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!
The Federation of American Scientists applauds the United States for declassifying the number of nuclear warheads in its military stockpile and the number of retired and dismantled warheads.
North Korea may have produced enough fissile material to build up to 90 nuclear warheads.
Secretary Austin’s likely certification of the Sentinel program should be open to public interrogation, and Congress must thoroughly examine whether every requirement is met before allowing the program to continue.
Researchers have many questions about the modernization of Pakistan’s nuclear-capable aircraft and associated air-launched cruise missiles.