Open source intelligence — which is derived from open, unclassified sources — should be recognized as a mature intelligence discipline that is no less important than other established forms of intelligence, the House of Representatives said last month in the FY 2022 defense authorization act (sec. 1612). The House directed the Secretary of Defense and the […]
The formerly classified fact that one metric ton of plutonium metal was to be moved from the Savannah River Site in 2019 for use in nuclear weapon pit production at Los Alamos was declassified in 2018. This recently disclosed declassification decision was one of a handful of such actions that are taken each year by […]
How would China fight a war against the US? A new US Army publication sets out to answer that question, offering a detailed account of the military tactics China could employ. See Chinese Tactics, Army Techniques Publication (ATP) 7-100.3, August 9, 2021. The 250-page document is mainly intended to help provide a realistic basis for […]
Legislative measures to improve the process of declassifying classified national security information were introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden in the pending intelligence authorization act for FY2022. But they were included in the classified annex so their substance and import are not publicly known. “I remain deeply concerned about the failures of the Federal Government’s obsolete […]
The possibility that nuclear weapons could be used in regional or global conflicts is growing, said a newly disclosed Pentagon doctrinal publication on nuclear war fighting that was updated last year. “Despite concerted US efforts to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in international affairs and to negotiate reductions in the number of nuclear weapons, since […]
The Department of Defense is once again asking Congress for an exemption from the Freedom of Information Act for certain unclassified military information including records on critical infrastructure and military tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs). The latest proposal was included in the Pentagon’s draft of legislative language for the Fiscal Year 2022 defense authorization act (section 1002, […]
Those persons who have authorized access to classified information that they believe is improperly classified are “encouraged and expected” to challenge the classification of that information (Executive Order 13526, section 1.8). Sometimes they do. And every once in a while, their challenges lead to declassification of the information. A new report from the Government Accountability […]
The world will be “increasingly out of balance and contested at every level” over the next twenty years due to the pressures of demographic, environmental, economic and technological change, a new forecast from the National Intelligence Council called Global Trends 2040 said last week. But among the mostly grim possible futures that can be plausibly anticipated […]
A properly trained soldier can distinguish a vegetarian from a meat-eater based on their smell, a new Army publication says, since “different diets produce different human odors.” He or she can to determine the age, gender and even the mental state of a target by studying their footprints. Not simply a warrior, the ideal soldier is […]
Shortly before the end of the Trump Administration in January 2021, then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe issued a directive that altered the process for preparing the National Intelligence Priorities Framework, or NIPF, stripping out limitations on signals intelligence collection from the previous policy. The NIPF is perhaps the single most important administrative tool for managing the U.S. […]
What actions should the federal government take “to ensure that our nation can continue to harness the full power of science and technology on behalf of the American people”? President Biden posed that question and five more specific ones to his Science Advisor Dr. Eric S. Lander. “My hope is that you, working broadly and transparently […]
On February 4, President Biden issued a memorandum to agency heads on “advancing the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex persons around the world.” He directed that “it shall be the policy of the United States to pursue an end to violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender […]