Corey Hinderstein, the former National Nuclear Security Administration’s deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation during the Joe Biden administration, said increasing weapons and slashing nonproliferation spending in the budget is a “recipe for national security failure.”
“Cutting nonproliferation funding would be lose-lose: harming programs with valuable near-term threat-reduction benefits and making deterrence less sustainable for a future with multiple nuclear-armed adversaries,” Hinderstein wrote. She referred to cuts in the White House fiscal 2026 budget that would increase weapons activities in the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) by $5.5 billion compared to 2025, while cutting nonproliferation by around $185 million.
Hinderstein now oversees the Nuclear Policy Program at Washington think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She wrote “meeting the U.S. national security goals of credible and effective nuclear deterrence will be more challenging and the United States will be less safe if nuclear weapons proliferate beyond the nation-states that have them today,” or if “adversaries’ arsenals become unconstrained by verifiable arms agreements.”
Hinderstein’s message comes as President Donald Trump said that both Israel and Iran Tuesday violated a ceasefire Trump claims he brokered between the two countries, according to CNN.
“Arms control is neither an imposed limitation nor a gift to an adversary, but a way to maintain stability and predictability in a nuclear relationship,” Hinderstein said.
Hinderstein listed what nonproliferation cuts would affect, including verification tools for U.N. nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has had its eye on Iran’s uranium enrichment program since the early 2000s, as well as capabilities to detect nuclear materials abroad that could be used for nefarious purposes.
While Hinderstein published her article on the organization website June 16, she wrote more on an X thread about how “foundational” investments in nonproliferation at NNSA, in the wake of Israel’s and the U.S.’s attack on Iran, can “protect us on a bad day, when things are unstable, and when we need tools and processes urgently.”
“With at least 400 kgs of enriched uranium in the wind, what would a regime collapse mean for global security?” Hinderstein wrote on X, with examples of how the nonproliferation account funds capabilities like international inspectors “on the ground” in Iran and mobile packaging of high-risk radioactive materials worldwide.
“It is shortsighted to think we can protect the US and our allies with offensive weapons alone,” Hinderstein wrote on X.
