WHAT DO WEAPONS GRADE PLUTONIUM, PRIVATE COMPANIES, AND THE DEAD/MISSING NUCLEAR SCIENTISTS HAVE IN COMMON?

I'll give you a clue...it's not good.

On Tuesday, May 26, 2026, while the political press was watching Paxton beat Cornyn in the Texas Senate primary, the Department of Energy quietly named five companies to receive up to 20 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium from dismantled American nuclear warheads. The next morning, Wednesday May 27, the fired Attorney General Pam Bondi was leaked to Axios as the newest appointee to the President’s tech advisory board, sitting next to the CEO of the company that just got the plutonium.

Twenty metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium is roughly 2,000 bombs worth of fissile material. This is the largest private transfer of weapons-grade material in American history and the largest reversal of US nonproliferation doctrine in fifty years.

The story itself caught my attention, but the clear attempt to bury it made me want to dig deeper. So, I did.

* * *

Part One: What Happened

Tuesday afternoon, May 26, 2026. The Department of Energy announced that under the Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program, it had selected five private companies to enter advanced negotiations to receive surplus weapons-grade plutonium.

The five companies are Oklo (NYSE: OKLO), Standard Nuclear, SHINE Technologies, Flibe Energy, and Exodys Energy. The material itself comes from dismantled American nuclear warheads, originally manufactured during the Cold War and previously committed to disposal.

The Math

• 20 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium total.

• Each metric ton is roughly enough material for 100 nuclear weapons.

• Total: approximately 2,000 bombs worth of fissile material.

• Source: dismantled US warheads, in custody at federal sites including Los Alamos National Laboratory, Pantex, and Savannah River.

The 50-Year Doctrine This Reverses

Since the 1970s, US nonproliferation doctrine has had one consistent line: civilian commercial plutonium reprocessing creates an unacceptable proliferation risk and therefore should not happen anywhere. The United States has used that doctrine to oppose Iran’s nuclear program for forty years. We have used it to constrain North Korea, to make Saudi Arabia accept restrictions, and to make the UAE sign a 2009 Section 123 Agreement that explicitly bans the UAE from domestic uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing.

That agreement was called the gold standard of nonproliferation.

On Tuesday, May 26, 2026, the United States did the thing we have spent fifty years telling every other country not to do. We are handing weapons-grade plutonium to private companies for commercial use.

The Legal Trigger

In May 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of Energy to identify federally owned plutonium and explore converting it into reactor fuel. That order is the legal basis for what happened this week. The order reversed a fifty-year US doctrine in a single signing.

Tuesday was the first concrete deliverable under that executive order. The five named companies are the first commercial recipients of weapons-grade plutonium in American history.

* * *

Part Two: Why Now

Three converging pressures put this decision on the desk this week I think.

Pressure One: AI Power Demand

A single hyperscale AI data center pulls 1 to 2 gigawatts of continuous power. Stargate alone, the AI infrastructure project announced January 21, 2025, is planning 20 gigawatts across its initial sites. The entire United States nuclear fleet is roughly 95 gigawatts. AI data centers are asking the country to add the equivalent of a quarter of the existing nuclear fleet, dedicated, on top of existing demand.

That demand cannot be met by the existing grid. It cannot be met by solar or wind, which do not provide around-the-clock baseload. It cannot be met by natural gas without breaking carbon commitments and triggering local siting fights. The remaining option, on paper, is nuclear.

Specifically: small modular reactors that can be sited next to data centers. Oklo makes small modular reactors. So does most of the other plutonium-recipient list.

Pressure Two: UAE Sovereign Wealth

MGX is Abu Dhabi’s tech investment arm. It is a joint vehicle of Mubadala (the main UAE sovereign wealth fund) and G42 (the UAE’s state-linked AI company). MGX targets $100 billion in assets under management.

MGX co-led OpenAI’s $122 billion valuation round. MGX co-led Anthropic’s $30 billion Series G. MGX invested in xAI’s $20 billion Series E alongside Qatar Investment Authority. MGX is a founding partner of the Stargate Project.

On May 22, 2025, Stargate UAE was announced. A 1-gigawatt compute cluster in Abu Dhabi. Power strategy: small modular nuclear reactors for baseload. The UAE needs the same nuclear technology the US is now authorizing for private commercial use.

Pressure Three: The Russia Walk-Away

In 2000, the United States and Russia signed the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement. Each side committed to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium with mutual verification.

