The Fifth Risk

The day after the election, the Department of Energy (DOE) prepared for about 30 people to come into the department, but no one showed up. Two weeks later, Trump appointed Thomas Pyle, the president of the American Energy Alliance (AEA), which Koch describes as a “propaganda machine” funded with money from ExxonMobil and the Koch Industries. Pyle met with current Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, Deputy Secretary Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, and the DOE Chief of Staff Kevin Knobloch. After that, he never came back. Eventually, Rick Perry was nominated and confirmed as the Secretary of Energy.

Lewis meets with John MacWilliams in June of 2017, and together, they simulate what a conversation about transition could have looked like within the Department of Energy. He asks MacWilliams, who had been the chief risk officer, to outline the top risks that a new administration should be cognizant of within the DOE. MacWilliams lists five: an accident with nuclear weapons, North Korea, Iran, the electrical grid, and project management. The DOE has spent both a lot of time and money making sure that nuclear accidents don’t happen. MacWilliams tells Lewis about “broken arrows,” nuclear accidents that didn’t lead to nuclear wars.