President Biden’s nominees to lead the Nuclear Weapons Council and the Department of Energy’s intergovernmental affairs programs are headed to the Senate, the White House announced this week.
The Senate had not scheduled hearings on either nominee at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, nor for Jill Hruby to be administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration. Biden announced his intent to nominate Hruby on Wednesday.
Michael Brown got the nod to be undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. If confirmed, he would lead the joint Pentagon-Department of Energy council that coordinates nuclear weapon procurements. The Senate Armed Services Committee will have to approve his nomination.
Brown is a former tech CEO who has led both chipmaker and wireless technology company Qualcomm, San Diego, and the former Symantec, an information security company now known as NortonLifeLock. He has been director of the defense innovation unit at the Department of Defense since 2018.
The Department of Energy has only one of the six votes on the Nuclear Weapons Council, which is dominated by Pentagon and military officials, including the commander of U.S. Strategic Command. Last year, Congress hotly debated the body’s influence over the broader Department of Energy budget, ultimately settling on a compromise between the House’s idea to make the Pentagon fund any budget increases the Defense Department wants for DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Senate Armed Services Committee’s idea to let the council set the budget for the NNSA without any input from the Secretary of Energy.
A former NNSA administrator complained last year that the Nuclear Weapons Council, with its lopsided Defense Department tilt, can too easily scapegoat DOE for problems with nuclear-weapons acquisitions while skirting criticism from the civilian agency.
Meanwhile, Ali Nouri was officially nominated to serve as assistant secretary for congressional and intergovernmental affairs. He has led that DOE office, which coordinates talks with other government agencies and Capitol Hill, as its deputy since January, when the long-time Senate staffer and former national security advisor to Al Franken left the Federation of American Scientists to join the Biden administration. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will have to approve his nomination.
