Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service obtained by Secrecy News include the following (all pdf).
“China’s Space Program: Options for U.S.-China Cooperation,” December 14, 2007.
“U.S.-China Military Contacts: Issues for Congress,” updated December 12, 2007.
“Iran: U.S. Concerns and Policy Responses,” updated December 5, 2007.
“Iraq and Al Qaeda,” updated December 7, 2007.
“Venezuela: Political Conditions and U.S. Policy,” updated November 26, 2007.
“Entering the Executive Branch of Government: Potential Conflicts of Interest With Previous Employments and Affiliations,” updated December 11, 2007.
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.
We need a new agency that specializes in uncovering funding opportunities that were overlooked elsewhere. Judging from the history of scientific breakthroughs, the benefits could be quite substantial.
The cost of inaction is not merely economic; it is measured in preventable illness, deaths and diminished livelihoods.