Government Fires Specialists Without Realizing They Were in Charge of Nuclear Bombs, Then Panics and Tries to Rehire Them

Paging Dr. Strangelove

We've all made mistakes before. Maybe we did something in the heat of the moment, or said something we couldn't take back.

Point is, it happens, and that's okay — because however bad our mistakes were, at least they didn't risk spelling doom for the entire human race.

Elon Musk, the richest man in the history of currency, is in the news yet again — is he ever not now? — for spearheading a massive round of government layoffs. This wave, carried out over Thursday and Friday, targeted recent hires across the CDC, Small Business Administration, Homeland Security, Veteran's Affairs, Department of Education, and crucially, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

The NNSA is a little-known group charged with building, designing, and organizing the US Nuclear arsenal — at one time the largest in the world, now said to be a close second to Russia. It's the kind of agency you hope not to read about in the news.

The whole "nuclear" part evidently wasn't enough to deter Musk and his DOGE boys from sending between 300 and 400 nuclear arms personnel to the bread line in a confusing flurry of termination emails on Wednesday.

As reported by multiple outlets in the wake of the firings, it turned out that the officials overseeing the dismissals didn't understand that the sacked workers were responsible for overseeing nuclear weapons — leading them to turn around and beg some of the now-fired workers to come back.

But that's turning out to be a difficult task for Musk's hatchet men, sources familiar with the matter tell NBC News, because the now-former staffers can't access their government email addresses anymore. Hindsight is 20-20, it seems.

It'd be one thing if DOGE was accomplishing its stated goals of uncovering fraud and ending bureaucratic waste. But since Donald Trump has taken office, his billionaire buddy's misadventures have repeatedly disrupted crucial programs like Education Department training, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau operations, and National Institute of Health biomedical research — while achieving only paltry savings that it claims are around $37 billion.

There's a reason for that: Musk's DOGE campaign is an ideological one, wrapped in a thin veil of fiscal responsibility and in practice demonstrating astonishing ineptitude, as demonstrated by its handling of the NNSA. Of course the richest tech mogul in history sees cancer research, environmental protection, and nuclear responsibility as "wasteful" — after all, what profits do they bring in?

And while Trump has championed denuclearization — a commendable task — it's important that those dismantling the warheads our government has spent 80 years stockpiling are trained, educated, and supported as they do it. As it stands, it's looking like quick PR wins, not nuclear responsibility, are the order of the day.

More on nuclear weapons: State Department Insider on Elon Musk Accessing Nuclear Weapons: “If You Make Something Idiot-Proof, the World Will Build a Better Idiot”