Brandon Williams, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), told the Exchange Monitor Wednesday it is “certainly not my job to agree” with President Donald Trump on whether to return to nuclear testing.
“You know, the president is the Commander in Chief, the president will make all of these decisions,” Williams said in response to a question by the Monitor at a panel held by the Congressional Nuclear Security Working Group, Bechtel and the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center at the Capitol. “They reside uniquely within his authority.”
Williams added, “NNNA will carry out the directions and directives of the president as ordered, and the details of that will be released in the president’s own time and for decisions that rely entirely within the White House. There’s no more insight I can give you other than that is entirely and exclusively within the purview of the president.”
Williams did speak highly of NNSA’s supercomputers that weed through the data from over 1,000 explosive nuclear weapons tests before the self-imposed moratorium of 1992. He said the U.S. has a “tremendous asymmetric advantage” given the supercomputers and “fantastic scientists at Livermore and Los Alamos and Sandia to run simulations to understand and make sure that our stockpile still works and works exquisitely.”
Trump announced in late October that he ordered the Pentagon to test nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with other countries. While Secretary of Energy Chris Wright told Fox News he thought Trump meant “noncritical tests” and “not nuclear explosions,” Trump did not clarify what he meant days later when asked on 60 Minutes.
When asked by the Monitor, Williams declined to say whether Trump clarified to him or others whether he meant nuclear explosions or not.