We’re back with key updates from D.C.! Start with the weather which was as lovely as I can remember in the last decade, even if the landscape was dotted with more flashing lights and armored trucks than usual. 

D.C. takes the cue from Congress and the city itself seems to recess and take its foot off the gas for those with government-related work. I hope everyone recharged sufficiently, because the break is over and there is much to do this fall – government funding, new and massive executive orders, and a whole lot of drama in between awaits us.  

Executive Order on Federal Grantmaking 

Political Appointees have the Power. The White House announced an Executive Order that would restructure the federal grantmaking process and affect how decisions are made regarding the distribution of billions of dollars in research grants. Now, all final grant award decisions across all agencies are to be made by political appointees, subject to their “independent judgment.” 

Learn what this could mean for you from McDermott Will & Schulte. 

Appropriations and an Uneasy Fiscal New Year’s Eve

Will we shut down? Congress will get right back to the arduous task of sorting out government funding for Fiscal Year 26 (FY26). We saw lots of progress on several of the 12 bills that constitute the government funding package. Even with a little dissent, Democrats and Republican appropriators alike are expressing a desire to pass the package by September 30 and avoid a dramatic shutdown fight. 

Spending Problems. There is a lot of time between now and then, however, and discord is brewing as significant concerns around how the Administration is using (and most importantly not using) funding that Congress has appropriated could have a major impact on whether a final bill is passed. 

OMB Releases Funds, Now they Must be Spent. OMB has apparently released its hold on much of the FY25 funding for NIH, NSF, and other research agencies it had blocked in recent months. It is of utmost urgency to ensure those funds are obligated before Sept 30, 2025 (otherwise the funds get returned to the Treasury). 

➡️ Those awaiting to receive grants can most effectively ensure this by reaching out to their congressional delegations to ask for assistance in securing release of the research funding.

Confirmations Deal. Majority Leader Thune (R-SD), Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and the White House have been negotiating over an agreement that would trade Democrats’ consent to speed up Trump’s appointee confirmations in exchange for the administration agreeing to unfreeze funding for certain agencies or other policy concessions. This could continue to have a part to play in any final deal. 

Tracker. Keep tabs on appropriations with the AAAS Tracker, including updates from the end of July. 

Higher Ed

Admissions Transparency. President Trump issued the latest presidential memorandum regarding his oversight of higher education, titled “Ensuring Transparency in Higher Education Admissions” (fact sheet). According to the memo, the Supreme Court has “definitively held that consideration of race in higher education admissions violates students rights” but a “persistent lack of available data” combined with “overt and hidden racial proxies” caused further “concerns about whether race is actually used in process.” Check out a breakdown. 

The U.S. Dept. of Justice released guidance for recipients of federal funding regarding unlawful discrimination. Explainer and more reading here. 

Research Security. The National Science Foundation announced a new SECURE Center with a newsletter that covers changes in federal research security policies and aggregates news articles. Sign up to track this ever-evolving space. 

Additionally, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it has fired 70 foreign contract researchers after a national security review intended to secure the U.S. food supply from adversaries including China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

Settlements. What does the Columbia University settlement mean for the rest of higher education? Will Creeley, legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said that, in addition to admission practices, this settlement and its “blatant disregard for federal law” will upend academia’s core commitment to fostering First Amendment rights.

What do we do? A plea from former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan – The Only Hope Is Total and Unrelenting Resistance

Science and Tech 

AI Action Plan. FAS’s brilliant AI team at the Federation of American Scientists unpack the AI Action Plan. Importantly, it notes that, “Despite the AI Action Plan’s ambitious proposals, it will remain aspirational without funding, proper staffing, and clear timelines.”

States’ Role. An interesting read from The Atlantic on university research and states. “It will take time for research universities to find a new long-term financial model that allows science and medicine to continue advancing—a model much less dependent on the federal government. But right now universities don’t have time.”

Manufacturing. Manufacturing is the third largest contributor to American GDP. What’s the status? SSTI takes a county-specific look.

USDA Reorganization

USDA out of DC. The US Department of Agriculture is getting an unprecedented makeover as Secretary Rollins aims to decentralize its operations across the country. That includes functions beyond agriculture such as important rural development offices and programs like wildfire management and more. 

Indirect Costs 

Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier and the Joint Association Group (JAG) have developed an impressive reimagining on Indirect Cost modeling, dubbed the Financial Accountability in Research (FAIR) Model. Find the details here, and familiarize yourself! For you visual learners, check out their webinar. 

According to JAG, the Financial Accountability in Research (FAIR) model is a new approach to increase transparency, accountability, and clarity in how federal research funding is spent. The goal of FAIR is to ensure continued American leadership globally in research and innovation while delivering maximum benefit to American taxpayers. FAIR was developed with extensive input and feedback from a broad array of public and private research institutions, academic medical centers, independent research institutes, hospitals, private foundations, and private companies

The complete upheaval around indirect costs policies from the Administration has many research institutions on red alert. The thoughtful, comprehensive response from JAG has been presented to the Administration and Congress, even seeing language included in the current appropriations bills. 

JAG is calling for support from the research community around the FAIR model – the future of the American research enterprise could be at risk without unity and vocal endorsement to the government. 

We Need to Talk about Impoundment 

Ok, I’ll bite, what is impoundment? 

Our friends at the Center for Budget Policy and Priorities and other smart budget teams, like at the Bipartisan Policy Center, are doing excellent work schooling us  on this urgent, developing issue. Please do go learn more because this is not going away and it is truly as big a deal as it sounds.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought is the name on the lips of many in DC this month as the end of the fiscal year approaches and his relentless plan to hack and disrupt the government funding process hits full tilt, and, as some argue, goes beyond the law. 

Deferrals, additional approvals, apportionment hold ups – these are all wonky budget actions that are being weaponized for the Executive Branch to effectively “impound” government funding approved by Congress. That’s illegal. 

Slow-rolling Spending – is it Impoundment?

GAO thinks so. On top of the significant issues with receiving their funding in the first place or even getting it clawed back by rescissions, many agencies are facing bureaucratic roadblocks to spending the funding they do have and risk ending the fiscal year (9/30) with unspent funds. 

“The administration appears to be preparing to run the clock out. To me, it’s clearly a violation of Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution. It’s fundamental to the way the government is supposed to operate.”-  G. William Hoagland of the Bipartisan Policy Center and former Republican aide to the Senate Budget Committee.

“It feels like temporary impoundment,” an Army Corps of Engineers employee said. 

What does the Administration have to say? 

Rachel Cauley, a spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget, said in a statement that, “impoundments remain an option at the president’s disposal.”

If all of this does indeed amount to illegal impoundment then do not expect that to deter the Administration. In response to GAO challenging this practice (and its done so dozens of times), Russel Vought argued that the Impoundment Control Act, the law at issue now, is unconstitutional.

Until Next Time! 

Is Gil Corner working for you? How can it be more useful? As we develop this new function in the newsletter, we want your thoughts! Email Gil directly at GRuiz@FAS.Org and let me know what you’d like to see more (or less) of, and what topics are interesting you the most. 

