Secrecy News was pleased to receive the following books, though we have not yet had a chance to read them closely.
“The Reagan Files: The Untold Story of Reagan’s Top-Secret Efforts to Win the Cold War” edited by Jason Saltoun-Ebin is a rich collection of declassified letters, transcripts and National Security Council meeting minutes gleaned from the Reagan Library concerning U.S.-Soviet relations and the end of the Cold War,
“Torture, Terror, and Trade-Offs: Philosophy for the White House” by Jeremy Waldron investigates questions of law and security, public safety and individual rights.
“Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era: Nuclear Antiaircraft Arms and the Cold War” by Christopher J. Bright builds on declassified files to tell the story of the thousands of nuclear antiaircraft weapons which were deployed around U.S. cities during the Cold War.
January saw us watching whether the government would fund science. February has been about how that funding will be distributed, regulated, and contested.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.