The growing use of the state secrets privilege could threaten basic constitutional rights, according to one recent critical analysis.
If current trends in government reliance on the state secrets privilege are allowed to continue, “it is questionable whether any constitutional complaint against the government involving classified information will ever be allowed to be adjudicated,” concluded Carrie Newton Lyons in a review published last year.
Ms. Lyons, a former CIA operations officer, presented her assessment in “The State Secrets Privilege: Expanding Its Scope Through Government Misuse” (pdf), Lewis & Clark Law Review, Volume 11, No. 1, Spring 2007.
Potential reforms to the state secrets privilege will be explored by Louis Fisher of the Law Library of Congress and other experts in a January 24 panel discussion sponsored by the Constitution Project.
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.
Despite an emerging awareness of the importance of state and local government innovation capacity, there is a shortage of plausible strategies to build that capacity.
Innovations in artificial intelligence and robotics will allow us to accelerate the search process using foundation AI models for science research and automate much of the experimentation with robotic, self-driving labs.
FAS commends the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources for clearing a historic 75 pieces of legislation, including multiple crucial bills to confront the wildfire crisis.