The Director of National Intelligence last year affirmed the Administration’s support for ratification of the Law of the Sea Convention. But a minority in Congress expressed concern that the Convention would impede U.S. intelligence collection.
“The overwhelming opinion of Law of the Sea experts and legal advisors is that the Law of the Sea Convention simply does not regulate intelligence activities nor was it intended to…,” wrote Charles Allen, then-Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Collection, as quoted in an August 8, 2007 letter from DNI Mike McConnell.
But “the Treaty fails to protect the significant role submarines have played, especially during the Cold War, in gathering intelligence very close to foreign shorelines,” claimed Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and David Vitter (R-LA), in a dissenting view not supported by the DNI or the leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Both perspectives were aired in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee volume last month that recommended ratification of the Convention. See “Convention on the Law of the Sea” (pdf), December 19, 2007.
The United States has the only proven and scalable tritium production supply chain, but it is largely reserved for nuclear weapons. Excess tritium production capacity should be leveraged to ensure the success of and U.S. leadership in fusion energy.
Despite an emerging awareness of the importance of state and local government innovation capacity, there is a shortage of plausible strategies to build that capacity.
Innovations in artificial intelligence and robotics will allow us to accelerate the search process using foundation AI models for science research and automate much of the experimentation with robotic, self-driving labs.
FAS commends the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources for clearing a historic 75 pieces of legislation, including multiple crucial bills to confront the wildfire crisis.