President Bush this week said that a newspaper — the Los Angeles Times — had published details of a new technology used to defend against improvised explosive devices, and that jihadists used details from that newspaper story to develop techniques for defeating the new technology. Noah Shachtman of DefenseTech.org argues that there is reason to doubt the President’s account. See “The Enemy is Me,” March 14. (There’s more here.)
“In another sign of increasing government secrecy, the Federal Aviation Administration has removed from its Web site the transcript of a heated public hearing during which pilots ridiculed no-fly zones that have surrounded Washington since 9/11,” writes Lance Gay of Scripps Howard News Service. See “FAA yanks potentially ‘sensitive’ information from Web site,” March 15.
If the New York Times could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act for having disclosed the warrantless NSA surveillance activity, as some enthusiasts have proposed, then who else might be guilty of a similar offense? That question was asked and answered by Jack Shafer in “A Gitmo for Journos: Who besides the New York Times could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act?”, Slate, March 14.
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.
Getting into a shutdown is the easy part, getting out is much harder. Both sides will be looking to pin responsibility on each other, and the court of public opinion will have a major role to play as to who has the most leverage for getting us out.
How the United States responds to China’s nuclear buildup will shape the global nuclear balance for the rest of the century.