“The United States is the world’s largest candy consumer,” reported an article yesterday in the online Christian Post (“Halloween Treats Can Be Tricky for Parents,” October 19). And that may well be true.
But the article went on to state that the U.S. spent “more than $8.8 billion on various sweets in 2009, according to the Information Security Oversight Office.” That is a dizzying misunderstanding.
The Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), led by director John P. Fitzpatrick, is the government agency responsible for oversight of the national security classification system. It does not gather data on candy consumption. (As far as we know.) The $8.8 billion figure — which must be far more than Americans actually spend on candy [not so; see correction below] — was presented in ISOO’s 2009 report on security classification costs as the total cost within government (excluding industry) for protecting classified information.
In 2010, the annual classification cost figure reported by ISOO reached $10.17 billion.
Update / Correction: It appears that Americans spend even more on sweets than on secrecy, including $13 billion per year on chocolate alone, according to the California Academy of Sciences (h/t Jameel Jaffer). And the National Confectioners Association reported (.ppt) retail candy sales of $29.3 billion in 2009.
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.