Russia suspended implementation in 2016. In October 2025, Putin signed a federal law formally ending Russian participation in the PMDA. Russia kept its 34 tons with no international disposal commitment.

The verification regime collapsed. Seven months later, the United States is moving to commercialize its 34 tons.

Part Three: The Five Companies

Top notes on each. Board, ownership, leadership, red flags. Full receipts.

Company #1: Oklo, Inc.

Ticker: OKLO (NYSE)

Went public: May 10, 2024 via AltC Acquisition Corp SPAC merger

HQ: Santa Clara, CA

Cash on hand: $2.5 billion (Q1 2026)

Stock: Up 59% in last 30 days as of May 27, 2026

Lobbying Q1 2026: $250,000+ on Nuclear REFUEL Act, DOE Loan Programs, NRC policies

Customer pipeline: 14 GW of AI data center commitments (12 GW Switch + 500 MW Equinix + Meta 1.2 GW Ohio)

Leadership

• Jacob DeWitte. CEO, Chairman, Co-Founder. MIT PhD nuclear engineering. Sits on PCAST.

• Caroline Cochran. Co-Founder, COO. MIT-trained nuclear engineer.

• R. Craig Bealmear. CFO.

Board of Directors

• Daniel Poneman. Former Deputy Energy Secretary under Obama, 2009-2014. Former CEO of Centrus Energy (US uranium enrichment). Added March 2025, one month after Wright left for DOE.

• Lt. Gen. (Ret.) John Jansen. 35-year Marine Corps. Former Deputy Commandant for Programs and Resources (Marine Pentagon procurement chief). Currently CEO of Advanced Technology International, defense contractor consortium.

• Michael Klein. SPAC banker. Co-founded AltC Acquisition Corp with Sam Altman. Former senior Citigroup executive.

• Dr. Mark Peters. Joined April 10, 2026. CEO of MITRE Corporation. Former Director of Idaho National Laboratory (DOE lab). Former Chair of National Laboratory Directors’ Council.

• David Christian. Joined April 10, 2026. Former Chief Nuclear Officer of Dominion Energy. Chairman of National Nuclear Accrediting Board.

• Derek Kan. Joined April 10, 2026. Former Deputy Director of federal OMB under Trump 1. Vice Chairman US Postal Service Board.

• David Park. Joined April 10, 2026. President of Koch Strategic Platforms. Former senior exec at Georgia-Pacific (Koch-owned).

• Michael Thompson. Lead Independent Director.

Departed But Material

• Chris Wright. Sat on Oklo’s board until February 2025. Resigned to become Energy Secretary. Now runs the agency that signs Oklo’s plutonium contract. When Trump named him to DOE on November 18, 2024, OKLO stock jumped 15% in one day.

• Sam Altman. Chaired Oklo from 2015 through April 2025. Founded the AltC SPAC. Stepped down with explicit reason of opening up future deals between OpenAI and Oklo. UAE sovereign wealth co-led OpenAI’s $122B round.

Major Institutional Shareholders

BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street; Susquehanna International Group (Jeff Yass, largest GOP donor 2024 cycle, major ByteDance/TikTok shareholder); Citadel Advisors (Ken Griffin); MIRAE Asset Global ETFs (South Korean asset manager); Jane Street Group

Red Flags

1. Insider selling. CEO Jacob DeWitte and COO Caroline Cochran adopted a Rule 10b5-1 pre-scheduled trading plan on March 31, 2025, two weeks after Trump picked Chris Wright (then Oklo board member) for DOE. DeWitte has disclosed selling approximately $35.5 million in personal stock across January, March, and May 2026. Cochran has disclosed selling $25 million plus in the same window. The plan adoption date is the receipt. They scheduled the cash-out two weeks after the federal pipeline became visible.

2. Lobbying predicted the policy. Oklo registered $250,000+ in lobbying disclosures in Q1 2026 specifically targeting the Nuclear REFUEL Act and reprocessing authorization. They got the policy in Q2 2026. The lobbying disclosures literally predict the May decision.

3. DOE revolving door. Three of Oklo’s eleven directors are direct alumni of senior Department of Energy roles. The agency on the other side of the plutonium contract has three of its own former senior people on the receiving side.

4. Board stacking. Oklo added four directors on April 10, 2026, six weeks before the plutonium decision. The new class includes the CEO of MITRE, the chairman of the national nuclear accrediting body, a former federal budget director, and the head of the Koch family investment arm.

