For the first time in six years, the Government Accountability Office has been asked by a congressional intelligence committee to perform an intelligence oversight-related function.
On March 11, Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), an intelligence subcommittee chairwoman, called upon the GAO to review security clearance processes in the intelligence community and to examine the DNI’s pilot project on security clearance reform.
The new assignment potentially represents a breakthrough in the longstanding stalemate over GAO’s role in intelligence oversight. Opposition to GAO oversight in the intelligence community combined with resistance from the congressional committee leadership have effectively sidelined GAO since the intelligence committees submitted their last intelligence-related request to GAO in 2002.
Proponents of an increased intelligence oversight role for GAO (including FAS [pdf] and GAO itself [pdf]) have argued that not only does GAO possess relevant expertise, but that by sharing the oversight burden GAO can free the intelligence committees to focus on more specialized oversight functions.
The new GAO assignment was described in a March 12 news release from Rep. Eshoo.
It was also noted by me in a letter to the editor of the Washington Post on “Extending the GAO’s Reach,” March 31.
The potential role of the GAO in intelligence oversight was addressed in a February 29 hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee chaired by Senator Daniel Akaka.
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.