On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the National Reconnaissance Office declassified and released thousands of pages of historical records documenting the development and operation of its GAMBIT and HEXAGON satellite programs. At first glance, many of the documents appear to be interesting and substantial additions to the historical record on the subject. (The associated satellite imagery does not yet seem to be available.)
For more than a decade, the most detailed illustrations of the KH-9 HEXAGON available to the public were a series of widely replicated line drawings prepared by Charles P. Vick in the 1990s (when he was at the Federation of American Scientists, as a matter of fact). Now that the KH-9 has been formally declassified and put on public display, as it was last Saturday, it is possible to appreciate what a remarkably perceptive job Mr. Vick did in portraying the satellite’s structure and operation.
For other accounts of the NRO anniversary releases see “KH-9 Hexagon Spy Satellite Makes a Rare Public Outing” by Keith Cowing, September 17, and “Big Black Throws a Party” by Dwayne Day, The Space Review, September 19.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.