Nuclear Weapons

Secrecy News in the News

06.11.13 | 1 min read | Text by Steven Aftergood

“If President Obama really welcomed a debate [on intelligence surveillance policy], there are all kinds of things he could do in terms of declassification and disclosure to foster it. But he’s not doing any of them.” At least that’s my perception. See Debate on Secret Data Looks Unlikely, Partly Due to Secrecy by Scott Shane and Jonathan Weisman, New York Times, June 11.

“As the administration and some in Congress vent their anger about leaks to The Post and to Britain’s Guardian newspaper, officials have only themselves to blame,” wrote Dana Milbank in the Washington Post today. “It is precisely their effort to hide such a vast and consequential program from the American public that caused this pressure valve to burst.” See Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks are the backlash of too much secrecy, June 11.

I discussed some aspects of the latest surveillance controversy on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal today.

publications
See all publications
Nuclear Weapons
Report
Nuclear Notebook: Russian Nuclear Weapons, 2023

The FAS Nuclear Notebook is one of the most widely sourced reference materials worldwide for reliable information about the status of nuclear weapons, and has been published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1987.. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: Director Hans […]

05.08.23 | 1 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
Video Indicates that Lida Air Base Might Get Russian “Nuclear Sharing” Mission in Belarus

On 14 April 2023, the Belarusian Ministry of Defence released a short video of a Su-25 pilot explaining his new role in delivering “special [nuclear] munitions” following his training in Russia. The features seen in the video, as well as several other open-source clues, suggest that Lida Air Base––located only 40 kilometers from the Lithuanian border and the […]

04.19.23 | 7 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
Was There a U.S. Nuclear Weapons Accident At a Dutch Air Base? [no, it was training, see update below]

A photo in a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) student briefing from 2022 shows four people inspecting what appears to be a damaged B61 nuclear bomb.

04.03.23 | 7 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
STRATCOM Says China Has More ICBM Launchers Than The United States – We Have Questions

In early-February 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) had informed Congress that China now has more launchers for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) than the United States. The report is the latest in a serious of revelations over the past four years about China’s growing nuclear weapons arsenal and the deepening […]

02.10.23 | 6 min read
read more