The activities of Pakistan’s notorious Abdul Qadeer Khan in proliferating nuclear weapons technology are examined in detail in a recent Master’s Thesis, along with an analysis of their enabling conditions and some of their larger implications.
“The A. Q. Khan nuclear supplier network constitutes the most severe loss of control over nuclear technology ever,” wrote author Christopher O. Clary.
“For the first time in history all of the keys to a nuclear weapon–the supplier networks, the material, the enrichment technology, and the warhead designs–were outside of state oversight and control.”
“This thesis demonstrates that Khan’s nuclear enterprise evolved out of a portion of the Pakistani procurement network of the 1970s and 1980s. It presents new information on how the Pakistani state organized, managed, and oversaw its nuclear weapons laboratories.”
See “The A.Q. Khan Network: Causes and Implications” by Christopher O. Clary, Naval Postgraduate School, December 2005.
If this proposed rule were enacted it would have deleterious effects on government workers in general and federal researchers and scientists, specifically.
When we introduce “at-will” employment to government employees, we also introduce the potential for environments where people are more concerned about self-preservation than service to others.
There is no better time to re-invigorate America’s innovation edge by investing in R&D to create and capture “industries of the future,” re-shoring capital and expertise, and working closely with allies to expand our capabilities while safeguarding those technologies that are critical to our security.
Russia currently maintains nearly 5,460 nuclear warheads, with an estimated 1,718 deployed. This represents a slight decrease in total warheads from previous years but still positions Russia as the world’s largest nuclear power alongside the United States.