The White House should undertake a focused effort to reduce national security secrecy, some 30 public interest organizations urged President Obama in a letter today. The groups called upon the President to adopt a recommendation of the Public Interest Declassification Board to set up a White House-led Security Classification Reform Steering Committee. “A presidentially appointed […]
Dozens of federal laws protect employees who report waste, fraud or abuse by their employers. Some of those laws, particularly those that apply to private-sector workers, have been strengthened in recent years, according to a new survey from the Congressional Research Service. “Eleven of the forty laws reviewed in this report were enacted after 1999. […]
An enormous volume of photographic imagery from the KH-9 HEXAGON intelligence satellites was quietly declassified in January and will be transferred to the National Archives later this year for subsequent public release. The KH-9 satellites operated between 1971 and 1984. The imagery they generated should be of historical interest with respect to a wide range […]
Just as law enforcement relied upon surveillance cameras and personal photography to enable the prompt identification of the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing, U.S. armed forces increasingly look to the collection of still and motion imagery to support military operations. Combat camera (COMCAM) capabilities support “operational planning, public affairs, information operations, mission assessment, forensic, […]
By Hans M. Kristensen The U.S. Air Force plans to arm the B-2A stealth bomber with a new nuclear cruise missile that is in the early stages of development, according to Air Force officials and budget documents. The B-2A bomber, which is designed to slip through air defenses undetected, does not currently have a capability […]
By Michael Edward Walsh The concept of emerging security challenges is not new. Mankind has always had to adapt to novel scientific and technological innovations that have changed the nature of war and violence within society. The sudden focus on emerging security challenges is then not driven by their mere emergence but rather by the […]
By Hans M. Kristensen The size of China’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force appears to be leveling out instead of increasing. During Thursday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Current and Future Worldwide Threats, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) director Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn told the lawmakers: China’s nuclear arsenal currently consists of approximately 50-75 […]
For reasons that are hard to comprehend, Congress for many years has directed the Congressional Research Service not to make its products directly available to the public. CRS reports naturally vary in quality, originality and breadth of focus. But as a class of documents, they are both interesting and useful. Along with impartial treatments of […]
Editor’s Note: This is the second of two postings of a Q&A conducted primarily by the Federation of American Scientists regarding the current situation on the Korean Peninsula. Developed and edited by Charles P. Blair, Mark Jansson, and Devin H. Ellis, the authors’ responses have not been edited; all views expressed by these subject-matter experts are their own. Please note […]
Negotiating a treaty to reduce nuclear weapons is so cumbersome and fraught with political minefields that it can actually retard the process of disarmament. “It usually takes far longer to reduce nuclear forces through a bilateral arms control treaty than it takes to adopt unilateral adjustments to nuclear forces,” according to a new report from […]
The Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 has been used for more than half a century to restrict disclosure of patent applications that could be “detrimental to national security.” At the end of the last fiscal year, no fewer than 5,321 secrecy orders were in effect. These secrecy orders have been difficult to penetrate and the […]
The latest issue of the Journal of National Security Law & Policy has just been published. Titles of likely interest include Free Speech Aboard the Leaky Ship of State: Calibrating First Amendment Protections for Leakers of Classified Information by Heidi Kitrosser, and Unknotting the Tangled Threads of Watergate Lore, a review of Max Holland’s book […]