Imperative for a Renewed Economic Paradigm

So far, President Trump’s tariff policies have generated significant turbulence and appear to lack a coherent strategy. His original tariff schedule included punitive tariffs on friends and foes alike on the mistaken basis that trade deficits are necessarily the result of an unhealthy relationship. Although they have been gradually paused or reduced since April 2, the uneven rollout (and subsequent rollback) of tariffs continues to generate tremendous uncertainty for policymakers, consumers, and businesses alike. This process has weakened America’s geopolitical standing by encouraging other countries to seek alternative trade, financial, and defense arrangements. 

However, notwithstanding the uncoordinated approach to date, President Trump’s mistaken instinct for protectionism belies an underlying truth: that American manufacturing communities have not fared well in the last 25 years and that China’s dominance in manufacturing poses an ever-growing threat to national security. After China’s admission to the WTO in 2001, its share of global manufacturing grew from less than 10% to over 35% today. At the same time, America’s share of manufacturing shrank from almost 25% to less than 15%, with employment shrinking from more than 17 million at the turn of the century to under 13 million today. These trends also create a deep geopolitical vulnerability for America, as in the event of a conflict with China, we would be severely outmatched in our ability to build critical physical goods: for example, China produces over 80% of the world’s batteries, over 90% of consumer drones, and has a 200:1 shipbuilding capacity advantage over the U.S. While not all manufacturing is geopolitically valuable, the erosion in strategic industries, which went hand-in-hand with the loss of key manufacturing skills in recent decades, poses potential long-term challenges for America.

In addition to its growing manufacturing dominance, China is now competing with America’s preeminence in technology leadership, having leveraged many of the skills gained in science, engineering, and manufacturing for lower-value add industries to compete in higher-end sectors. DeepSeek demonstrated that China can natively generate high-quality artificial intelligence models, an area in which the U.S. took its lead for granted. Meanwhile, BYD rocketed past Tesla in EV sales and accounted for 22% of global sales in 2024 as compared to Tesla’s 10%. China has also been operating an extensive satellite-enabled secure quantum communications channel since 2016, preventing others from eavesdropping. 

China’s growing leadership in advanced research may give it a sustained edge beyond its initial gains: according to one recent analysis of frontier research publications across 64 critical technologies, global leadership has shifted dramatically to China, which now leads in 57 research domains. These are not recent developments: they have been part of a series of five year plans, the most well known of which is Made in China 2025, giving China an edge in many critical technologies that will continue to grow if not addressed by an equally determined American response.

via US Efforts to Contain Xi’s Push for Tech Supremacy Are Faltering in Bloomberg

An Integrated Innovation, Economic Foreign Policy, and Community Development Approach 

Despite China’s growing challenge and recent self-inflicted damage to America’s economic and geopolitical relationships, America still retains many ingrained advantages. The U.S. still has the largest economy, the deepest public and private capital pools for promising companies and technologies, and the world’s leading universities; it has the most advanced military, continues to count most of the world’s other leading armed forces as formal treaty allies, and remains the global reserve currency. Ordinary Americans have benefited greatly from these advantages in the form of access to cutting edge products and cheaper goods that increase their effective purchasing power and quality of life – notwithstanding Secretary Bessent’s statements to the contrary.

The U.S. would be wise to leverage its privileged position in high-end innovation and in global financial markets to build “industries of the future.” However, the next economic and geopolitical paradigm must be genuinely equitable, especially to domestic communities that have been previously neglected or harmed by globalization. For these communities, policies such as the now-defunct Trade Adjustment Assistance program were too slow and too reactive to help workers displaced by the “China Shock,” which is estimated to have caused up to 2.4 million direct and indirect job losses. 

Although jobs in trade-affected communities were eventually “replaced,” the jobs that came after were disproportionately lower-earning roles, accrued largely to individuals who had college degrees, and were taken by new labor force entrants rather than providing new opportunities for those who had originally been displaced. Moreover, as a result of ineffective policy responses, this replacement took over a decade and has contributed to heinous effects: look no further than the rate at which “deaths of despair” for white individuals without a college degree skyrocketed after 2000.

via NBER Working Paper: Places versus People: the Ins and Outs of Labor Market Adjustment to Globalization 

via Working class white Americans are now dying in middle age at faster rates than minority groups in Brookings

Nonetheless, surrendering America’s hard-won advantages in technology and international commerce, especially in the face of a growing challenge from China, would be an existential error. Rather, our goal is to address the shortcomings of previous policy approaches to the negative externalities caused by globalization. Previous approaches have focused on maximizing growth and redistributing the gains, but in practice, America failed to do either by underinvesting in the foundational policies that enable both. Thus, we are proposing a two-pronged approach that focuses on spurring cutting-edge technologies, growing novel industries, and enhancing production capabilities while investing in communities in a way that provides family-supporting, upwardly mobile jobs as well as critical childcare, education, housing, and healthcare services. By investing in broad-based prosperity and productivity, we can build a more equitable and dynamic economy.

Our agenda is intentionally broad (and correspondingly ambitious) rather than narrow in focus on manufacturing communities, even though current discourse is focused on trade. This is not simply a “political bargain” that provides greater welfare or lip-service concessions to hollowed-out communities in exchange for a return to the prior geoeconomic paradigm. Rather, we genuinely believe that economic dynamism which is led by an empowered middle-class worker, whether they work in manufacturing or in a service industry, is essential to America’s future prosperity and national security – one in which economic outcomes are not determined by parental income and one where black-white disparities are closed in far less than the current pace of 150+ years.

via Peter Levine via Brookings

via Mapping the road to prosperity and parity for Black and Latino residents across America from McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility

Thus, the ideas and agenda presented here are neither traditionally “liberal” nor “conservative,” “Democrat” nor “Republican.” Instead, we draw upon the intellectual traditions of both segments of the political spectrum. We agree with Ezra Klein’s and Derek Thompson’s vision in Abundance for a technology-enabled future in which America remembers how to build; at the same time, we take seriously Oren Cass’s view in The Once and Future Worker that the dignity of work is paramount and that public policy should empower the middle-class worker. What we offer in the sections below is our vision for a renewed America that crosses traditional policy boundaries to create an economic and political paradigm that works for all.

Policy Recommendations 

Investing in American Innovation

Given recent trends, it is clear that 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. These investments will enable America to grow its economic potential, providing fertile ground for future shared prosperity. We emphasize five key components to renewing America’s technological edge and manufacturing base:

Invest in R&D. Increase federally funded R&D, which has declined from 1.8% of GDP in the 1960s to 0.6% of GDP today. Of the $200 billion federal R&D budget, just $16 billion is allocated to non-healthcare basic science, an area in which the government is better suited to fund than the private sector due to positive spillover effects from public funding. A good start is fully funding the CHIPS and Science Act, which authorized over $200 billion over 10 years for competitiveness-enhancing R&D investments that Congress has yet to appropriate. Funding these efforts will be critical to developing and winning the race for future-defining technologies, such as next-gen battery chemistries, quantum computing, and robotics, among others.

