Declassification Declassified: PRC and the W88 Warhead
In 2006, the Department of Energy formally declassified the already widely publicized fact “That the People’s Republic of China obtained some Restricted Data information on the W88 [nuclear] warhead, and perhaps the complete W88 design.”
Then, in a remarkable display of bureaucratic acrobatics, DOE classified the memo that authorized the declassification of that information. The declassification memo was found to merit classification at the Secret/Restricted Data level.
Five years later, in 2011, the two-sentence memo was reviewed for declassification and DOE has now released it.
As often seems to be the case, declassification here lags behind disclosure rather than leading it. For a convenient summary of issues surrounding China and the W88, see China: Suspected Acquisition of U.S. Nuclear Weapon Secrets, Congressional Research Service, updated February 1, 2006.
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.”
Ask people what worries them most right now, and they’ll say the cost of living and their livelihoods, not climate change. But those concerns are not separate.
After a year-long delay, this April, EPA released the latest air toxics data, which only included raw air data downloads. This year, for the first time in nearly 25 years, the air toxics data did not include cancer risk estimates.