There is practically a universal consensus that the national security classification system has become dysfunctional and counterproductive. (Just what to do about it remains up in the air–more on that shortly).
That consensus was articulated again earlier this month in a speech by Joan Dempsey, formerly a senior Pentagon intelligence official, a Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, and executive director of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and now a vice president at Booz Allen and Hamilton.
“Ninety-five percent of what we do shouldn’t be classified at all, or it should be a much lower level of classification,” Ms. Dempsey said. “We’re lazy about classification. We call things secret that are not secret. It hampers our ability to be effective as a community. It costs the country billions of unnecessary dollars, and it doesn’t provide us one additional capability. We’re our own worst enemy in that regard,” she said.
Ms. Dempsey spoke on April 14 at the University of Texas at Austin. Her talk, ironically enough, was entitled “Back to Black: An Argument for Removing U.S. Intelligence Activities from Public Scrutiny,” and amounted to a call for increased secrecy of intelligence operations. But her defense of intelligence secrecy, she said, was contingent on robust congressional oversight and was not intended to shield misconduct or to perpetuate overclassification. A webcast of the talk is available here (the discussion of classification begins at about 28:45).
Congress must enact a Digital Public Infrastructure Act, a recognition that the government’s most fundamental responsibility in the digital era is to provide a solid, trustworthy foundation upon which people, businesses, and communities can build.
To increase the real and perceived benefit of research funding, funding agencies should develop challenge goals for their extramural research programs focused on the impact portion of their mission.
Without trusted mechanisms to ensure privacy while enabling secure data access, essential R&D stalls, educational innovation stalls, and U.S. global competitiveness suffers.
Satellite imagery has long served as a tool for observing on-the-ground activity worldwide, and offers especially valuable insights into the operation, development, and physical features related to nuclear technology.