The U.S. Army has arrested Spc. Bradley Manning of Potomac, Maryland for unauthorized disclosure of classified information. Among other things, he is suspected of having provided the video of a 2007 Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad that killed several civilians to the Wikileaks web site, which published it online in April of this year. The story was reported last night by Wired’s Threat Level blog. See “U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe” by Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter.
Spc. Manning is currently being held in pre-trial confinement in Kuwait, according to an Army statement obtained by NPR.
His arrest is the third known apprehension of a suspected leaker during the Obama Administration, after Shamai Leibowitz and Thomas A. Drake, and seems to reflect an increasingly aggressive response to unauthorized disclosures of classified information.
Yesterday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed revoking its 2009 “endangerment finding” that greenhouse gases pose a substantial threat to the public. The Federation of American Scientists stands in strong opposition.
Modernizing ClinicalTrials.gov will empower patients, oncologists, and others to better understand what trials are available, where they are available, and their up-to-date eligibility criteria, using standardized search categories to make them more easily discoverable.
The Federation of American Scientists supports H.R. 4420, the Cool Corridors Act of 2025, which would reauthorize the Healthy Streets program through 2030 and seeks to increase green and other shade infrastructure in high-heat areas.
The current lack of public trust in AI risks inhibiting innovation and adoption of AI systems, meaning new methods will not be discovered and new benefits won’t be felt. A failure to uphold high standards in the technology we deploy will also place our nation at a strategic disadvantage compared to our competitors.