* * *

Company #2: Standard Nuclear

HQ: Oak Ridge, Tennessee (former K-25 nuclear site)

Founded: 2024

Built from: Assets of bankrupt USNC (Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation) acquired for $28M at Section 363 auction

Series A: $140M announced January 26, 2026

Joint Venture Partner: Framatome (80.5% French state-owned)

Leadership

• Kurt Terrani. Co-Founder and CEO. Iranian-born American nuclear scientist. UC Berkeley PhD. Senior Staff Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 2010. Former VP at USNC before its bankruptcy.

• Tommy Hendrix. Chairman. Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Decisive Point (defense VC). Former Army Green Beret with multiple combat deployments. Started career at Blackstone.

Lead Investors (Series A)

Decisive Point (lead, defense-focused VC, Beacon NY); Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) - Marc Andreessen sits on PCAST; Chevron Technology Ventures; StepStone Group, XTX Ventures, Welara, Fundomo, Washington Harbour Partners, Crucible Capital

Joint Venture

Standard Nuclear and Framatome announced a US-based TRISO fuel joint venture in September 2025. Framatome is owned 80.5% by EDF (French state, fully nationalized September 2022) and 19.5% by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (Japan).

Red Flags

1. Built on a CIA officer’s bankruptcy. USNC filed Chapter 11 on October 29, 2024 with $72.7 million in debt and only $7.1 million in revenue. USNC was predominantly financed by Richard Hollis Helms, a former CIA officer who specialized in covert international work and put $100M+ into the company before his death in 2024. The bankruptcy filing cited the loss of its founding investor.

2. French state JV has Russian state ties. Framatome has a long-term technology sharing partnership with Rosatom (the Russian state nuclear corporation), renewed 2021, not formally cancelled after Ukraine.

3. PCAST conflict of interest. Marc Andreessen sits on the federal advisory board shaping plutonium policy. His firm a16z has equity in Standard Nuclear’s Series A. Direct financial benefit, sitting on the advisory body.

4. Two years old. Standard Nuclear was incorporated in 2024. The company now gets weapons-grade plutonium.

* * *

Company #3: SHINE Technologies

HQ: Janesville, Wisconsin

Founded: 2010 (as SHINE Medical Technologies)

Total funding: $1 billion+

Most recent round: $240M Series E led by NantWorks

Stated focus: Medical isotopes, fusion, nuclear fuel recycling

Leadership

• Greg Piefer. Founder and CEO. PhD nuclear engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

• Todd Asmuth. President and Chief Strategy Officer.

• Derek Kramer. Chief Operating Officer.

• Kyle Stacey. CFO (appointed 2026).

Board

• Patrick Soon-Shiong. South-African-born American billionaire. Owner of NantWorks. Owns the Los Angeles Times. Anchored SHINE’s $240M Series E with $150M through NantWorks. Joined the board.

• Ralph Alexander. Joined May 2026. Chairman and CEO of Gridfree.AI. Former President, CEO and Chairman of Talen Energy. Spent a decade as Managing Director at Riverstone Holdings and Carlyle. Senior exec at BP (including CEO of BP Gas, Power and Renewables).

• Jean Rogers. Founder and former CEO of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board.

• Dr. Tamanna Bembenek. Former GE Healthcare.

Investors

NantWorks (Soon-Shiong); Fidelity Management & Research; Sumitomo Corporation of Americas (Japanese conglomerate); Pelican Energy Partners; Deerfield Management; Oaktree Capital Management; Koch Industries (early backer, pre-2024)

Red Flags

1. FDA warning letter to Soon-Shiong, March 24, 2026. The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning letter to ImmunityBio (where Soon-Shiong is Executive Chairman and Chief Scientific and Medical Officer) over misleading cancer drug claims he personally made about ImmunityBio’s lead product Anktiva. The stock dropped 21% in a single trading day. Approximately $2 billion in market cap was erased.

2. Active securities class action. Hagens Berman filed a securities class action lawsuit against Soon-Shiong and ImmunityBio on behalf of investors who bought shares between January 19 and March 24, 2026. The case is live as of this writing.

3. Prior securities fraud history. 2017: sued for securities fraud after a STAT News investigation revealed Soon-Shiong used a $12 million philanthropic donation to a university to steer $10 million back to his own company NantHealth, along with patient data used to inflate company metrics. 2017: Cher (the singer) personally sued Soon-Shiong over Altor BioScience stock fraud.

4. LA Times silence. Soon-Shiong owns the Los Angeles Times. The LA Times has not published one editorial or investigation of the plutonium decision as of this filing.

