At the request of the National Security Advisor, a public meeting has been scheduled for July 8 to solicit public comments and recommendations concerning proposed revisions to executive branch classification and declassification policies. The meeting was announced in a June 23 Federal Register notice.
The Public Interest Declassification Board, which is hosting the July 8 meeting, will also launch a new blog next week to solicit public recommendations online. The blog will sequentially consider four areas: declassification policy, creation of a National Declassification Center, classification policy, and technology challenges and opportunities. Discussion of each topic will continue for three days, before moving to the next topic.
Meanwhile, an experimental and somewhat erratic White House process for gathering public input on transparency and openness has entered its third phase, intended to draft “constructive proposals” for advancing open government.
Science funding agencies are biased against risk, making transformative research difficult to fund. Forecast-based approaches to grantmaking could improve funding outcomes for high-risk, high-reward research.
Establishing an NIH Office of Infection-Associated Chronic Illness Research can guard against the long-term effects of Covid and lead to novel breakthroughs across many less understood diseases.
A military depot in central Belarus has recently been upgraded with additional security perimeters and an access point that indicate it could be intended for housing Russian nuclear warheads for Belarus’ Russia-supplied Iskander missile launchers.
With a PhD in materials science, a postdoc position at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and a stint as a AAAS Fellow, Dr. Shawn Chen has had a range of roles in the research community.