In the event of an attack against the United States involving weapons of mass destruction, National Guard units known as WMD civil support teams (CST) would be called upon to respond.
“The mission of the WMD CST is to support civil authorities at a domestic CBRNE [chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive] incident site by identifying CBRNE agents/substances, assessing current and projected consequences, advising on response measures, and assisting with requests for additional support.”
The operation of WMD civil support teams was described in a recent National Guard publication on “Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team Management,” January 12, 2006 (1.2 MB PDF).
Further detail is presented in “Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures,” U.S. Army Field Manual FM 3-11.22, June 2003 (233 pages, 6 MB PDF).
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.
Using the NIST as an example, the Radiation Physics Building (still without the funding to complete its renovation) is crucial to national security and the medical community. If it were to go down (or away), every medical device in the United States that uses radiation would be decertified within 6 months, creating a significant single point of failure that cannot be quickly mitigated.
The federal government can support more proactive, efficient, and cost-effective resiliency planning by certifying predictive models to validate and publicly indicate their quality.