5. Japanese keiretsu cross-investment. Sumitomo Corporation (SHINE investor) is part of the same Japanese industrial network as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (Framatome 19.5% owner). Coordinated Japanese capital is in two of the five plutonium recipients.

* * *

Company #4: Flibe Energy

HQ: Huntsville, Alabama

Founded: 2011

Technology: Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR)

Funding model: ARPA-E and DOE grants, minimal venture capital

Leadership

• Kirk Sorensen. Co-Founder. Former NASA Marshall Space Flight Center engineer. Former Chief Nuclear Technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering (defense contractor). The internet’s most public thorium advocate since 2006.

Federal Funding

• February 2026: shared $19M DOE Office of Nuclear Energy award with four other companies.

• ARPA-E grant history dating to mid-2010s.

Red Flags

1. Federal research grant dependent. Flibe has not raised significant venture capital and has no publicly disclosed commercial customer. The federal government is now authorizing a federally subsidized research operation to receive weapons-grade plutonium.

2. Limited oversight infrastructure. Smallest of the five recipients with the least public governance disclosure. No board of directors structure publicly documented at the same level as the other four companies.

* * *

Company #5: Exodys Energy

Founded: October 2022 (incorporated 2023)

Total disclosed funding: $2.47 million

Technology: UPCYCLE modular nuclear fuel recycling, MOX capability

Ownership note: Partially owned by the State of New York via New York Ventures

Leadership

• Carl Perez. CEO. Previously CEO of Elysium Industries (molten-salt reactor company) from October 2014 to October 2022. Native New Yorker. Babson College.

• Viola Aureggi. Co-Founder and CFO.

• Ed Pheil. CTO. Previously CTO and founder at Elysium Industries.

• Vice Admiral William Hilarides (US Navy, Ret.). Strategic leadership. 35-year Navy. Nearly 20 years on nuclear-powered submarines. Former Commander of NAVSEA, where he managed over $100 billion in Pentagon programs and approximately 70,000 personnel.

• JC Piroux. 40+ years experience in nuclear back-end fuel cycle.

Foreign Co-Founders

Exodys was co-founded in 2023 with recycling operators from La Hague in France. La Hague is the largest commercial nuclear reprocessing facility in the world, operated by Orano (French state-controlled). The Exodys team includes personnel who actually operated La Hague.

Red Flags

1. Same team that already failed once. Carl Perez and Ed Pheil ran Elysium Industries for eight years (October 2014 to October 2022) and never delivered a commercial reactor. They wound it down and reconstituted as Exodys the same month, pivoting from reactor design to fuel recycling.

2. Second French state nuclear connection. Two of five recipients (Standard Nuclear via Framatome, Exodys via La Hague) trace operational lineage to the French civilian nuclear industry. France is the only major Western country still operating commercial plutonium reprocessing.

3. $2.47 million total raised. The federal government just authorized a company with under $2.5 million in total disclosed funding to handle weapons-grade plutonium.Western country still operating commercial plutonium reprocessing.

$2.47M total raised. The federal government just authorized a company with $2.47 million in total funding to handle weapons-grade plutonium.

* * *

Part Four: The Fixer

On Wednesday, May 27, 2026, the day after the plutonium announcement, Axios reported that Pam Bondi had been appointed to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. No White House press conference. No press release. No formal announcement. The news came out as a leaked scoop on the afternoon after a three-day weekend during a Senate primary news storm.

That timing is the story that caught my eye. Good news gets a Rose Garden ceremony. News you want buried gets leaked on a Tuesday evening.

Her Background

Bondi has no science background. No engineering background. No AI background. No nuclear background. She is a former Florida Attorney General, a former US Attorney General, and a longtime political loyalist of the President.

Her official role on PCAST is to facilitate coordination between the government and the tech titans on the panel.

Her Foreign Lobbying Record

In July 2019, Pam Bondi registered as a foreign agent for the State of Qatar under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. She joined Ballard Partners and was listed as key personnel on the Qatar contract, which paid Ballard Partners $115,000 per month.

FARA filings list her as personally and substantially engaged in the work. Her described lobbying was on support regarding Qatari relations with US government officials, US business entities, and non-governmental audiences in matters pertaining to combating human trafficking. That is the polite framing for reputation rehabilitation work ahead of the 2022 World Cup.

She stopped briefly in November 2019 to work on Trump’s first impeachment defense from inside the White House Counsel’s office. She resumed Qatar work in 2020.

