Brandon M. Williams was just weeks into his job of supervising the nation’s arsenal of thousands of nuclear bombs and warheads when President Trump put him at the center of a storm over whether the United States should change its posture on nuclear weapons testing.
Now, Mr. Williams, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, has ordered his subordinates to step up their vigilance against leaks of classified information, signaling a need to preserve the secrets that empower the world’s deadliest weapons.
“This is not a suggestion,” he wrote on Saturday in a memo emailed to the heads of the nation’s nuclear weapons labs and their associated physical plants. “It is an order. Our national security permits no alternative.” The subject line of the note read: “URGENT: Upholding Our Oath.”
The message seemed unusual for its harsh tone and wide distribution.
The email was shared with The New York Times by a former official with knowledge of the nuclear weapon complex who was not authorized to speak publicly about its inner workings.
Mariza Smajlaj, a spokeswoman for the N.N.S.A., did not reply to a request for a comment on the administrator’s letter and the agency’s security concerns.
Unlike many of his predecessors, Mr. Williams has no deep technical roots or experience in running the nation’s nuclear weapons complex. The former Navy officer and one-term congressman from upstate New York was described in a lengthy 2022 Syracuse.com profile as a multimillionaire who starts each morning by reading a section of the Bible.
In taking the N.N.S.A. job, Mr. Williams inherited what some federal and private experts consider an aging world of incompatible parts that can verge on ungovernability. The agency has a budget this year of roughly $25 billion, and its facilities employ some 65,500 people at sites from coast to coast.
“Look at how many contractors they have,” said Henry D. Sokolski, formerly a nuclear policy official in the Defense Department. He added, “You have to accept that your ability to control information, and how the money is spent, takes a hit when you contract out.”
In recent decades, federal officials have taken enforcement actions against scores of offenders involved in security breaches, according to the Department of Energy, which oversees the N.N.S.A. Many involve the nuclear weapon labs.
Last month, President Trump made a surprise announcement that the United States would resume explosive testing, throwing the nuclear complex into disputes over his proposed agenda. Among the objections were those by officials at the N.N.S.A., according to CNN.
Mr. Williams has made no public comments on the swirling controversy, and his letter seems to be directed primarily at the institutional failings and missteps of the giant weapons complex he now oversees rather than on media leaks.
Among the letter’s recipients was the head of a sprawling plant in Kansas City that makes the mechanical guts of America’s nuclear warheads and is bigger than the Pentagon. An investigation concluded this summer found that secret information on the design and production of nuclear arms was compromised in three separate incidents at the site. No criminal charges were filed, but the plant’s mangers agreed to a settlement of unspecified civil penalties, improved training and workplace upgrades.
Days after the settlement’s public announcement, Mr. Williams was sworn in as head of the N.N.S.A.
Another recipient of the Williams letter was Thom Mason, the director of Los Alamos, the lab where the atomic bomb was born and where weapons are now designed. He has served in that role since November 2018. Last year, the organization was cited for a security breach.
The violation was characterized as recurring incidents in 2023 and 2024 that involved the introduction of unauthorized items into secure areas. They included cellphones, earbuds with microphones and coffee makers equipped with Bluetooth for remote operation.
The Williams letter implicitly addressed the wide array of violations, ranging from minor to major. Past actions by personnel affiliated with the nuclear agency have “undermined national leadership’s confidence in our ability to safeguard classified and sensitive unclassified information,” the letter began.
He argued that any compromise of that information, “regardless of its perceived sensitivity, represents a direct threat to our strategic interests, our personnel, and the American people we are sworn to protect.”
Mr. Williams said he expected each recipient of the memo “to disseminate this message with the gravity it deserves throughout your respective organizations.”
William J. Broad has reported on science at The Times since 1983. He is based in New York.
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