“Engaging the People’s Republic of China in a dialogue is perhaps the most dramatic and far reaching decision undertaken by the Nixon administration,” as noted in a new volume of the U.S. State Department’s official Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series devoted to that topic.
A 1972 NSC memorandum for Henry Kissinger published in the new volume expressed concern about efforts by the Federation of American Scientists and its then-President Jeremy J. Stone to promote scientific exchange with China.
“The Chinese, by encouraging Stone, are effectively undercutting the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the PRC, a group we have recommended to Peking,” complained NSC staffer John H. Holdridge in his August 28, 1972 memo to Kissinger (see document 248).
The FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) paints a picture of a Congress that is working to both protect and accelerate nuclear modernization programs while simultaneously lacking trust in the Pentagon and the Department of Energy to execute them.
For Impact Fellow John Whitmer, working in public service was natural. “I’ve always been around people who make a living by caring.”
While advanced Chinese language proficiency and cultural familiarity remain irreplaceable skills, they are neither necessary nor sufficient for successful open-source analysis on China’s nuclear forces.
To maximize clean energy deployment, we must address the project development and political barriers that have held us back from smart policymaking and implementation that can withstand political change. Here’s how.