Exterior sign for BlackRock investment firm outside office building, San Francisco, California, May 27, 2025. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

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There is a long history of corporations and their investors being called to account for the potential consequences of their activities and for how their products are used. Examples of controversial corporate activities old and new include the role of the tech sector’s products in shaping the development of children in distressing, negative ways; concerns about mass surveillance and the supply of targeting systems to police, border patrol and immigration agencies; the role of corporations in expanding America’s carbon footprint and exacerbating the climate crisis; irresponsible marketing practices by the gun industry; the role of banks and corporations in propping up the apartheid regime in South Africa; the central involvement of arms makers in enabling Israeli attacks on Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran; the environmental damage caused by the activities of the oil, chemical, and nuclear industries; and the role of tobacco companies in hiding the noxious health effects of cigarettes.

These activities have been met, over time, with protests, investigations, boycotts, and legislative and regulatory reforms, many of which have led to a safer world and more responsible corporate behavior. A whole sector of socially responsible investment funds has risen up, including funds that exclude investments in fossil fuel generating firms, tobacco and gun manufacturers, and more.

A new report by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) highlights the activities and moral responsibility of another crucial sector — the nuclear weapons industry and the financial institutions that support it. From ICAN’s perspective, identifying these firms and pressuring to get out of the nuclear business is just one of many avenues for promoting the global ban on nuclear weapons called for in the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which has been signed by over half of the world’s nations (99 in all) and formally ratified by 74 nations. ICAN received the Nobel Peace Prize for its role in promoting the treaty, which was also heavily supported by the hibakusha – survivors of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Proponents of nuclear deterrence and corporations involved in nuclear weapons production and finance argue that the possession of nuclear weapons by major powers is a positive thing, because, allegedly, it will dissuade nuclear-armed nations from attacking each other, and that therefore building ever more nuclear weapons makes the world a safer place. Among other things, this comforting view ignores the devastating health and environmental damage caused by the development, production, deployment, and maintenance of nuclear weapons, from excess cancer deaths caused by radiation effects on residents of New Mexico, Utah, and the Marshall Islands. In essence, the nuclear weapons business is causing unnecessary deaths and environmental degradation whether or not these deadly weapons are ever used again in wartime.

The possibility that nuclear weapons could be used again, by accident or design, cannot be ruled out. In fact, the risk of nuclear use is at one of its highest levels of the atomic era, according to a panel of experts assembled by the prestigious Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

Of particular concern is the possibility of an accidental nuclear war prompted by a false alarm of an incoming attack. For example, former secretary of defense William Perry has called intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) – long range missiles armed with nuclear warheads – “some of the most dangerous weapons we have” because the president would have only a matter of minutes to launch them on warning of an attack, increasing the risks of an accidental nuclear war prompted by a false alarm. Perry and his coauthor Tom Collina explore this risk in depth in their book The Button, and other experts like the late Daniel Ellsberg have warned of the prospects that the same deadly scenario could come to fruition.

Eliminating long-range nuclear-armed missiles from the U.S. arsenal would make the world a safer place, but it would also run up against the economic and political interests of the ICBM lobby, from the bureaucrats who oversees the ICBM program, to the theorists who argue that these missiles are essential pillars of nuclear deterrence, to the corporations and political leaders who benefit from their continued development and deployment.

A key player in the nuclear weapons lobby is the Senate ICBM Coalition, composed of senators from Utah, Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota. Their states host either major ICBM bases (Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota) or significant ICBM development activities (Utah). The coalition has been amazingly successful. It helped put a provision into law stating that the United States arsenal cannot not go below the current level of 400 deployed ICBMs and played a central role in ensuring billions in funding for a new ICBM, the Sentinel, despite major projected costs overruns and significant technical difficulties in its early years of development. The coalition has also thwarted efforts to study alternatives to a new ICBM, and even blocked a plan to destroy 50 empty missile silos left empty as a result of reductions mandated by the New START strategic arms reduction agreement, a U.S.-Russian accord which has since lapsed due to a failure of the parties to renew it when they had the chance last year. My colleague Ben Freeman and I document this history in our new book, The Trillion Dollar War Machine, as have organizations and publications like the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Federation of American Scientists, the Arms Control Association, the Council for a Livable World, Back from the Brink, Roots Action, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Which brings us back to the new ICAN report, “Don’t Bank on the Bomb 2026,” which was produced in partnership with the anti-nuclear group PAX. The report found that even as the world is reeling from a regionwide conflict in the Middle East, the ongoing war in Ukraine, a devastating civil war in Sudan, and ongoing tensions between India and Pakistan (neighbors and nuclear-armed states), over 300 financial institutions worldwide have increased their investments in nuclear weapons production. This is a 15 percent increase over the prior year, after years of decline in which some major financial institutions withdrew from financing nuclear weapons.

As ICAN’s director of programs and contributing author Susi Snyder has pointed out, “For the first time in years the number of investors trying to profit from the nuclear arms race is on the rise. This is a short-term and risky strategy that contributes to a dangerous escalation.” Snyder further noted that it is “impossible to profit from an arms race without feeding one.”

The report comes out as the world’s nations gather at UN Headquarters in New York to debate the future of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a treaty ratified over 50 years ago on the promise that nuclear-armed states would move to eliminate their arsenals while non-nuclear states would agree not to develop nuclear weapons of their own. Over time the NPT has had some success in heading off a future in which there might have been as many as two dozen nuclear-armed states, according to a prediction made by U.S. president John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s. But recent developments have called the legitimacy of the treaty and the reliability of its signatories into question, including the heavy investment in a new generation of nuclear weapons by the United States, Russia and China; the abandonment by Washington of an effective multilateral agreement that blocked Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon; and this year’s attacks on Iran by two nuclear-armed states, Israel and the United States, based in part on demonstrably false claims that Iran had, or soon would have, the capability to attack America or its allies with a nuclear weapon.

The ICAN report also identifies 25 nuclear arms producing companies worldwide, including Honeywell International, Boeing, General Dynamics, BAE Systems, and Lockheed Martin. The top investors in those companies were Vanguard, Black Rock, and the Capital Group. The top three lenders to the nuclear weapons industry as a whole were the major U.S. banks J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup. All of this means that consumers and citizens have plenty of pressure points to vote with their dollars against the continuing nuclear arms race.