NSDD-113 on Security of Government Communications
In a recently declassified 1983 directive (pdf), President Reagan ordered steps to improve the security of government communications.
“Mobile and fixed communications systems used by key U.S. Government officials in the Nation’s capital and surrounding areas are especially vulnerable to intercept and exploitation by foreign intelligence services,” the President wrote.
National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 113 was classified Top Secret until last year, when it was released in full. A copy was obtained by researcher Michael Ravnitzky. See “Security of Communications Systems Used by Key Government Officials,” NSDD-113, November 17, 1983.
Using the NIST as an example, the Radiation Physics Building (still without the funding to complete its renovation) is crucial to national security and the medical community. If it were to go down (or away), every medical device in the United States that uses radiation would be decertified within 6 months, creating a significant single point of failure that cannot be quickly mitigated.
The federal government can support more proactive, efficient, and cost-effective resiliency planning by certifying predictive models to validate and publicly indicate their quality.
We need a new agency that specializes in uncovering funding opportunities that were overlooked elsewhere. Judging from the history of scientific breakthroughs, the benefits could be quite substantial.
The cost of inaction is not merely economic; it is measured in preventable illness, deaths and diminished livelihoods.