Inklings | What’s this humanitarian leader doing on a US destroyer?

Share & more Why was CARE CEO Michelle Nunn on a warship? Inklings explores how aid works in the wilds of humanitarian hubs, on the front lines of emergency response, or in the dark corners of aid punditry. It’s also available as an email newsletter. Subscribe here. Today: The latest on WFP partner Palantir, aid worker kidnappings, and ray guns and Tomahawk missiles. On the radar | Humanitarian leaders have personal lives, too. If you’re Michelle Nunn, the head of CARE USA, sometimes that means etching your initials onto a US navy destroyer capable of launching Tomahawk cruise missiles. In April, Nunn dropped by a shipyard run by Huntington Ingalls Industries, a military shipbuilder, to tour the future USS Sam Nunn – a guided-missile destroyer named for her father, a former US senator. The Nunn family – including Sam and his wife Colleen – posed for photos touring the under-construction warship. “It is exciting and deeply humbling to see this powerful destroyer taking shape,” Sam was quoted as saying in an Ingalls press release, which did not identify CARE or Michelle’s role at the organisation. - Part of the crew: Michelle is the “ship sponsor” of her dad’s destroyer, which is not a sentence we anticipated writing this year. Ship sponsors may be more commonly known as the people that break champagne bottles on the bow of a new ship for good luck. In the US navy, they’re usually women and “technically considered a permanent member of the ship's crew”, according to the website of a “commissioning committee” for a ballistic missile submarine being built elsewhere. - Inspiration: Michelle and Sam Nunn previously had their initials welded onto the destroyer’s keel plate – the backbone of a ship. “I am so honoured to assume the role as this ship’s sponsor and I hope that my father’s values of determination, integrity, and service will inspire the sailors [of the ship],” Michelle was quoted as saying in 2024. - What is the USS Sam Nunn? The future USS Sam Nunn will be one of dozens of guided-missile destroyers (part of an “Arleigh Burke” class of warship) in the navy’s fleet. Weapons systems on similar destroyers are designed for anti-aircraft warfare as well as land strikes using long-range Tomahawk missiles. The vessels cost about $2.7 billion to build, according to congressional documents. UN-led humanitarian response plans have received about $12.5 billion in donor funding this year – which adds up to roughly five USS Sam Nunns. Aid groups say they’re desperately short on cash and will reach only a fraction of the 239 million people said to need humanitarian aid this year. - ‘Low cost per kill’: The future USS Sam Nunn will be equipped with a combat system made by Lockheed Martin, the weapons and aerospace firm. Lockheed Martin describes its Aegis system as “the shield (and the spear) of the fleet”. Aegis is equipped with vertical missile launchers capable of missile defence and land attacks. A possible add-on is a high-energy laser weapon called HELIOS, described as ”a transformational new weapon system” with “speed-of-light delivery” and “low cost per kill”. So that’s nice. - What does a high-energy weapon look like? We wondered the same thing. Here’s a pic taken from a January 2025 report from the evaluations office of the US defence department (now known as the “department of war”). There’s no date or caption printed with the photo, but it appears to depict a test of a high-energy weapon aboard the USS Preble, currently the only ship in the fleet (publicly) known to be outfitted with the weapon. The Preble, also an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, has reportedly used it to strike Iranian drones. - Iran strikes: The USS Sam Nunn is a few years away from completion. But the navy’s fleet of other Arleigh Burke-class destroyers have played a frontline role in the US-Israel war on Iran. Several destroyers are deployed in the Strait of Hormuz as part of the US-named Operation Epic Fury. The US military has posted clips of these destroyers enforcing blockades and launching missiles in attacks on Iran. - Minab school: The US fired so many Tomahawk missiles on Iran in a four-week period that the Pentagon worried they’d run out, the Washington Post reported. More than 100 children were killed in a suspected US missile attack that hit an elementary school in Minab, southern Iran, in February. The US at first denied responsibility, but a Sky News investigation found evidence that it was a Tomahawk that struck the school. A US Central Command video shows a warship firing missiles the same day the school was hit, Sky News said, noting that it is not evidence connecting a particular ship to the attack. - What CARE says: “Michelle attended the ceremony entirely in her personal capacity as a private citizen and daughter, honouring her father Senator Nunn's service in the US Coast Guard, as well as his decades of public service,” a CARE spokesperson wrote in an emailed reply. “She apprised the organisation of her private, voluntary role in support of her father.” The spokesperson did not want to be identified by name, which is a thing. The Nunn-sponsored warship is another example of how the humanitarian system struggles with its own political nature. The system tends to pluck its leaders from the political elite or the politically connected. That means taking on a leader’s politics, history, and national baggage along with their strengths, whether it’s a Beasley, a McCain, a Miliband, or, we suppose, a Nunn. Many humanitarians preach neutrality and independence as part of their guiding principles. But they also sit at the sharp end of a donor-driven system mostly funded by governments – some of whom contribute to or cause the crises humanitarians must respond to. Humanitarians struggle to name that duality, because doing so also means acknowledging your politics (and maybe calling out your funders). Data points | Everyone’s still talking about Palantir… except for humanitarians. Here’s the latest from the outside world on the World Food Programme’s military contractor partner: - US Immigration and Customs Enforcement shared sensitive medical data it wasn’t supposed to have with Palantir, NPR reported. - The Spanish government has quietly told state-backed firms not to sign new Palantir contracts due to national security concerns, El Confidencial reported. - ICYMI, Financial Times has a 30-minute doc on the data analytics firm. - And, is Palantir’s product actually unique? Computer Weekly digs into the question. Meanwhile, in case you were wondering, WFP has stopped responding to our questions about their relationship with Palantir, or the cyber-attack that may be the biggest breach of humanitarian beneficiary data on record (we’re told they’ve not been very forthcoming with partners or some donors as well). They haven’t replied to our queries since 3 June. We’re still wondering about the timeline of the data breach and the 17 days that passed before people in Gaza were notified, the status of any investigations and risk assessments, and the confusing number of people whose data was exposed. They also apparently gave Sofía Monsalve Suárez, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, a bit of a cold shoulder as well when faced with light questions on Palantir. - FAO: WFP’s Rome cousins, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), may be taking a page from the UN comms book. During the same event in which she quizzed WFP, Monsalve also asked whether agencies like FAO might be growing dependent on tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. We asked FAO for a comment on 9 July. The organisation has not replied to a follow-up query. End quote | “Armed actors who want to stop humanitarian assistance do not need to kill aid workers. They need to kidnap them.” This striking quote from Uchenna Hillprieston Okwara, a PhD candidate at the University of Central Florida and a former officer in the Nigerian Army, is from a recent article posted by the Humanitarian Practice Network. Formerly a military officer in counter-insurgency operations in northeastern Nigeria, Okwara writes on the difficult topic of kidnapped aid workers. Kidnappings of aid workers doubled last year, the Aid Worker Security Database reported. This includes Yemen, where Houthi authorities have kidnapped dozens of people including aid workers, and aid organisations don’t know how to respond. “Armed actors who understand how humanitarian organisations function know that killing one aid worker generates a statement of grief and a security review,” Okwara writes. “They know that kidnapping a team suspends operations across an entire region.” Have any tips, recommendations, or indecipherable acronyms to share with the Inklings newsletter? 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