Capability-Building. Develop a coordinated mechanism for supporting translation and early commercialization of cutting-edge technologies. Otherwise, the U.S. will cede scale-up in “industries of the future” to competitors: for example, Exxon developed the lithium-ion battery, but lost commercialization to China due to the erosion of manufacturing skills in America that are belatedly being rebuilt. However, these investments are not intended to be a top-down approach that selects winners and losers: rather, America should set a coordinated list of priorities (leveraging roadmaps such as the DoD’s Critical Technology Areas), foster competition amongst many players, and then provide targeted, lightweight financial support to industry clusters and companies that bubble to the top.

Financial support could take the form of a federally-funded strategic investment fund (SIF) that partners with private sector actors by providing catalytic funding (e.g., first-loss loans). This fund would focus on bridging the financing gap in the “valley of death” as companies transition from prototype to first-of-a-kind / “nth-of-a-kind” commercial product. In contrast to previous attempts at industrial policy, such as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) or CHIPS Act, they should have minimal compliance burdens and focus on rapidly deploying capital to communities and organizations that have proven to possess a durable competitive advantage.

Encourage Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Provide tax incentives and matching funds (potentially from the SIF) for companies who build manufacturing plants in America. This will bring critical expertise that domestic manufacturers can adopt, especially in industries that require deep technical expertise that America would need to redevelop (e.g., shipbuilding). By striking investment deals with foreign partners, America can “learn from the best” and subsequently improve upon them domestically. In some cases, it may be more efficient to “share” production, with certain components being manufactured or assembled abroad, while America ramps up its own capabilities.

For example, in shipbuilding, the U.S. could focus on developing propulsion, sensor, and weapon systems, while allies such as South Korea and Japan, who together build almost as much tonnage as China, convert some shipyards to defense production and send technical experts to accelerate development of American shipyards. In exchange, they would receive select additional access to cutting-edge systems and financially benefit from investing in American shipbuilding facilities and supply chains.

Immigration. America has long been described as a “nation of immigrants.” Their role in innovation is impossible to deny: 46% of companies in the Fortune 500 were founded by immigrants and accounted for 24% of all founders; they are 19% of the overall STEM workforce but account for nearly 60% of doctorates in computer science, mathematics, and engineering. Rather than spurning them, the U.S. should attract more highly educated immigrants by removing barriers to working in STEM roles and offering accelerated paths to citizenship. At the same time, American policymakers should acknowledge the challenges caused by illegal immigration. One such solution is to pass legislation such as the Border Control Act of 2024, which had bipartisan support and increased border security, supplemented by a “points-based” immigration system such as Canada’s which emphasizes educational credentials and in-country work experience.

Create Targeted Fences. Employ tariffs and export controls to defend nascent, strategically important industries such as advanced chips, fusion energy, or quantum communications. However, rather than employing these indiscriminately, tariffs and export controls should be focused on ensuring that only America and its allies have access to cutting-edge technologies that shape the global economic and security landscape. They are not intended to keep foreign competition out wholesale; rather, they should ensure that burgeoning technology developers gain sufficient scale and traction by accelerating through the “learn curve.”

Building Strong Communities

Strong communities are the foundation of a strong workforce, without which new industries will not thrive beyond a small number of established tech hubs. However, strengthening American communities will require the country to address the core needs of a family-sustaining life. Childcare, education, housing, and healthcare are among the largest budget items for families and have been proven time and again to be critical to economic mobility. Nevertheless, they are precisely the areas in which costs have skyrocketed the most, as has been frequently chronicled by the American Enterprise Institute’s “Chart of the Century.” These essential services have been underinvested in for far too long, creating painful shortages for communities that need them most. As such, addressing these issues form the core pillars of our domestic reinvestment plan. Addressing them means grappling with the underlying drivers of their cost and scarcity. These include issues of state capacity, regulatory and licensing barriers, and low productivity growth in service-heavy care sectors. A new policy agenda that addresses the fundamental supply-side issues is needed to reshape the contours of this debate.

via Visual Capitalist

Expand Childcare. Inadequate childcare costs the U.S. economy $122 billion in lost wages and productivity as otherwise capable workers, especially women, are forced to reduce hours or leave the labor force. Access is further exacerbated by supply shortages: more than half the population lives in a “childcare desert,” where there are more than three times as many children as licensed slots. Addressing these shortages will alleviate the affordability issue, enabling workers to stay in the workforce and allow families to move up the income ladder.

Fund Early Education. Investments in early childhood education have been demonstrated to generate compelling ROI, with high-quality studies such as the Perry preschool study demonstrating up to $7 – $12 of social return for every $1 invested. While these gains are broadly applicable across the country, they would make an even greater difference in helping to rebuild manufacturing communities by making it easier to grow and sustain families. Given the return on investment and impact on social mobility, American policymakers should consider investing in universal pre-K.

Invest in Workforce Training and Community Colleges. The cost of a four-year college education now exceeds $38K per year, indicating a clear need for cheaper BA degrees but also credible alternatives. At the same time, community colleges can be reimagined and better funded to enable them to focus on high-paying jobs in sectors with critical labor shortages, many of which are in or adjacent to “industries of the future.” Some of these roles, such as IT specialists and skilled tradespeople, are essential to manufacturing. Others, such as nursing and allied healthcare roles, will help build and sustain strong communities.

Build Housing Stock. America has a shortage of 3.2 million homes. Simply put, the country needs to build more houses to address the cost of living and enable Americans to work and raise families. While housing policy is generally decided at lower levels of government, the federal government should provide grants and other incentives to states and municipalities to defray the cost of developing affordable housing; in exchange, state and local jurisdictions should relax zoning regulations to enable more multi-family and high-density single-family housing. 

Expand Healthcare Access. American healthcare is plagued with many problems, including uneven access and shortages in primary care. For example, the U.S. has 3.1 primary care physicians (PCPs) per 10,000 people, whereas Germany has 7.1 and France has 9.0. As such, the federal government should focus on expanding the number of healthcare practitioners (especially primary care physicians and nurses), building a physical presence for essential healthcare services in underserved regions, and incentivizing the development of digital care solutions that deliver affordable care.

Allocating Funds to Invest in Tomorrow’s Growth

Investment Requirements

While we view these policies as essential to America’s reinvigoration, they also represent enormous investments that must be paid for at a time when fiscal constraints are likely to tighten. To create a sense of the size of the financial requirements and trade-offs required, we lay out each of the key policy prescriptions above and use bipartisan proposals wherever possible, many of which have been scored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) or another reputable institution or agency. Where this is not possible, we created estimates based on key policy goals to be accomplished. Although trade deals and targeted tariffs are likely to have some budget impact, we did not evaluate them given multiple countervailing forces and political uncertainties (e.g., currency impacts).

Potential Pay-Fors

Given the budgetary requirements of these proposals, we looked for opportunities to prune the federal budget. The CBO laid out a set of budgetary options that collectively could save several trillion over the next decade. In laying out the potential pay-fors, we used two approaches that focused on streamlining mandatory spending and optimizing tax revenues in an economically efficient manner. Our first approach is to include budgetary options that eliminate unnecessary spending that are distortionary in nature or are unlikely to have a meaningful direct impact on the population that they are trying to serve (e.g., kickback payments to state health plans). Our second approach is to include budgetary options in which the burden would fall upon higher-earning populations (e.g., raising the cap on payroll and Social Security taxes). 