During her January 2025 Senate Judiciary confirmation hearings, Bondi did not list Qatar as a conflict of interest on her Senate Judiciary Questionnaire.

The Qatari Jet

On May 14, 2025, as US Attorney General, Bondi personally signed a Department of Justice memo approving Trump to accept a $400 million Boeing 747-8 from the Qatari royal family. The memo, prepared by her Justice Department and approved by the Office of Legal Counsel, structured the transfer to move through the Defense Department first and then to the Trump Library Foundation.

Legal scholars across the political spectrum said the transaction likely violates the Constitution’s emoluments clause. Senate Democrats wrote formal letters demanding Bondi recuse herself given her prior Qatar lobbying. She refused.

Why She Was Fired

In April 2026, six weeks ago, Bondi was fired as Attorney General. The reporting cited two specific refusals on her part: she would not release the Epstein files, and she would not aggressively prosecute the President’s political opponents.

Six weeks after being fired over “Epstein”, she was reinstalled on the federal advisory board that coordinates AI, nuclear, and tech policy. Sitting at the elbow of the President. Sitting next to the CEO who just received weapons-grade plutonium. Sitting next to the venture capitalist whose firm invested in another plutonium recipient. They did not appoint a scientist, they appointed a fixer.

* * *

Part Five: Follow The Money

The plutonium decision sits inside a financial web that runs through four countries and several billion dollars in cross-investments. Here is the map.

Qatar

The Qatar Investment Authority co-invested with UAE sovereign wealth in xAI’s $20 billion Series E in January 2026. Pam Bondi was a registered foreign agent for Qatar from July 2019 to 2020 at $115,000 per month. She approved the $400 million Qatari jet to Trump on May 14, 2025. She was placed on PCAST on May 27, 2026.

UAE

MGX, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund’s tech investment arm, is a founding partner of the Stargate Project alongside OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank. MGX co-led OpenAI’s funding round at a $122 billion valuation. MGX co-led Anthropic’s $30 billion Series G.

Stargate UAE was announced May 22, 2025: a 1-gigawatt AI compute cluster in Abu Dhabi powered by small modular reactor nuclear baseload. Oklo makes small modular reactors. Sam Altman built Oklo. OpenAI is a Stargate partner. UAE sovereign wealth is in OpenAI.

The 2009 US-UAE 123 Agreement explicitly banned the UAE from domestic uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing. The US is now doing what we told the UAE not to do. The UAE has begun openly raising the 123 Agreement question.

Israel

Larry Ellison sits on PCAST. He is one of three named Stargate partners through Oracle. He is also the largest individual American donor to the Israeli Defense Forces in recorded history.

• Over $26 million in confirmed public donations to Friends of the IDF since 2014.

• Single largest gift in FIDF history: $16.6 million in 2017.

• Oracle holds a 26-year contract to build the IT infrastructure for the IDF intelligence campus in the Negev, which houses Unit 8200 (Israeli signals intelligence and cyber warfare division).

• Oracle announced $10 billion in Israel-based AI build-out for 2025.

Marc Andreessen also sits on PCAST. His firm Andreessen Horowitz is invested in plutonium recipient Standard Nuclear. a16z has personally deployed over $115 million into the 2026 election cycle. Andreessen and Greg Brockman seeded the Leading the Future super PAC with $100 million combined, using openly AIPAC-modeled targeting tactics.

Iran

Two distinct Iran threads run through this story.

First, the biographical one. Kurt Terrani, Standard Nuclear’s CEO, is Iranian-born. His career is entirely American (UC Berkeley PhD, Oak Ridge National Laboratory). The vulnerability is rhetorical rather than material, but the political exposure is real.

Second, the doctrinal one. The United States has spent forty years telling Iran it cannot have civilian plutonium reprocessing because it is a proliferation gateway. On Tuesday, May 26, 2026, the US did exactly the thing we have told Iran not to do. Iran has been waiting for this argument since 1986.

Russia

Standard Nuclear’s joint venture partner Framatome has a long-term technology sharing partnership with Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear corporation. The Framatome-Rosatom agreement was renewed in 2021 and has not been formally cancelled, even after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

So the supply chain for one of the five US plutonium recipients runs through a French state-owned company that has an active technology agreement with Russian state nuclear. That is a supply chain detail that has not appeared in any plutonium decision press release.

The Domestic Crossovers

Inside the United States, the same names appear in multiple places.

