Pentagon’s Black Budget Soars to Cold War Heights
The Department of Defense budget request for 2007 includes about $30.1 billion in classified or “black” spending, according to a new analysis by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
“In real (inflation-adjusted) terms the $30.1 billion FY 2007 request includes more classified acquisition funding than any other defense budget since FY 1988, near the end of the Cold War, when DoD received $19.7 billion ($29.4 billion in FY 2007 dollars) for these programs,” wrote author Steven Kosiak.
See “Classified Funding in the FY 2007 Budget Request” (pdf) from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
The study was reported in “Classified military spending reaches highest level since Cold War” by Drew Brown, Knight-Ridder Newspapers, May 19.
It is in the interests of the United States to appropriately protect information that needs to be protected while maintaining our participation in new discoveries to maintain our competitive advantage.
The question is not whether the capital exists (it does!), nor whether energy solutions are available (they are!), but whether we can align energy finance quickly enough to channel the right types of capital where and when it’s needed most.
Our analysis of federal AI governance across administrations shows that divergent compliance procedures and uneven institutional capacity challenge the government’s ability to deploy AI in ways that uphold public trust.
From California to New Jersey, wildfires are taking a toll—costing the United States up to $424 billion annually and displacing tens of thousands of people. Congress needs solutions.