# Department of Energy The **Department of Energy (DOE)** is misleadingly named: its single largest mission is the **nuclear-weapons complex**, run through the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which maintains and modernizes the U.S. arsenal. Beyond weapons, DOE operates the 17 national laboratories (Los Alamos, Sandia, Oak Ridge, Lawrence Livermore, and others), manages the [[Strategic Petroleum Reserve]] and nuclear-waste cleanup, funds basic and applied energy research, and houses the Loan Programs Office that finances clean-energy projects. Established in 1977 in the wake of the energy crises, it is also one of the 18 [[Intelligence Community Hub]] elements through its Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, which guards the secrets of the weapons program. For the KB, DOE is contested on two axes: **energy direction** (fossil-fuel acceleration versus clean energy) and the **security and independence of the national labs and the weapons mission**. The weapons complex is generally protected across administrations; the clean-energy and climate functions are the political battleground. ## Leadership (2025–) **[[Chris Wright]]** — the founder and CEO of Liberty Energy, a fracking-services company — was confirmed Secretary of Energy on February 3, 2025, by a 59–38 vote. A vocal advocate of fossil fuels and skeptic of climate alarmism, Wright has steered DOE toward "energy dominance": expanding oil, gas, and nuclear, and rolling back the clean-energy programs and Loan Programs Office financing of the prior administration. ## Major components Tracked as plain references until individual pages are built: - **National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)** — the nuclear-weapons stockpile, naval reactors, and nonproliferation. - **National Laboratories** — 17 labs conducting weapons, energy, and basic science research. - **Office of Science** — the largest federal funder of physical-science research. - **Loan Programs Office (LPO)** — clean-energy and advanced-vehicle project financing; a deregulation/defunding target. - **Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence** — DOE's [[Intelligence Community Hub]] element. - **Environmental Management** — cleanup of Cold War nuclear-weapons sites. ## The capture lens The [[Project 2025]] agenda targets DOE's climate and renewable-energy functions while protecting the weapons mission. The patterns the KB tracks: - **Fossil-fuel and nuclear acceleration** — LNG export approvals, expanded leasing support, and a nuclear-power push. - **Clean-energy retreat** — gutting the Loan Programs Office and renewable-energy and efficiency programs. - **Climate-science suppression** — reducing DOE's climate research and modeling. - **National-lab security politics** — the perennial tension between open science and counterintelligence at the labs. ## See Also - [[Intelligence Community Hub]] - [[Project 2025]] - [[Cabinet Departments Hub]] - [[Federal Agencies]] - [[National Quantum Initiative]] — the 2018 federal quantum program and its funding politics