A fresh hire within President Biden’s Department of Energy previously wrote an op-ed about “queering nuclear weapons” — in which she argued that “queer theory” was crucial to US nuclear policy.
Sneha Nair co-authored the article just months before she was hired in February as a special assistant at the DOE’s nuclear security wing, the National Nuclear Security Administration, noted Fox News, which first reported on it.
In the wide-ranging piece, Nair argued that queer theory could “help change how nuclear practitioners, experts, and the public think about nuclear weapons” as she touched on the sprawling diversity, equity and inclusion ideology.
The article — titled “Queering nuclear weapons: How LGBTQ+ inclusion strengthens security and reshapes disarmament” — also laid bare her belief that discrimination against queer people could “undermine nuclear security and increase nuclear threat.”
“It’s about people. Equity and inclusion for queer people is not just a box-ticking exercise in ethics and social justice; it is also essential for creating effective nuclear policy,” she wrote in the piece published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Nair — a graduate of Prince William’s alma mater, St. Andrews University — argued that queer theory, which she defined as a look at “sex and gender-based norms,” identified how nuclear weapons conversations were gendered.
“Nuclear deterrence is associated with ‘rationality’ and ‘security,’ while disarmament and justice for nuclear weapon victims are coded as ’emotion’ and a lack of understanding of the ‘real’ mechanics of security,” she wrote.
The article went on to say that the theory prioritizes the rights of people over “the abstract idea of national security — and challenges the understanding of nuclear weapons.
“The queer lens prioritizes the rights and well-being of people over the abstract idea of national security, and it challenges the mainstream understanding of nuclear weapons — questioning whether they truly deter nuclear war, stabilize geopolitics, and reduce the likelihood of conventional war,” she wrote.
“Queer theory asks: Who created these ideas? How are they being upheld? Whose interests do they serve? And whose experiences are being excluded?”
Nair penned the piece while working as a nuclear research expert at the Stimson Center, a think tank based in Washington, DC. Her co-author, Louis Reitmann, was a research associate at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation.
A request for comment from the Department of Energy was not immediately returned Thursday.
Meanwhile, the op-ed surfaced as it was revealed that Biden had reportedly secretly ordered the US to prepare for nuclear threats from China, Russia and North Korea.
Biden had signed off on a highly classified plan in March that shifts America’s nuclear strategy to focus on Beijing as a nuclear threat — and prepare for the possibility that the communist nation could team up with Pyongyang and Moscow, the New York Times reported.