As the table below shows, there is a menu of options available to policymakers that raise funding well in excess of the required investment amounts above, allowing them to pick and choose which are most economically efficient and politically viable. In addition, they can modify many of these options to reduce the size or magnitude of the effect of the policy (e.g., adjust the point at which Social Security benefits for “high earners” is tapered or raise capital gains by 1% instead of 2%). While some of these proposals are potentially controversial, there is a clear and pressing need to reexamine America’s foundational policy assumptions without expanding the deficit, which is already more than 6% of GDP.

Conclusion

America is in need of a new economic paradigm that renews and refreshes rather than dismantles its hard-won geopolitical and technological advantages. Trump’s tariffs, should they be fully enacted, would be a self-defeating act that would damage America’s economy while leaving it more vulnerable, not less, to rivals and adversaries. However, we also recognize that the previous free trade paradigm was not truly equitable and did not do enough to support manufacturing communities and their core strengths. We believe that our two-pronged approach of investing in American innovation alongside our allies along with critical community investments in childcare, higher education, housing, and healthcare bridges the gap and provides a framework for re-orienting the economy towards a more prosperous, fair, and secure future.

Fellows Brown, Janani-Flores, Krishnaswami, Ross and Vinton will work on projects spanning government modernization, clean energy, workforce development, and economic resiliency

Washington, D.C. – March 17, 2025 – Today our first cohort of Senior Fellows join the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a non-partisan, nonprofit science think tank dedicated to developing evidence-based policies to address national challenges. These senior-level scientists and technologists represent a diverse group of thinkers and doers with deep experience across multiple fields who have committed to developing policy solutions to specific problems. The fellows were selected through a competitive process of project proposals, and will work in their area of expertise independently and collaboratively with FAS staff for six months.

“We are leaning into the reality of the present moment and bringing exceptional talent to join forces with our staff and the wider science and policy community to develop new policy ideas that solve specific and difficult societal challenges,” says Daniel Correa, CEO of the Federation of American Scientists.

Senior Fellows – 2025 Cohort

The inaugural cohort of senior fellows and their primary areas of focus are:

Quincy K. Brown served as Director of Space STEM and Workforce Policy on the National Space Council in the White House Office of the Vice President. She will design a participatory, strategic foresight process to identify solutions to the most pressing challenges we face in the evolving science and technology ecosystem. She will leverage data-driven insights, strategic partnerships, and evidence-based research to shape national policy, scale innovative initiatives, and cultivate cross-sector collaborations.

Maryam Janani-Flores served as the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Economic Development Administration at the Department of Commerce, where she oversaw policy, strategy, and operations for a $5 billion grant portfolio. She will focus on broad-based participation in innovation ecosystems by placing recently departed federal scientists, engineers, and technologists in innovation hubs nationwide to build inclusive, durable innovation ecosystems.

Arjun Krishnaswami served in the Biden-Harris Administration as the Senior Policy Advisor for Clean Energy Infrastructure in the White House. He will take lessons learned at the federal level to elicit adoption of clean technology at the state level, modernizing our nation’s energy grid so that communities across the country can benefit from the greater resiliency, lower costs, and cleaner air that follow from clean energy upgrades.

Denice Ross, former U.S. Chief Data Scientist and Deputy U.S. CTO, will prototype a Federal Data Use Case Repository for documenting and sharing how people across the nation use priority federal datasets from many agencies. Her project is a front-line effort to protect the continued flow of federal data.

Merici Vinton served as a Senior Advisor to IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel and prior to that was an original architect of the Direct File service. She will focus on technology innovation to deliver public services in a post “digital services” era, making institutions more relevant and responsive.

“This is a time where we need solutions, and these senior fellows bring with them the expertise,  motivation and a vision for how to use policy as a tool to affect meaningful, positive change,” says Dr. Jedidah Isler, Chief Science Officer at FAS. 

She continues: “These senior fellows have years of hands-on experience to draw upon to imagine, plan, and develop ambitious science and technology policy. We look forward to a bidirectional flow of expertise between senior fellows and our staff to deliver actionable policy ideas that will serve the public using the technical tools of today and emerging technology of tomorrow. They give me hope that we can co-create a future that provides safety, access and prosperity for all.”

Role of Senior Fellows at FAS 

Senior fellows will work independently to develop and refine their policy plans over the next six months. All of the proposals are ambitious; to reach their desired outcomes, fellows will collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders in the science and policy communities, seeking to understand and implement feedback from evidence-based datasets, specialized experts, people with lived experience, and ultimately, from th​e people whom their policy could impact.

During the course of this policy development senior fellows will have access to FAS resources and full-time staff to ensure these ideas can be realized. 

Senior fellows will be an extension of the wide range of​​ scientific and technical expertise housed within FAS – ranging from nuclear weapons to climate science to emerging technologies – one of the country’s oldest science policy think tanks. 

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About FAS

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) works to advance progress on a broad suite of contemporary issues where science, technology, and innovation policy can deliver transformative impact, and seeks to ensure that scientific and technical expertise have a seat at the policymaking table. Established in 1945 by scientists in response to the atomic bomb, FAS continues to bring scientific rigor and analysis to address national challenges. More information about FAS work at fas.org.

The Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) currently funds multiyear technology projects to help agencies improve their service delivery. However, many agencies abdicate responsibility for project outcomes to vendors, lacking the internal leadership and project development teams necessary to apply a product model approach focused on user needs, starting small, learning what works, and making adjustments as needed. 

To promote better outcomes, TMF could make three key changes to help agencies shift from simply purchasing static software to acquiring ongoing capabilities that can meet their long-term mission needs: (1) provide education and training to help agencies adopt the product model; (2) evaluate investments based on their use of effective product management and development practices; and (3) fund the staff necessary to deliver true modernization capacity. 

Challenge and Opportunity

Technology modernization is a continual process of addressing unmet needs, not a one-time effort with a defined start and end. Too often, when agencies attempt to modernize, they purchase “static” software, treating it like any other commodity, such as computers or cars. But software is fundamentally different. It must continuously evolve to keep up with changing policies, security demands, and customer needs. 

Presently, agencies tend to rely on available procurement, contracting, and project management staff to lead technology projects. However, it is not enough to focus on the art of getting things done (project management); it is also critically important to understand the art of deciding what to do (product management). A product manager is empowered to make real-time decisions on priorities and features, including deciding what not to do, to ensure the final product effectively meets user needs. Without this role, development teams typically march through a vast, undifferentiated, unprioritized list of requirements, which is how information technology (IT) projects result in unwieldy failures. 

By contrast, the product model fosters a continuous cycle of improvement, essential for effective technology modernization. It empowers a small initial team with the right skills to conduct discovery sprints, engage users from the outset and throughout the process, and continuously develop, improve, and deliver value. This approach is ultimately more cost effective, results in continuously updated and effective software, and better meets user needs.

However, transitioning to the product model is challenging. Agencies need more than just infrastructure and tools to support seamless deployment and continuous software updates – they also need the right people and training. A lean team of product managers, user researchers, and service designers who will shape the effort from the outset can have an enormous impact on reducing costs and improving the effectiveness of eventual vendor contracts. Program and agency leaders, who truly understand the policy and operational context, may also require training to serve effectively as “product owners.” In this role, they work closely with experienced product managers to craft and bring to life a compelling product vision. 

