Humanity is upping the stakes on its deadly game of nuclear poker once again. The world spent a combined total of $91,393,404,739 on nuclear weapons in 2023 – that’s around $250 million each year, $173,884 per minute, or $2,898 a second.
Nine countries possess nukes – the US, Russia, France, China, the UK, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea – and all of them increased the amount of money they put into their atomic arsenals last year.
2023’s spending is $10.7 billion higher than in 2022, a trend that was primarily driven by the US, which accounted for 80 percent of the surge. Last year, the North American superpower spent more than all the other nuclear-armed countries put together with a total expenditure of $51.5 billion.
The next biggest spender was China, which forked out over $11.8 billion on their nuclear weapons arsenal, followed by Russia with an expenditure of $8.3 billion. The UK and France were not far behind, spending $8.1 billion and $6.1 billion, respectively.
All of this data comes from a new report by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), who described the lavish spending as an “unacceptable misallocation of public funds.”
“The acceleration of spending on these inhumane and destructive weapons over the past five years is not improving global security but posing a global threat,” Alicia Sanders-Zakre, Policy and Research Coordinator at ICAN who co-authored the report, said in a statement.
The billions upon billions of dollars were spent modernizing and maintaining current nuclear arsenals or, in some cases, even expanding them.
Governments and militaries are just half of the story, though. The new report shines a light on 20 corporations that amassed over $30 billion for work on developing, manufacturing, sustaining, and producing nuclear weapons.
The nuclear weapons industry received at least $7.9 billion in new contracts in 2023, as per the ICAN report. The top earner was Honeywell International, which raked in around $6.2 billion through nuclear weapons work, followed by Northrop Grumman ($5.9 billion), BAE Systems ($3.3 billion), Lockheed Martin ($2.89 billion) and General Dynamics ($2.7 billion).
All of this was facilitated through lobbyist groups, which spent more than $118 million courting governments in 2023.
This is without mentioning the nuclear weapons work of certain state-controlled organizations – such as Bharat Dynamics Limited (India), China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), or Rostec (Russia) – which are known to contribute significantly to their country’s nuclear arsenals, but do not publicly disclose much of their data.
Don’t expect any changes in the years ahead, either. At least five companies – BAE Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Peraton – have contracts that continue through 2039.
Let’s hope twitchy fingers stay off the buttons and we make it that far!
Source Link: The World Spent $250 Million On Nukes Every Day Last Year In Record Surge