The 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was preventable. The Great East Japan earthquake and the tsunami that followed it were unprecedented events in recent history, but they were not altogether unforeseeable.
The process of declassifying national security records, which is hardly expeditious under the best of circumstances, will become slower as a result of the mandatory budget cuts known as sequestration. Due to sequestration, “NARA has reduced funding dedicated to the declassification of Presidential records,” the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) said in a report […]
A new report from the Congressional Research Service assesses the economic state of post-revolution Egypt and finds it fairly grim. “After more than two years of social unrest and economic stagnation following the 2011 popular uprising, the government of Egypt is facing serious economic pressures that, if not remedied, could lead to economic collapse and […]
The international agreements that constitute the infrastructure of international trade and investment are spotlighted in an informative new report from the Congressional Research Service. “In the absence of an overarching multilateral framework on investment, bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and investment chapters in free trade agreements (FTAs), collectively referred to as ‘international investment agreements,’ have emerged […]
By Hans M. Kristensen Does the U.S. Navy have more ballistic missile submarines than it needs? Dramatic reductions in deterrent patrols – but not submarines – suggest so. Over the past thirteen years, the number of deterrent patrols conducted each year by U.S. ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) has declined by more than half. During most […]
“Intelligence activity in the past decades has, all too often, exceeded the restraints on the exercise of governmental power that are imposed by our country’s Constitution, laws, and traditions,” according to the Congressional Research Service. The CRS, which shuns polemical claims, presents that assertion as a simple statement of fact (although cautiously sourced to the […]
The Department of Defense has revised its 1996 directive on non-lethal weapons (NLW) to guide future development and procurement of this category of weaponry. “Unlike conventional lethal weapons that destroy their targets principally through blast, penetration, and fragmentation, NLW employ means other than gross physical destruction to prevent the target from functioning. NLW are intended […]
By Hans M. Kristensen Greetings from Geneva! I’m at the Palais des Nations for the second Preparatory Committee (PREPCOM) meeting for the 2015 Review Conference of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). I was invited by the Swiss and New Zealand UN Missions to brief our report Reducing Alert Rates of Nuclear Weapons. With me on […]
The latest updates from the Congressional Research Service include the following. Armed Conflict in Syria: U.S. and International Response, April 22, 2013 Turkey: Background and U.S. Relations, April 23, 2013 Department of Defense Implementation of the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative: Implications for Federal Information Technology Reform Management, April 23, 2013 Security Assistance Reform: “Section […]
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 […]