These internal capacity investments are not expensive relative to the cost of traditional IT projects in government, but they are currently hard to make. Placing greater emphasis on building internal product management capacity will enable the government to more effectively tackle the root causes that lead to legacy systems becoming problematic in the first place. By developing this capacity, agencies can avoid future costly and ineffective “modernization” efforts.

Plan of Action

The General Services Administration’s Technology Modernization Fund plays a crucial role in helping government agencies transition from outdated legacy systems to modern, secure, and efficient technologies, strengthening the government’s ability to serve the public. However, changes to TMF’s strategy, policy, and practice could incentivize the broader adoption of product model approaches and make its investments more impactful.

The TMF should shift from investments in high-cost, static technologies that will not evolve to meet future needs towards supporting the development of product model capabilities within agencies. This requires a combination of skilled personnel, technology, and user-centered approaches. Success should be measured not just by direct savings in technology but by broader efficiencies, such as improvements in operational effectiveness, reductions in administrative burdens, and enhanced service delivery to users.

While successful investments may result in lower costs, the primary goal should be to deliver greater value by helping agencies better fulfill their missions. Ultimately, these changes will strengthen agency resilience, enabling them to adapt, scale, and respond more effectively to new challenges and conditions.

Recommendation 1. The Technology Modernization Board, responsible for evaluating proposals, should: 

1. Assess future investments based on the applicant’s demonstrated competencies and capacities in product ownership and management, as well as their commitment to developing these capabilities. This includes assessing proposed staffing models to ensure the right teams are in place.
2. Expand assessment criteria for active and completed projects beyond cost savings, to include measurements of improved mission delivery, operational efficiencies, resilience, and adaptability. 

Recommendation 2. The TMF Program Management Office, responsible for stewarding investments from start to finish, should: 

1. Educate and train agencies applying for funds on how to adopt and sustain the product model. 
2. Work with the General Services Administration’s 18F to incorporate TMF project successes and lessons learned into a continuously updated product model playbook for government agencies that includes guidance on the key roles and responsibilities needed to successfully own and manage products in government.
3. Collaborate with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to ensure that agencies have efficient and expedited pathways for acquiring the necessary talent, utilizing appropriate assessments to identify and onboard skilled individuals. 

Recommendation 3. Congress should: 

1. Encourage agencies to set up their own working capital funds under the authorities outlined in the TMF legislation. 
2. Explore the barriers to product model funding in the current budgeting and appropriations processes for the federal government as a whole and develop proposals for fitting them to purpose. 
3. Direct OPM to reduce procedural barriers that hinder swift and effective hiring. 

Conclusion 

The TMF should leverage its mandate to shift agencies towards a capabilities-first mindset. Changing how the program educates, funds, and assesses agencies will build internal capacity and deliver continuous improvement. This approach will lead to better outcomes, both in the near and long terms, by empowering agencies to adapt and evolve their capabilities to meet future challenges effectively.

This action-ready policy memo is part of Day One 2025 — our effort to bring forward bold policy ideas, grounded in science and evidence, that can tackle the country’s biggest challenges and bring us closer to the prosperous, equitable and safe future that we all hope for whoever takes office in 2025 and beyond.

PLEASE NOTE (February 2025): Since publication several government websites have been taken offline. We apologize for any broken links to once accessible public data.

Any time a US federal agency proposes a major action that “has the potential to cause significant effects on the natural or human environment,” they must complete an Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS. An EIS typically addresses potential disruptions to water supplies, transportation, socioeconomics, geology, air quality, and other factors in great detail––meaning that one can usually learn a lot about the scale and scope of a federal program by examining its Environmental Impact Statement.

What does all this have to do with nuclear weapons, you ask?

Well, given that the Air Force’s current plan to modernize its intercontinental ballistic missile force involves upgrading hundreds of underground and aboveground facilities, it appears that these actions have been deemed sufficiently “disruptive” to trigger the production of an EIS.

To that end, the Air Force recently issued a Notice of Intent to begin the EIS process for its Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) program––the official name of the ICBM replacement program. Usually, this notice is coupled with the announcement of open public hearings, where locals can register questions or complaints with the scope of the program. These hearings can be influential; in the early 1980s, tremendous public opposition during the EIS hearings in Nevada and Utah ultimately contributed to the cancellation of the mobile MX missile concept. Unfortunately, in-person EIS hearings for the GBSD have been cancelled due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic; however, they’ve been replaced with something that might be even better.

The Air Force has substituted its in-person meetings for an uncharacteristically helpful and well-designed website––gbsdeis.com––where people can go to submit comments for EIS consideration (before November 13th!). But aside from the website being just a place for civic engagement and cute animal photos, it is also a wonderful repository for juicy––and sometimes new––details about the GBSD program itself.

The website includes detailed overviews of the GBSD-related work that will take place at the three deployment bases––F.E. Warren (located in Wyoming, but responsible for silos in Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska), Malmstrom (Montana), and Minot (North Dakota)––plus Hill Air Force Base in Utah (where maintenance and sustainment operations will take place), the Utah Test and Training Range (where missile storage, decommissioning, and disposal activities will take place), Camp Navajo in Arizona (where rocket boosters and motors will be stored), and Camp Guernsey in Wyoming (where additional training operations will take place).

Taking a closer look at these overviews offers some expanded details about where, when, and for how long GBSD-related construction will be taking place at each location.

For example, previous reporting seemed to indicate that all 450 Minuteman Launch Facilities (which contain the silos themselves) and “up to 45” Missile Alert Facilities (each of which consists of a buried and hardened Launch Control Center and associated above- or below-ground support buildings) would need to be upgraded to accommodate the GBSD. However, the GBSD EIS documents now seem to indicate that while all 450 Launch Facilities will be upgraded as expected, only eight of the 15 Missile Alert Facilities (MAF) per missile field would be “made like new,” while the remainder would be “dismantled and the real property would be disposed of.”

Currently, each Missile Alert Facility is responsible for a group of 10 Launch Facilities; however, the decision to only upgrade eight MAFs per wing––while dismantling the rest––could indicate that each MAF could be responsible for up to 18 or 19 separate Launch Facilities once GBSD becomes operational. If this is true, then this near-doubling of each MAF’s responsibilities could have implications for the future vulnerability of the ICBM force’s command and control systems.

The GBSD EIS website also offers a prospective construction timeline for these proposed upgrades. The website notes that it will take seven months to modernize each Launch Facility, and 12 months to modernize each Missile Alert Facility. Once construction begins, which could be as early as 2023, the Air Force has a very tight schedule in order to fully deploy the GBSD by 2036: they have to finish converting one Launch Facility per week for nine years. It is expected that construction and deployment will begin at F.E. Warren between 2023 and 2031, followed by Malmstrom between 2025 and 2033, and finally Minot between 2027 and 2036.

Although it is still unclear exactly what the new Missile Alert Facilities and Launch Facilities will look like, the EIS documents helpfully offer some glimpses of the GBSD-related construction that will take place at each of the three Air Force bases over the coming years.

