost would fall on the DOD, with the largest expenditure going on ballistic missile submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles. High expenditure areas for the DOE include nuclear weapons laboratories. These costs could be placed on the DOD under DeSantis' plan. The DOD budget request for the 2024 fiscal year was for £842 billion.

This is not the first time that a Republican presidential hopeful has called for the DOE and other federal agencies to be abolished. In 2011, former Texas Governor Rick Perry famously forgot the name of all three federal agencies he wanted to abolish if elected president during a live GOP primary debate ahead of the 2012 election.

After declaring that there will be "three agencies of government when I get there, that are gone," Perry named Commerce and Education, before adding, "What's the third one there?"

After being asked by CNBC moderators if he could remember the name of the third department he wanted to abolish, Perry took a brief look through his notes before adding: "I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops."

The third agency Perry could not name was the Energy Department, with Perry later serving as secretary of Energy between 2017 and 2019 under the Trump administration.

Matthew Bunn, the James R. Schlesinger professor of the Practice of Energy, National Security, and Foreign Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, said that the proposals put forward by Perry and DeSantis do not necessarily mean that the country does not need the Energy Department, but they are saying "we don't need a whole cabinet department" to do its role.

"In most such ideas, either the nuclear weapons complex gets moved over to the Department of Defense, or the National Nuclear Security Administration—which runs the weapons complex—becomes a free-standing agency like NASA," Bunn told Newsweek.

DeSantis has not elaborated on his plans to eliminate four federal agencies, such as whether he would move the DOE's nuclear weapons responsibilities to other departments.

Newsweek reached out to DeSantis' office via email for comment.

Brian W. Smith, a political science professor at St. Edwards University in Texas, is doubtful that DeSantis will succeed in his vow to remove four federal agencies if elected president.

"How realistic is it for a presidential candidate to say they will abolish an agency? It is realistic to say, but not to do," Smith told NBC News. "Talk is cheap, but killing an agency is not."

Update, 4/7/23, 6:45 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.