• Koch Industries was an early SHINE investor. David Park (President of Koch Strategic Platforms) joined Oklo’s board April 10, 2026. Koch capital touches two of the five recipients.

• Sam Altman built OpenAI (UAE money), chaired Oklo (plutonium recipient), and founded the AltC SPAC (took Oklo public). One person at every node.

• Chris Wright sat on Oklo’s board until February 2025 and is now Energy Secretary. The Oklo stock jumped 15% the day he was named to DOE.

• Jeff Yass’s Susquehanna is a top institutional shareholder of Oklo. Yass is the single largest GOP donor of the 2024 cycle and a major TikTok/ByteDance shareholder.

• Three of Oklo’s eleven directors are former senior Department of Energy officials. Two of the five recipients (Standard Nuclear, SHINE) share a Japanese keiretsu investor network. Two of the five (Standard Nuclear, Exodys) trace operational lineage to French state nuclear.

* * *

Part Six: The Eleven Scientists

Eleven American scientists who worked on nuclear, fusion, classified defense, or NASA space science have died or gone missing in the last two and a half years. The FBI is investigating. One of them ran the MIT lab that built a company whose CEO is now on PCAST. Three months later, PCAST handed plutonium to companies in his orbit.

FBI Director Kash Patel publicly stated last month that the bureau will produce a final report on whether the cases are connected. The House Oversight Committee sent a formal letter requesting briefings on April 20, 2026. The investigation is being run jointly with the Department of Energy. Trump met on it personally.

I am not going to call this a conspiracy. I am going to do what I do what I do best and stack the names against the timeline.

The Cases

Deaths

• Nuno Loureiro, age 47. Director of MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center. Fatally shot at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts on December 15-16, 2025. The reported perpetrator (Cláudio Manuel Neves Valente) was also tied to a Brown University shooting two days earlier. Loureiro had just received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2025.

• Carl Grillmair, age 67. Caltech astrophysicist. Worked on NASA’s NEOWISE mission and the upcoming NEO Surveyor mission. Fatally shot on his front porch in Llano, California on February 16, 2026. Local suspect (Freddy Snyder) arrested. Snyder had a history of trespassing on Grillmair’s property dating to December 2025.

• Joshua LeBlanc. NASA-affiliated engineer. Body found in a burned vehicle hours after he was reported missing.

• Jason Thomas. Pharmaceutical researcher. Found dead March 2026.

• Frank Maiwald, age 61. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory specialist. Died in Los Angeles, 2024.

• Jude Height. Army biochemist. Struck by a vehicle and killed in 2022. Death officially ruled accidental but cited in current FBI review.

Missing

• William Neil McCasland, retired Air Force Major General. Oversaw classified research programs. Walked out of his Albuquerque, New Mexico home on February 27, 2026. Not seen since.

• Monica Jacinto Reza, age 60. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory aerospace engineer. Disappeared while hiking in a Los Angeles forest in June 2025.

• Melissa Casias, age 53. Los Alamos National Laboratory employee. Last seen walking on a highway near Talpa, New Mexico in June 2025.

• Anthony Chavez, age 78. Los Alamos National Laboratory retiree. Former construction supervisor at the site. Disappeared May 2025.

• Steven Garcia. Disappeared August 2025. Connection per FBI investigation review.

The Direct Connection

Here is the line that ties this investigation directly to the plutonium network.

• Nuno Loureiro was the Director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC), appointed May 2024.

• The PSFC has, in MIT’s own words, a close relationship with Commonwealth Fusion Systems. CFS was spun out of the PSFC.

• Bob Mumgaard is the CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. He helped organize SPARC, the precursor fusion device at PSFC, before leaving to lead CFS in 2018.

• Loureiro’s research directly informed the plasma behavior models CFS relies on.

• December 15-16, 2025: Loureiro shot dead at his home.

• March 25, 2026: White House announces Bob Mumgaard to PCAST.

• May 26, 2026: PCAST member companies receive 20 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium.

Three months separate the death of MIT’s fusion director from his commercial counterpart’s elevation to the federal advisory board shaping plutonium policy. The man at the academic center of the fusion research that informs Commonwealth Fusion was killed three months before his commercial counterpart was placed on the federal board.

The Other Patterns

Los Alamos

Two of the missing are Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel. Anthony Chavez (former construction supervisor) disappeared May 2025. Melissa Casias (current employee) disappeared June 2025. Los Alamos is where the federal plutonium stockpile is largely held. The May 2025 Trump executive order directing DOE to identify federal plutonium for private transfer is the same month and the month before the Los Alamos disappearances.