In addition to the temporary workforce housing camps and construction staging areas that will be established for each missile wing, each base is expected to receive several new training, storage, and maintenance facilities. With a single exception––the construction of a new reentry system and reentry vehicle maintenance facility at Minot––all of the new facilities will be built outside of the existing Weapons Storage Areas, likely because these areas are expected to be replaced as well. As we reported in September, construction has already begun at F.E. Warren on a new underground Weapons Generation Facility to replace the existing Weapons Storage Area, and it is expected that similar upgrades are planned for the other ICBM bases.

Finally, the EIS documents also provide an overview of how and where Minuteman III disposal activities will take place. Upon removal from their silos, the Minutemen IIIs will be transported to their respective hosting bases––F.E. Warren, Malmstrom, or Minot––for temporary storage. They will then be transported to Hill Air Force Base, the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR), or Camp Najavo, in Arizona. It is expected that the majority of the rocket motors will be stored at either Hill AFB or UTTR until their eventual destruction at UTTR, while non-motor components will be demilitarized and disposed of at Hill AFB. To that end, five new storage igloos and 11 new storage igloos will be constructed at Hill AFB and UTTR, respectively. If any rocket motors are stored at Camp Navajo, they will utilize existing storage facilities.

After the completion of public scoping on November 13th (during which anyone can submit comments to the Air Force via Google Form), the next public milestone for the GBSD’s EIS process will occur in spring 2022, when the Air Force will solicit public comments for their Draft EIS. When that draft is released, we should learn even more about the GBSD program, and particularly about how it impacts––and is impacted by––the surrounding environment. These particular aspects of the program are growing in significance, as it is becoming increasingly clear that the US nuclear deterrent––and particularly the ICBM fleet deployed across the Midwest––is uniquely vulnerable to climate catastrophe. Given that the GBSD program is expected to cost nearly $264 billion through 2075, Congress should reconsider whether it is an appropriate use of public funds to recapitalize on elements of the US nuclear arsenal that could ultimately be rendered ineffective by climate change.

Additional background information:

• United States nuclear forces, 2020

• Construction of New Underground Nuclear Warhead Facility At Warren AFB

This publication was made possible by generous contributions from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the New Land Foundation, the Ploughshares Fund, and the Prospect Hill Foundation. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

Image sources: Air Force Global Strike Command. 2020. “Environmental Impact Statement for the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent Deployment and Minuteman III Decommissioning and Disposal: Public Scoping Materials.”

In March 2013, the Senate voted down an amendment offered by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) to cut $700,000 from their budget that was set-aside for the National Security Working Group (NSWG). What many did not realize at the time was that this relatively small and obscure proposed cut would have eliminated one of the last traces of the bipartisan Congressional approach to debating arms control.

The NSWG first began as the Arms Control Observer Group, which helped to build support for arms control in the Senate. In recent years, there have been calls from both Democrats and Republicans to revive the Observer Group, but very little analysis of the role it played. Its history illustrates the stark contrast in the Senate’s attitude and approach to arms control issues during the mid- to late 1980s compared with the divide that exists today between the two parties.

The Arms Control Observer Group

The Arms Control Observer Group was first formed in 1985. At the time, the United States was engaged in talks with the Soviet Union on the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. To generate support for ongoing negotiations, Majority Leader Senator Bob Dole (R-KS), and Minority Leader Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), with the endorsement of President Ronald Reagan, created the bipartisan Arms Control Observer Group. The Observer Group consisted of twelve senators, with four senators, two from each party, serving as co-chairs and created an official role for senators to join U.S. delegations as they negotiated arms control treaties. As observers, its members had two duties: to consult with and advise U.S. arms control negotiating teams, and “to monitor and report to the Senate on the progress and development of negotiations.”

During meetings with U.S. State Department negotiators, senators were able to present their views, ask questions, and even engage in candid and confidential exchanges of ideas and information. Senators were also allowed to meet with members of the Soviet delegations on an “informal” basis. The Observer Group believed that the “interplay of ideas” would assist negotiators and, if negotiations failed, the members would help their fellow senators explain the reasons why to the American public.

The Observer Group served a number of purposes. First, it was intended to supplement the activities of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Byrd argued that the process that existed up until that point—where the Foreign Relations Committee became experts on treaties and the full Senate only began to understand the issues after the negotiation—was not functioning properly. Its creators argued, “the full Senate has focused its attention in the past only sporadically on the vital aspects of arms control negotiations, usually developing a knowledge and understanding of the issues being negotiated after the fact…the result of this fitful process has been generally unsatisfactory in recent years.” During the previous decade, the Executive Branch had failed to garner enough Senate support for several arms control initiatives: the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty of 1976, the Threshold Test Ban Treaty of 1974, and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) of 1979, none of which were ratified by the United States. Although there had been previous attempts to involve senators in arms control negotiations, the Observer group provided “more regular and systematic involvement” from the full Senate long before a vote took place.

The formation of the Observer Group publicly demonstrated the important role of arms control in national security matters. The resolution that created the group states that senators have the “obligation to become as knowledgeable as possible concerning the salient issues, which are being addressed in the context of the negotiating process. Any accord with the Soviet Union to control or reduce our strategic weapons carries considerable weight for our nation.” According to Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA), a founding member of the Observer Group, “the goal [was] to have the Senate fulfill both halves of its constitutional responsibilities, not only the consent half—that’s what we’ve been looking to primarily in the past—but also the advice half.”

Additionally, the Observer Group helped develop institutional knowledge and expertise on arms control within the Senate. The Group’s founding members stated that they believed it was necessary to become “completely conversant” in issues related to treaty negotiations and that such knowledge was “critical” to the Senate’s understanding of the issues involved. To achieve that goal, they held regular behind closed-door briefings on negotiations for senators and their staff and some staffers were able to review related classified materials.  Observer Group members were conversant in issues related to previous arms control treaties, missile defense, the connection between strategic offense and defense, and treaty compliance.

Above all, the Observer Group was intended to help build bipartisan support for President Reagan’s arms control initiatives. The group was seen as a mediating body. When it was formed, Senators Dole and Byrd co-authored a resolution stating that the Observer Group was part of “an ongoing process to reestablish a bipartisan spirit in this body’s consideration of vital national security and foreign policy issues.” Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), who was one of the original members of the Observer Group, agreed by affirming, “The observer group is tremendously important to forming a consensus on which ratification might occur.” The Group’s 1985 report to Congress endorsed “the broad bipartisan support of the Senate for the Administration’s arms control efforts…determination to be as patient as necessary to achieve a sound agreement…the seriousness with which the Senate, including the Observer group intends to fulfill its constitutionally-mandated role in the treaty-making process.” This opinion was also shared by the Reagan administration. In a letter to Senators Dole and Byrd, Secretary of State George Shultz stated that he thought the Observer Group would help facilitate unity on arms control.

It is difficult to demonstrate the extent of its influence as the years the Observer Group was most active were also the years in which arms control was seen by both parties as a vital part of U.S. policy.  The success of these initiatives was clearly not solely due to the Observer Group, but it did play a role. Every one of the original Group’s members voted in favor of the INF Treaty in 1988, which passed 93-5.  Similarly, all of the senators within the Group voted in favor of ratifying the 1992 START Treaty, which passed 93-6.

