Welcome to this latest FAS experiment in blogging. We hope it will provide you with some insight into our activities and offer us another channel for presenting our work and our observations on strategic security and everything that entails, which is… a lot.
I’m Steven Aftergood, and I focus on secrecy and intelligence policy. The two fit together rather intimately, since secrecy is a characteristic feature of intelligence. But secrecy, while necessary in many cases, also has corrosive effects. It tends to impede oversight, to shield incompetence, and, worst of all, to degrade the performance of the intelligence bureaucracy itself. That’s why the 9/11 Commission concluded that U.S. is “too complex and secret.”
Confronting official secrecy can be a daunting task, and a frustrating one. But it can be done. I put out Secrecy News, an email newsletter (soon to be a blog, too) that tracks some of the latest twists and turns in secrecy policy, and I will be plagiarizing from it here regularly. So let’s go!
This report outlines a framework relying on “Cooperative Technical Means” for effective arms control verification based on remote sensing, avoiding on-site inspections but maintaining a level of transparency that allows for immediate detection of changes in nuclear posture or a significant build-up above agreed limits.
The grant comes from the Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY) to investigate, alongside The British American Security Information Council (BASIC), the associated impact on nuclear stability.
Satellite imagery of RAF Lakenheath reveals new construction of a security perimeter around ten protective aircraft shelters in the designated nuclear area, the latest measure in a series of upgrades as the base prepares for the ability to store U.S. nuclear weapons.
It will take consistent leadership and action to navigate the complex dangers in the region and to avoid what many analysts considered to be an increasingly possible outcome, a nuclear conflict in East Asia.