NASA / JPL

Four of the eleven are NASA-adjacent: Grillmair (Caltech NEOWISE), LeBlanc (NASA), Reza (NASA JPL), Maiwald (NASA JPL). Plutonium-238 is the isotope NASA uses for radioisotope thermoelectric generators that power deep-space missions. Patrick Soon-Shiong publicly stated his interest in SHINE Technologies is plutonium-238 for space mission batteries. The space scientists sit adjacent to the same commercial pipeline now being authorized.

Air Force Classified Research

Retired Air Force Major General William Neil McCasland oversaw classified research programs. He disappeared from his Albuquerque, New Mexico home on February 27, 2026. Oklo, the lead plutonium recipient, has an active Defense Logistics Agency Notice of Intent to Award for a 30-year power purchase agreement at Eielson Air Force Base. Oklo’s board includes Lt. Gen. (Ret.) John Jansen, a Marine Corps procurement chief.

What We Can And Cannot Say

I want to be careful here. People will read this and pattern-match to assassinations. I am not making that claim.

• CAN SAY: The FBI is investigating 11 cases. Kash Patel has promised a final report. The investigation is real.

• CAN SAY: Loureiro’s PSFC built the company that Mumgaard runs. Mumgaard is on PCAST. PCAST shaped the plutonium decision.

• CAN SAY: Two Los Alamos personnel disappeared during the same 2025 window the plutonium transfer program was being authorized.

• CANNOT SAY: That any one death or disappearance is connected to any specific person, program, or company.

• CANNOT SAY: That the perpetrators in the solved shooting cases were directed by anyone other than themselves.

• CANNOT SAY: That these cases are coordinated.

The official posture from authorities is that the cases have not been formally connected. The FBI investigation exists to determine whether they should be.

The FBI does not open a final-report investigation into 11 separate cases unless somebody believes the pattern is worth understanding.

* * *

Part Seven: The Timeline In One Page

In date order. Each line is a single sourced event.

July 2019 Pam Bondi registers as foreign agent for the State of Qatar at Ballard Partners under FARA. Contract paid $115,000 per month.

January 21, 2025 Stargate Project announced from the White House. OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, MGX. $500 billion target.

February 2025 Chris Wright confirmed as Energy Secretary. Leaves Oklo’s board.

March 2025 Oklo adds Daniel Poneman (former Deputy Energy Secretary) to its board.

March 31, 2025 Oklo CEO and COO adopt a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan to schedule personal stock sales.

April 2025 Sam Altman steps down as Oklo chairman. Cites desire to open up future deals between OpenAI and Oklo.

May 13-16, 2025 Trump visits Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE. Signs over $200 billion in deals.

May 14, 2025 Bondi’s DOJ approves Trump receiving $400 million Boeing 747 from the Qatari royal family.

May 22, 2025 Stargate UAE announced. 1 GW AI compute cluster in Abu Dhabi. Power: small modular nuclear.

May 2025 Trump signs executive order directing DOE to identify federal plutonium for private use.

May-June 2025 Two Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel disappear.

October 2025 Russia formally exits the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement.

December 15-16, 2025 Nuno Loureiro, Director of MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center, shot dead at his home in Brookline, MA.

January 5 to May 1, 2026 Oklo CEO and COO sell approximately $60 million in personal stock under the 10b5-1 plan.

January 26, 2026 Standard Nuclear announces $140M Series A. Lead investor Decisive Point. Andreessen Horowitz invests.

February 16, 2026 Caltech astrophysicist Carl Grillmair shot dead at his home in Llano, CA.

February 27, 2026 Retired Air Force Major General William Neil McCasland walks out of his home in Albuquerque, NM and disappears.

March 24, 2026 FDA warning letter to ImmunityBio over Patrick Soon-Shiong’s misleading cancer drug claims. $2 billion market cap loss in one day.

March 25, 2026 White House announces new PCAST membership: Sacks, Kratsios, Andreessen, Ellison, Catz, DeWitte, Mumgaard, Huang, Su, Zuckerberg, Brin, Dell, Ehrsam, Friedberg, Martinis.

April 2026 Pam Bondi fired as Attorney General over Epstein files and political prosecution refusals.

April 10, 2026 Oklo adds four new directors: Peters (MITRE), Christian (Dominion), Kan (ex-OMB), Park (Koch Strategic Platforms).

April 20, 2026 House Oversight Committee sends formal letter to FBI Director Kash Patel demanding briefings on missing scientists.

