Responding to a Nuclear Detonation, and Other Resources
“It is incumbent upon all levels of government, as well as public and private parties within the U.S., to prepare for” a nuclear detonation in a U.S. city, according to a new U.S. government document. “Planning Guidance for Response to a Nuclear Detonation” (pdf) was drafted by an interagency team and published by the Homeland Security Council earlier this month (h/t Docuticker.com).
Security requirements for the protection of classified or controlled information held by the Department of Energy are set forth in a newly revised “Information Security Manual” (pdf), DoE Manual 470.4-4A, January 16, 2009.
Current policy on biosecurity was discussed in a newly published congressional hearing entitled “One Year Later — Implementing the Biosurveillance Requirements of the 9/11 Act,” House Homeland Security Committee, July 16, 2008.
The record of a May 21, 2008 House Judiciary hearing on “FBI Whistleblowers,” featuring witness testimony from Bassem Youssef and Mike German (now of the ACLU), has also been recently published.
The research community lacks strategies to incentivize collaboration on high-quality data acquisition and sharing. The government should fund collaborative roadmapping, certification, collection, and sharing of large, high-quality datasets in life science.
The potential of new nuclear power plants to meet energy demand, increase energy security, and revitalize local economies depends on new regulatory and operational approaches at the NRC.
In anticipation of future known and unknown health security threats, including new pandemics, biothreats, and climate-related health emergencies, our answers need to be much faster, cheaper, and less disruptive to other operations.
To unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence within the Department of Health and Human Services, an AI Corps should be established, embedding specialized AI experts within each of the department’s 10 agencies.