Last year Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), the new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI), abandoned the Committee’s longstanding practice of holding a public hearing with intelligence agency heads on the global threat environment. But yesterday, the annual threat hearing was once again held in public.
Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM) noted last year’s lapse.
“It’s been two years since we’ve had one of these [hearings]. And I hope we don’t wait that long next time. I think it’s important that the American people have a chance to hear from these officials directly,” Sen. Heinrich said at the hearing yesterday. “Public debate, I believe, benefits tremendously from transparency.”
“The Senator is correct,” Chairman Burr replied. “We didn’t have an open threats hearing last year, we had a closed one.” But he noted that open hearings were held last year with agency heads from the NSA, NCTC and FBI. (And though he didn’t mention it, the Senate Armed Services Committee held its own public threat hearing last year, as well as yesterday, with intelligence community leaders, thereby casting an unflattering light on the Intelligence Committee’s closed door policy.)
Chairman Burr said that the Intelligence Committee would hold public hearings more frequently in the future.
“It is the intent of the chair to continue to allow every agency the opportunity, not just to be here for a worldwide threat hearing, but to come in and share with the American people what it is they do, why they do it, but more importantly why the American people should care about their success.”
“I think the Committee has attempted to try to increase the amount of open exposure with a degree of specificity that we haven’t had in the past,” Chairman Burr said.
At a time when universities are already facing intense pressure to re-envision their role in the S&T ecosystem, we encourage NSF to ensure that the ambitious research acceleration remains compatible with their expertise.
FAS CEO Daniel Correa recently spoke with Adam Marblestone and Sam Rodriques, former FAS fellows who developed the idea for FROs and advocated for their use in a 2020 policy memo.
In a year when management issues like human capital, IT modernization, and improper payments have received greater attention from the public, examining this PMA tells us a lot about where the Administration’s policy is going to be focused through its last three years.
Congress must enact a Digital Public Infrastructure Act, a recognition that the government’s most fundamental responsibility in the digital era is to provide a solid, trustworthy foundation upon which people, businesses, and communities can build.