To the shock and bewilderment of those who knew him, Christopher Bolkcom, a distinguished analyst at the Congressional Research Service, died suddenly May 1 at age 46.
Twenty years ago, Christopher was a research assistant working for John Pike here at FAS. He quickly went on to become a national expert on military aviation and other aspects of defense policy. When looking over a bibliography of studies prepared for the secretive Office of Net Assessment, I was impressed to see that Christopher had co-authored several papers for the influential Pentagon group more than fifteen years ago. More recently, as a CRS analyst, he wrote dozens of authoritative reports on military aircraft and all kinds of related topics. He was much in demand. As noted by the Project on Government Oversight, he testified at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee just last Thursday, the day before he died.
But Christopher’s testimony (pdf) and his publications on “Tactical Air Modernization” (pdf) and the like don’t begin to capture the depth and vitality of the man. He knew enough discord in his own life to make him thoughtful and forgiving towards the weaknesses of others. (Well, sometimes.) He had a mischievous sense of humor and he liked to live on the edge. He pursued the martial arts, he rode a motorcycle to work, and he listed me as a reference for his security clearance renewal.
Above all, Christopher was a loving father to his two young children, Jessica and Max. He was also a generous and devoted friend. His family has invited those who remember him to make a donation in his name to the Falls Church Presbyterian Church Youth Program, 225 E. Broad Street, Falls Church, Virginia 22046.
With targeted policy interventions, we can efficiently and effectively support the U.S. innovation economy through the translation of breakthrough scientific research from the lab to the market.
Crowd forecasting methods offer a systematic approach to quantifying the U.S. intelligence community’s uncertainty about the future and predicting the impact of interventions, allowing decision-makers to strategize effectively and allocate resources by outlining risks and tradeoffs in a legible format.
The energy transition underway in the United States continues to present a unique set of opportunities to put Americans back to work through the deployment of new technologies, infrastructure, energy efficiency, and expansion of the electricity system to meet our carbon goals.
The United States has the only proven and scalable tritium production supply chain, but it is largely reserved for nuclear weapons. Excess tritium production capacity should be leveraged to ensure the success of and U.S. leadership in fusion energy.