The locations Hoofddorp and Enschede were closed in 2014. During World War II, the organisation grew from having an insignificant role to a controlling role in a number of large institutes under the occupation of the Nazis. The Director was . As a rector of the University of Utrecht he fired the Jewish professors Ornstein, Roos and Wolff and the Jewish student assistants Fisher, Katz, Pais and Van der Hoeven. He was member of the board of the AKU, which was controlled by the Germans. In 2006 TNO-ITSEF, a subsidiary organisation of TNO, was criticized for resisting publication of its test reports regarding widely used voting computers in the Netherlands. In the same year a Swiss research group refuted a widely publicized TNO report claiming UMTS radiation is a health hazard. The organisation also received criticism after the evacuation of 200 residents of an Amsterdam housing estate over fears of its structural integrity when the construction had been technically approved by TNO only five months earlier. Also in 2006 TNO was criticized for their handling of an investigation into the collapse of a balcony in Maastricht in 2003 that killed two people. In 2018 TNO was criticized for their report about the fireworks disaster in Enschede on 13 May 2000, being accused of committing fraud to disguise the cause of the disaster, according to an investigation by Paul van Buitenen.