May 6, 2026 NRC approves Oklo Aurora reactor Principal Design Criteria. OKLO stock +13% in a day.

May 21, 2026 Trump postpones AI executive order after pushback from Musk, Zuckerberg, Sacks.

Tuesday, May 26, 2026 DOE selects Oklo, Standard Nuclear, SHINE, Flibe, Exodys for 20 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium. Same day Paxton beats Cornyn.

Wednesday, May 27, 2026 Bondi leaked to Axios as new PCAST appointee.

This is one timeline. They picked the day of a Senate primary so you would not see it as one timeline.

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Part Eight: The Network Map

The full network map shows the five companies, the federal advisory board, the connecting people, and the eleven scientists with all the lines drawn between them. Save it. Share it. Just please give me credit for it because this is my brain child :)

Conclusion

They told you it was about clean energy.

But what it’s really about is Qatar paying the fixer →UAE sovereign wealth backing the AI company that built the nuclear company →Israel’s largest American donor sitting on the approving board —> Russian state nuclear in the supply chain through France —> Iran getting the rhetorical gift of a generation —> The Koch family holding board seats in two of the five recipients —> Sam Altman building both the AI demand and the nuclear supply and the SPAC that financed it —> The Energy Secretary having sat on the lead recipient’s board until weeks before he took office —> The CEO and COO of that lead recipient cashing out $60 million in personal stock on a plan adopted two weeks after their former colleague joined the cabinet —> The FBI investigating eleven dead and missing scientists, including the MIT fusion director whose lab built a company whose CEO is now on the advisory board that approved the plutonium handoff.

And the fired Attorney General who refused to release the Epstein files getting installed as the coordinator the day after.

Sources

The Plutonium Decision

CNN: Trump admin handing weapons-grade plutonium to energy companies, May 26, 2026; Al Jazeera: US picks partners for Cold War plutonium; NOTUS: Trump accelerates plutonium transfer plans; Sen. Markey: Energy Secretary Wright Oklo conflict of interest; World Nuclear News: Oklo selected for US surplus plutonium programme

Oklo

Oklo board changes April 10, 2026; Oklo Poneman appointment March 2025; OKLO Form 4: DeWitte $9M January 5, 2026 sale; OKLO Form 4: Cochran 200K share sale; OKLO Form 4: DeWitte May 2026 $14M sale; OKLO institutional shareholders (Susquehanna/Yass, Citadel, BlackRock, Mirae); OKLO $250K Q1 2026 lobbying disclosure; Lt. Gen. (Ret.) John Jansen bio; CNBC: Liberty Energy stock jumps when Wright picked for DOE, Nov 18, 2024

Standard Nuclear / USNC

Standard Nuclear $140M Series A, January 26, 2026; Standard Nuclear / Framatome TRISO joint venture; USNC Chapter 11 filing, October 29, 2024; West Island Blog: Standard Nuclear / former CIA officer Helms; Core Memory: Kurt Terrani profile; Wikipedia: Framatome ownership; World Nuclear News: Framatome-Rosatom partnership

SHINE / Soon-Shiong

SHINE $240M Series E (NantWorks lead, Soon-Shiong joins board); Ralph Alexander joins SHINE board May 2026; Hagens Berman: ImmunityBio securities class action / FDA warning letter March 24, 2026; STAT News: NantHealth securities fraud lawsuit 2017; BioSpace: Cher sues Soon-Shiong over Altor BioScience

Flibe / Exodys

Flibe Energy company page; Exodys Energy About (La Hague France co-founders, Hilarides); DOE Office of Nuclear Energy $19M to five companies, February 2026

Bondi

OpenSecrets: Bondi FARA filings for Qatar; Newsweek: Pam Bondi’s Lobbying for Qatar Explained; CNN: DOJ approves Qatari 747 for Trump, May 14, 2025; Axios: Trump appoints Bondi to White House AI panel, May 27, 2026

Missing Scientists

CNN: Deaths and disappearances of scientists spark federal probe, April 21, 2026; Fortune: FBI looks into dead or missing nuclear and space defense scientists; House Oversight Committee letter to FBI Director Patel, April 20, 2026; Men’s Journal: Dead and Missing Scientists Reaches 11; MIT News: Nuno Loureiro dies at 47, December 16, 2025; MIT News: Loureiro named PSFC Director, May 2024; NextBigFuture: Loureiro and Commonwealth Fusion Systems; Caltech: Mourning Carl Grillmair