Nuclear agency’s top IT official says AI gains will lead to workforce cuts

The National Nuclear Security Administration is continuing to modernize its workflows with agility and efficiency improvements in mind, according to the agency’s chief information officer and associate administrator for information management. 

Adding AI tools is one way that the agency is making progress toward its goals, the NNSA tech leader said. 

“It makes our work better, makes us work faster,” James Wolff said Thursday during a fireside chat at the Energy, Infrastructure and Environment Summit. “The alternate view on that is likely we can reduce the number of people that are supporting the mission because we are more efficient — nobody wants to hear that, but I will absolutely do that.”

“We spend a lot of money in our organization,” he added. “We want to do it as efficiently as possible.”

AI-driven cuts are a persistent fear among employees. The workforce across federal agencies has already gone through massive change in the past year, with a net decrease of nearly 265,000 workers since January 2025.

NNSA’s workforce has run up against challenges in recent years, too. 

A Government Accountability Office report published last year reiterated retention and attraction challenges that had been previously identified. The watchdog recommended the agency assess how reforms would impact the current and future workforce. GAO confirmed in a Thursday email to FedScoop that the workforce recommendation is still open, and the watchdog is waiting on an update from NNSA on a revised timeline for implementation. 

While AI is heralded as a tool that can help fill skill gaps, there is a point where a staffing lag puts potential gains out of reach. 

The IRS, for example, is facing that reality as workforce reductions threaten the tax agency’s ability to reap AI’s benefits, GAO found as part of an audit conducted over the past two years. 

Even when staff gaps aren’t present, AI safety experts have urged caution when considering using AI to replace, rather than augment, human expertise. 

Some federal IT leaders believe it’s best to be upfront about the AI-driven risk to jobs.

“It would be irresponsible if we said, ‘Yeah, no one’s losing their jobs,’” Beckie Koonge, assistant CIO at the National Weather Service, said during a separate panel Thursday. “It’s coming, whether we like it or not, even if we try to resist it.” 

Several agencies have emphasized the importance of subject matter experts amid ongoing AI efforts. In the past couple of years, officials from the CIA and Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection have highlighted the technology’s limitations. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission echoed the sentiment earlier this month. 

“AI is not replacing expertise, it’s augmenting the NRC staff to improve mission outcomes,” NRC Chief Data Officer Basia Sall said during the agency’s AI symposium. 

Still, using AI in the place of a human is becoming more common. The AI rush has arrived at a time when federal IT leaders and other top government officials are under pressure to do more with less, adding to the technology’s allure. 

The NNSA is already using AI to synchronize data across tools, identify data clusters and generate analysis and to offload some of its emergency operations. When describing the latter use case, the Energy Department said it stood in place of a “large team that would be required for coding and development of emergency services facilitation.”

The full picture of how AI is impacting the size of the workforce across agencies is blurry. 

Greg Barbaccia, the federal CIO, told FedScoop in December that he had yet to see the “whole cloth displacement of an individual” due to AI or any other technology. 

Lawmakers have tried to add some clarity by introducing legislation that would require agencies to report layoffs linked to AI and begin conducting studies on the effects. A bipartisan group of senators also sent a letter to the Department of Labor earlier this month to request that the agency begin collecting and disseminating data about AI’s impact on the labor market.

“Reporting from across the private sector, academia, and media depict an uncertain picture of artificial intelligence’s current and potential impact on the workforce, with some use cases demonstrating a high probability of job disruption and others making the case for employment growth,” the group of 10 senators said. “It is imperative that the federal government serves as an agile, objective, and reliable source of information regarding the significant labor market changes that this technological advancement presents.”