Brandon Williams is known to us at C&L as a lying hothead. That alone should disqualify him from the job of overseeing nukes. But the one-term former congressman also has virtually no qualifications for the job – except for the one President-Unelect Musk and fake-populist-puppet Donald Trump seem to care about most: Williams is a very wealthy tech bro. And while he's not the usual kind of sexual predator we've come to expect from the Predator-in-Chief-to-be, that hothead incident we wrote about came about when he launched a profanity-laced tirade against staffers who allegedly threatened to expose Williams' daughter's OnlyFans account.
When The New York Times sounds alarmed, you know there’s a seriously bad situation afoot. Not that its article came right out and said so but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist (pardon the pun) to get the gist.
For one thing, the article implies that even Felonious Trump knows Williams is not qualified for the job.
Mr. Trump announced his choice of Mr. Williams as the nation’s nuclear weapons czar in social media posts on Thursday morning, calling him “a successful businessman and Veteran of the U.S. Navy, where he served as a Nuclear Submarine Officer, and Strategic Missile Officer.”
A nuclear submarine officer is a far cry from someone equipped to maintain and manage a large nuclear arsenal. The Times notes that Williams’ congressional biography says he successfully completed nuclear engineer training in the Navy. But he also left the service in 1996. I’m no expert on the subject but I’m pretty sure a lot has changed in nuclear engineering in the nearly 30 years since then.
It's not like Williams seems to have kept up on the subject. The former director of the Los Alamos Weapons Laboratory is quoted as saying Williams has “very limited experience” with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the agency Williams has been chosen to head. Another expert told The Times Williams would be taking “an incredibly complex, technical job.”
So what has Williams been doing since his nuclear sub days, besides his one term in Congress? Why he’s a rich tech businessman!
More from The Times:
According to his congressional biography, Mr. Williams founded “a software company that now helps large industrial manufacturers modernize their production plants, secure their critical infrastructure from cyberattacks, and paves the way for reduced emissions through advances in artificial intelligence.”
…
A lengthy 2022 profile of Mr. Williams described him as a multimillionaire who starts each morning by reading a section of the Bible. After high school, it said, Mr. Williams went to Baylor University, a private Christian school in Waco, Texas, and then transferred to Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif.
His congressional biography says he earned a bachelors from Pepperdine in liberal arts, and later an MBA from the Wharton School, a contrast with the advanced degrees in physics or engineering that typically dot the résumés of weaponeers who end up in senior positions of the nation’s atomic complex.
In case none of that’s enough to keep you up at night, Trump wants to do something more with nukes in his second term, thus making the choice of an NNSA head all the more important.
The credentials and credibility of whoever becomes N.N.S.A.’s new leader may face close scrutiny because advisers to Mr. Trump have suggested that the incoming administration may propose a restart to the nation’s explosive testing of nuclear arms. That step, daunting both technically and politically, would end U.S. adherence to a global test ban that sought to end decades of costly and destabilizing arms races.
There’s lots more in the article about how nuclear test explosions are both unnecessary and likely to start a chain reaction of escalation among countries like Iran. You should read the whole thing, but not late at night.