The National Security Working Group

Towards the end of the 1990s, the Senate’s attitude towards arms control changed. Negotiations between the United States and Russia on a legally binding nuclear reduction treaty had stalled. The Senate had voted down the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Reflecting this changing point of view, in 1999, Senator Trent Lott (R-MS), wanted to further diminish the Senate’s focus and expertise on arms control issues. He proposed an amendment that expanded the Observer Group’s purview to include observing talks related to missile defense and export controls and renamed it the National Security Working Group. For nearly a decade during the George W. Bush administration, which pursued relatively little in terms of legally binding arms control agreements, the NSWG was relatively dormant.

This changed in 2009 under the Obama administration when the Executive Branch started briefing senators about the ongoing New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) negotiations. From July 6, 2009, when President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed an agreement to reduce American and Russian nuclear arsenals, to April 10, 2010, when they signed the negotiated treaty, the NSWG was revived in order to give senators a role in observing the negotiation process. During this ten-month period, the NSWG began meeting again. The meetings were open to members of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees and were well attended, with roughly 50 percent attendance from those who were invited. Senators who participated in the Working Group knew it was a serious matter and paid attention to it. As a result of their attendance, they left meetings better informed on issues related to arms control.

Throughout the course of Senate deliberation of New START, Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) served as the Republican Party’s key interlocutor with Democrats. Unlike his predecessors in the Observer Group, Senator Kyl did not see the Working Group as a vehicle for bipartisan cooperation and consensus building. Senator Kyl used his position as the chief negotiator to disrupt the Obama administration’s legislative agenda on arms control.

Senator Kyl used issues peripheral to the treaty, such as missile defense and modernization of the nuclear stockpile, to “slow roll” the legislative process and prevent the administration from pursuing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which he ardently opposed.¹ According to one account, Senator Kyl “was not using the Working Group. It was just a tool to stop the policy. There wasn’t a getting to yes option. It wasn’t there to get to yes. If the members of the group aren’t inclined to get to yes, then the mechanism won’t get them there.”  Further, he “came prepared to ask tough questions, not just to listen and probe. He was there to look for chinks in the arms and attack in front of his colleagues. He wanted his colleagues to see it.”

In an effort to prevent Senator Kyl from disrupting meetings, Senate staff made the NSWG open to all members of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees. They also made sure that senior Democratic leadership was present for all of the NSWG meetings. Either Senator John Kerry (D-MA) or Carl Levin (D-MI) served as Chair and were both prepared to answer all questions and concerns.

Despite this impediment, senators still appear to have found the Working Group useful. Senator Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the NSWG provided an opportunity to bring senators in at the beginning of the negotiation process, and “through the group” there were “many opportunities to learn of the progress and details of negotiations and to provide our advice and views to the administration throughout the process.” He praised the NSWG’s work, arguing that it was a “key” part of the treaty ratification process because it allowed senators to begin meeting with the administration “early in the process of negotiation” before New START was finalized. He said that during the New START process, “members of the National Security Working Group asked a great number of questions, received answers at a number of meetings, stayed abreast of the negotiation details, and provided advice to the administration.” Finally, he added that, through the NSWG, the administration had the opportunity to respond to senators’ questions and concerns, which helped to avoid problems during the Senate’s consideration of the treaty.

The Senate was less supportive of arms control this time around. Even with senators actively involved in the NSWG, only 13 Republicans ended up supporting the treaty. Of those 13, only four Republicans were members of the Working Group (Senators Lugar, Corker, Voinovich, and Cochran). Among those four, only Senator Lugar was a particularly strong advocate for the treaty.

At best, the Working Group had a mixed track record and certainly did not have the same kind of success as the Observer Group. Only two senators traveled to observe New START negotiations. There was no spirit of cooperation or strong bipartisan support for the treaty. The Working Group essentially became a courtroom where New START could be prosecuted.

The Future of the NSWG

Since the vote on New START, the NSWG has not been any more successful in helping to foster bipartisanship. At the beginning of the 113^th session of Congress, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) were appointed co-chairs.  Senator Rubio, like Senator Kyl, has attempted to impede the Obama Administration’s work on arms control.

While the cooperative atmosphere that surrounded the Arms Control Observer Group seems like an anachronism in today’s political climate, this is not meant to argue that senators within the Working Group need to agree on everything. There were major disagreements over nuclear policy during the Reagan administration and at times, heated discussions within the Observer Group. The difference was that the Observer Group was effective because the senators who were in it believed that arms control could advance U.S. national interests and wanted the group to succeed.

Today, the NSWG suffers from three broader trends within the United States that inhibit this attitude. The first is that the partisanship that exists in the Working Group is a reflection of the divisions in Congress. Given this dynamic, if there is any chance for the NSWG to serve as a valuable forum, individuals looking for the spotlight cannot be given the opportunity to hijack it. Secondly, since the end of the Cold War, detailed, negotiated arms control agreements are decreasingly seen as important to advancing U.S. national interests. There is diminishing prestige or interest in being a member of the NSWG or in supporting arms control. Thirdly, the Republican Party is far more skeptical about any legally binding international commitments than it once was.

These trends are unfortunate. The fact is that arms control still has a role to play in advancing U.S. interests and promoting international peace and stability. There are numerous issues that the United States and Russia will still need to address together. They continue to cooperate on issues related to Iran and reducing the risk of nuclear terrorism. They will likely still continue to communicate about issues related to U.S. missile defense deployment. Some think that current problems between the United States and Russia are evidence that this is not the case, but it was this kind of tension that led both countries to arms control in the first place. For this reason, diplomacy will remain an important policy tool for preventing catastrophic war between the two countries.

With diminishing nuclear policy expertise in a divided Senate, there is a need for a group of engaged, knowledgeable senators invested in arms control. For this reason, the NSWG will continue to have the opportunity to play a constructive role in informing the Senate on these issues and allowing senators into the diplomatic process.

The first members of the Group were Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Sam Nunn (D-Georgia), Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), Claiborne Pell (D-Rhode Island), Al Gore (D-Tennessee), Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), Pat Moynihan (D-New York), Don Nickles (R-Oklahoma), John Warner (R-Virginia), and Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyoming).

Foreword, Report of the Senate Arms Control Observer Group Delegation to the Opening of the Arms Control, Negotiations with the Soviet Union in Geneva, Switzerland, March 9-12, (III) 1985.

Origin and Summary of Activities, Report of the Senate Arms Control Observer Group Delegation to the Opening of the ArmsControl, Negotiations with the Soviet Union in Geneva, Switzerland, March 9-12, 1985.

Transcript of Press Conference of Observer Group in Geneva, March 12, 1985, Report of the Senate Arms Control Observer Group Delegation to the Opening of the Arms Control, Negotiations with the Soviet Union in Geneva, Switzerland, March 9-12, 1985.

Origin and Summary of Activities, Report of the Senate Arms Control Observer Group Delegation to the Opening of the Arms Control, Negotiations with the Soviet Union in Geneva, Switzerland, March 9-12, 1985.

Janne E. Nolan, “Preparing for the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review,” Arms Control Today, November 2000, http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2000_11/nolan

Congressional Staffer (April 4, 2013), personal interview.

