At the same time the White House is finishing a review of nuclear weapons policy, U.S. Strategic Command has quietly put into effect a new strategic nuclear war plan.
By Hans M. Kristensen After two years of stalling, the latest New START Treaty aggregate data released today by the State Department indicates that U.S. warhead reductions under the treaty are finally picking up. Russia, which is already below the treaty limit, has been more or less flatlining over the past year. Seen in perspective, however, […]
“Reconnaissance assets, like artillery assets, are never kept in reserve,” according to U.S. Army doctrine. In other words, whatever means you may have to gather information about the activities and capabilities of an adversary should be fully deployed, not held back. “Reconnaissance units report exactly what they see and, if appropriate, what they do not […]
Senate Republicans are the most prolific users of Twitter in Congress, tweeting an average of 1.53 Tweets per day, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service. They were followed by Senate Democrats (1.49 Tweets on average), House Republicans (1.23), and House Democrats (1.09). Senate Republicans were also the most frequent posters on […]
Several nuggets of interest are presented in the latest biennial report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, summarizing the Committee’s oversight activities in the 112th Congress: * The Director of National Intelligence abruptly cancelled a multi-year effort to establish a single consolidated data center for the entire Intelligence Community a year or so ago, […]
A Department of Defense instruction issued on Friday reinforces the policy that the DoD Office of Inspector General (OIG) is to have full access to all records, including classified records, that it needs to perform its function, and that no DoD official other than the Secretary himself may block such access. “The OIG must have […]
New and updated products from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has not made readily available to the public include the following. Cloud Computing: Constitutional and Statutory Privacy Protections, March 22, 2013 The National Broadband Plan Goals: Where Do We Stand?, March 19, 2013 U.S. Customs and Border Protection: Trade Facilitation, Enforcement, and Security, March […]
FAS supplied the data for a new interactive web site published by CNN. The site enables you to get a quick overlook of the nuclear arsenals of the world’s nine nuclear weapon states. Check it out here. Update (April 17, 2013): CNN told me that the site had just under 2 million page views, with average […]
This week NASA abruptly took the massive NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) offline. Though no explanation for the removal was offered, it appeared to be in response to concerns that export controlled information was contained in the collection. “Until further notice, the NTRS system will be unavailable for public access. We apologize for any inconvenience […]
Over the past thirty years, dozens of indiscriminate mass shootings in America have resulted in 547 deaths and an additional 476 injured victims, according to a new tabulation by the Congressional Research Service. The new CRS report examines the phenomenon of mass shootings, like the December 2012 incident in Newtown, CT, and considers potential policy […]
Dr. Yousaf Butt, a nuclear physicist, is professor and scientist-in-residence at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. The views expressed are his own. Dr. George N. Lewis is a senior research associate at the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Cornell University. Researchers from […]
In July 2011, J. William Leonard, a former director of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), took the extraordinary step of filing a formal complaint with the Office he once led charging that a document used to indict former NSA official Thomas Drake under the Espionage Act had been wrongly classified in violation of the […]