ICAN’s new report “Complicit: 2020 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending” unveils one year of the cycle of spending on nuclear weapons from countries to defence contractors to lobbyists and think tanks and back again. In 2020, the report estimates that nine countries spent $72.6 billion on nuclear weapons, $27.7 billion of which went to a dozen defence contractors to build nuclear weapons. Those contractors then spent $117 million lobbying policy makers and up to $10 million funding think tanks writing about nuclear weapons to ensure they can continue to line their pockets with nuclear weapon contracts for years to come.
The contractors are all profiled in detail in the Don’t Bank on the Bomb list of nuclear weapon producers.