20/06/2022 |

New ICAN report: ‘Squandered: 2021 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending’

Read the full report here.

$157,000 per minute, almost twice the annual U.S. median family income. That’s how much the nine nuclear-armed states spent on their nuclear weapons in 2021 in a continuing global pandemic and only months before Russia began assembling troops on the border with Ukraine. In total, the nine nuclear armed states spent $82.4 billion on nuclear weapons in 2021, which represents an inflation-adjusted increase of $6.5 billion from last year.

But that’s not all. For the new report, “Squandered: 2021 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending,” ICAN dug through thousands of pages of contracts and annual reports to show that not just governments are responsible for squandering resources on weapons of mass destruction. Companies, lobbyists and think tanks were all part of a vicious cycle of spending, lobbying, and more spending on nuclear weapons in 2021.

The report finds that private companies were awarded at least $30.2 billion in new nuclear weapons related contracts in 2021 – more than double the $14.8 billion awarded in 2020. Those companies then spent $117 million lobbying decision makers and between $5.5-$10 million funding most of the major think tanks that research and write on nuclear weapons.

Be part of the solution, and join the events in Vienna online. Together we can break the cycle of complicity, and put these resources to better use.

Let’s stand up together to stop the waste of scarce public resources on nuclear weapons.