Phase out land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles instead of replacing them
Nuclear weapons
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
The choice between replacing and retiring land-based missiles belongs to Congress and the Pentagon. Documented contractor lobbying is a major force holding the replacement program in place. The top 11 ICBM contractors spent over $119 million on lobbying in 2019-2020. Northrop Grumman, holder of the $13.3 billion replacement contract, lobbied against an amendment requiring the Pentagon to study alternatives. Owners have begun contesting this: the School Sisters of Notre Dame asked Northrop Grumman shareholders in 2023 to require a report aligning the company's political activities with its human rights policy. The controlling obstacle is military doctrine rather than the missile builders' influence. Under a statutory review in 2024 the Pentagon's independent cost office studied the alternatives, including extending the current missiles and shifting the mission to submarines. It rejected them all and certified the new missile as essential to national security even at an 81 percent cost overrun. The basing-state senators defend Air Force bases whose jobs exist with or without contractor lobbying.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Common Ground of the American People: Nuclear Weapons, Program for Public Consultation / Voice of the People, survey February 2019
- Inside the ICBM Lobby: Special Interests Or the National Interest?, Arms Control Association, 2021-05
- Notice of Exempt Solicitation: Proposal 6, Northrop Grumman 2023 Annual Meeting (School Sisters of Notre Dame Cooperative Investment Fund), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (EDGAR), 2023-05
- Overbudget ICBM Program Survives Review, Arms Control Association, 2024-09
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Represents the religious shareholders filing at defense contractors and coordinated the 2026 investor letter asking five prime contractors to stop producing weapons prohibited under international law, including nuclear weapons.
1 campaign on record
Annually evaluate and publicly report on the alignment of the company's lobbying and political expenditures with its human rights policy, the filing citing the 13.3 billion dollar nuclear missile contract and the company's lobbying against a study of alternatives.
Result: 20 percent
IASJ Shareholder Proposals, Investor Advocates for Social Justice
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Common Ground of the American People's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.