Kyl, Jon, Memo to National Security Working Group Republican Members: Report on the NSWG CODEL to Observe the Geneva Negotiations, November 23, 2009, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/images/091123_20091121_-_Kyl_Memo_to_NSWG_-_NSWG_START_mission.pdf.

Senator Carl Levin (MI), “Authorizing Expenditures by Committees,” Congressional Record (March 5, 2013), p. S1103.

Kristine Bergstrom, “Rubio vs Gottemoeller: The New Partisan Politics of Senate Nuclear Confirmations,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March 7, 2014, http://carnegieendowment.org/2014/03/07/rose-gottemoeller-marco-rubio-and-new-partisan-politics-of-senate-nuclear-confirmations/h2mq.

Nickolas Roth is a research associate at the Project on Managing the Atom in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School. Nickolas Roth previously worked as a policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, where he wrote extensively about the industrial infrastructure responsible for maintaining the nuclear weapons stockpile. Mr. Roth has a B.A. in History from American University and a Masters of Public Policy from the University of Maryland, where he is currently a research fellow. Mr. Roth’s written work has appeared or been cited in dozens of media outlets around the world, including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Asahi Shimbun, Boston Globe, and Newsweek.  

“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it,” warned British statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke more than 200 years ago. Having recently delved into reading about the history of the first group of American atomic scientists and their efforts to deal with the nuclear arms race, I have realized that Burke was right. More so, I would underscore that the ideas of these intellectual path-breakers are still very much alive today, and that even when we are fully cognizant of this history we are bound to repeat it. By studying these scientists’ ideas, Robert Gilpin in his 1962 book, American Scientists and Nuclear Weapons Policy, identifies three schools of thought: (1) control, (2) finite containment, and (3) infinite containment.

The control school had its origins in the Franck Report, which had James Franck, an atomic scientist at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago serve as the lead drafter of the report which argued that “any international agreement on prevention of nuclear armaments must be backed by actual and efficient controls.” Seventy Manhattan Project scientists signed this report in June 1945, which was then sent to Secretary of War Henry Stimson. They suggested that instead of detonating atomic bombs on Japan, the United States might demonstrate the new weapon on “a barren island” and thus say to the world, “You see what sort of a weapon we had but did not use. We are ready to renounce its use in the future if other nations join us in this renunciation and agree to the establishment of an efficient control.” As we all know, the United States government did not take this advice during the Second World War.

But in 1946, the United States put forward in the Acheson-Lilienthal Report (in which J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, served as the lead drafter) ideas for international control of atomic energy. In the form of the Baruch Plan, this proposal before the fledging United Nations faced opposition from the Soviet Union, which wanted to arm itself with nuclear weapons before accepting a U.S. plan that could leave the United States wielding a monopoly on nuclear arms. However, the control school has been kept alive in part, through the founding in 1957 of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has the dual mission to promote peaceful nuclear power and safeguard these programs. Periodically, concepts are still put forward to create multilateral means to exert some control over uranium enrichment and reprocessing of plutonium, the methods to make fissile material for nuclear reactors or bombs. Many of the founders and leading scientists of FAS such as Philip Morrison and Linus Pauling belonged to the control school.

Starting in the late 1940s, disillusionment about the feasibility of international control was setting in among several atomic scientists active in FAS and advisory roles for the government. They began to see the necessity for making nuclear weapons to contain the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, there were those who believed that international controls should continue to be pursued in parallel with production of atomic bombs. Thus, a sharp division did not exist between the control and finite containment schools of thought. Oppenheimer exemplified this view in a speech on September 17, 1947, to the National War College where he extolled the “soundness” of the control proposals but lamented that “the very bases for international control between the United States and the Soviet Union were being eradicated by a revelation of their deep conflicts of interest, the deep and apparently mutual repugnance of their ways of life, and the apparent conviction on the part of the Soviet Union of the inevitably of conflict—and not in ideas alone, but in force.”

Reading this, I think of the dilemma the United States faces with Iran over efforts to control the Iranian nuclear program while confronting decades of mistrust. One big difference between Iran and the Soviet Union is that Iran, as a non-nuclear weapon state party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is legally obligated to not make or acquire nuclear explosives whereas the Soviet Union never had such legal restrictions. Thus, Iran has already agreed to accept controls through safeguards on its nuclear program. The question is what additional controls Iran will agree to accept in order to provide needed assurances that it does not have a nuclear weapons program and will not develop such in the future. In parallel, the United States is strengthening containment mostly via a military presence in the Persian Gulf region and providing weapons and defense systems to U.S. allies in the Middle East. Scientists play vital roles both in improving methods of control via monitoring, safeguarding, and verifying Iran’s nuclear activities and in designing new military weapon systems for containment through the threat of force.

How much military force is enough to contain or deter? The scientists who believed in finite containment were generally reluctant, and even some were opposed, to advocating for more and more powerful weapons. As Gilpin examines in his book, the first major schism among the scientists was during the internal government debate in 1949 and 1950 about whether to develop the hydrogen bomb. In particular, the finite containment scientists on the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission assessed that “an American decision not to construct the hydrogen bomb would again symbolize the sincerity of America’s desire to end the atomic arms race.”

In contrast, the infinite containment school that included Edward Teller (who was instrumental in designing the hydrogen bomb), and Ernest Lawrence (who was a scientific leader during the Manhattan Project and was based at the University of California, Berkeley), “argued that control over nuclear weapons would only be possible in a completely open world such as that envisioned in the Baruch Plan. Under the conditions of modern science, the arms race would therefore be unavoidable until the political differences underlying that arms race were settled” in the words of Gilpin. Many of the infinite containment scientists were the strongest advocates for declassifying nuclear secrets as long as there were firm assurances that nations had joined together to prevent the use of nuclear energy for military purposes or that “peace-loving nations had a sufficient arsenal of atomic weapons [to] destroy the will of aggressive nations to wage war.” In effect, they were arguing for world government or for a coalition of allied nations to enforce world peace.

Readers will be reminded of many instances in which history has repeated itself as mirrored by the control, finite containment, and infinite containment ways of thought arising from the atomic scientists’ movement of the 1940s and 1950s. Despite the disagreements among these “schools,” a common belief is that the scientists “knew that technical breakthroughs rarely come unless one is looking for them and that if the best minds of the country were brought in to concentrate on the problem, someone would find a solution … if there were one to be found,” according to Gilpin. Gilpin also astutely recommended that “wisdom flourishes best and error is avoided most effectively in an atmosphere of intellectual give and take where scientists of opposed political persuasions are pitted against one another.” Finally, he uncovered a most effective technique for “bring[ing] about the integration of the technical and policy aspects of policy” through “the contracted study project … wherein experts from both inside and outside of the government meet together over a period of months to fashion policy suggestions in a broad area of national concern.”

This, in effect, is the new operational model for much of FAS’s work. We are forming study groups and task forces that include diverse groups of technical and policy experts from both inside and outside the government. Stay tuned to reports from FAS as these groups tackle urgent and important science-based national security problems.

Charles D. Ferguson, Ph.D.

President, Federation of American Scientists