2007 Intelligence Authorization Bill Advances in Senate
The 2007 intelligence authorization bill was approved without amendment on February 8 by the Senate Armed Services Committee with a recommendation that it be passed into law.
The Senate bill would notably require public disclosure of the annual intelligence budget total, an objective long sought by open government advocates and classification reformers. Although there is no credible national security rationale for withholding the amount of the intelligence budget, it remains formally classified.
The Committee issued a brief report on the pending intelligence bill.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held a closed hearing February 8 on Saudi Arabia and the reputed role of some Saudis in financing terrorist activities.
The hearing was held at the request of SSCI member Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) who described his perspective on the subject in a rather blunt statement on the Senate floor.
“It is time to bring to light the way in which Saudi oil money is fueling the fires of terrorism so people can actually see who is getting burned and what is necessary to protect the security and the well-being of Americans in a perilous world,” he said.
About 86% of Colorado’s water is used for agriculture, but only about 30-60% of that water actually reaches crops. Conveyance efficiency through canal modernization is a powerful drought resilience and water saving strategy with proven technical feasibility.
“One thing became increasingly clear: AI doesn’t simply introduce a new category of risk. It changes the speed, scale, complexity, and interaction of risks that already exist.”
In an ideal world, we would not have state or federal climate intervention research bans. We would have researchers and institutions that would not shy away from revealing the good, the bad, and the ugly of these technologies and doing so responsibly.
“What excites me is that it’s very tempting to be very discouraged, and say, ‘Oh, we’ve got these archaic institutions that are calcified and you could never change them.’ But I think we’re in the middle of a technological revolution that will upend lots of things, and does provide a window.”