Obsolete secrecy procedures and growing political abuse have left the national security classification system in a state of disarray and dysfunction. Most government agencies “still rely on antiquated information security management practices,” according to a new annual report from the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO). “These practices have not kept pace with the volume of […]
Unlike countries such as South Korea, New Zealand, or Germany, the US has not controlled the spread of COVID-19 in a coordinated fashion, and the nation is in danger of a second surge of cases. Some experts already see indicators of the second surge. For instance, COVID-19 hospitalizations rose sharply in several states after Memorial […]
The coronavirus has killed over 108,000 people, and infected millions, in the US alone. As some areas of the country begin to lift infection control precautions, it is critical for the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic to improve. An important part of this process is Congressional oversight of the Administration’s response to COVID-19, and during […]
How can the national security classification and declassification system be fixed? That depends on how one defines the problem that needs fixing. To the authors of a new report from the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB), the outstanding problem is the difficulty of managing the expanding volume of classified information and declassifying a growing backlog of records. “There is […]
The Department of Defense is asking Congress to expand its authority to recall retired members of the military to active duty in the event of a war or national emergency. The DoD proposal predates the turmoil that followed the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis last week and the activation of National […]
The US Air Force wants to renew and expand the withdrawal of public land for the Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR), where it conducts flight testing, classified research and development projects, and weapons tests. A Defense Department proposal to Congress would increase the amount of land currently withdrawn from public use by more than 10 […]
In 2018 the Census Bureau discovered that results of the 2010 census could be processed and matched with external sources in such a way as to reveal confidential personal information, in violation of the law. “This had not been thought to be feasible owing to the large amount of data and computation involved,” a new report from […]
The threat to public safety from unmanned aerial systems (drones) is not just foreseeable — it already exists in the form of numerous near-collisions with manned aircraft, a new report from the Congressional Research Service observes. “Between 2016 and 2019, airline pilots reported, on average, more than 100 drone sightings per month to FAA, and […]
Hobbled by secrecy and timidity, the U.S. intelligence community has been conspicuously absent from efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, the most serious national and global security challenge of our time. The silence of intelligence today represents a departure from the straightforward approach of then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats who offered the clearest public […]
There is a bewildering amount of official guidance on the role of the military in circumstances such as the current pandemic. But the practical impact of that guidance, whatever it may be, is unclear. Like the proverbial war plan that cannot survive first contact with the enemy, Pentagon doctrine on infectious disease seems to have been […]
On this day, ten years ago, U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev signed the New START treaty during a ceremony in Prague. The treaty capped the number of strategic missiles and heavy bombers the two countries could possess to 800, with no more than 700 launchers and 1,550 warheads deployed. The treaty […]
General Atomics’ SkyGuardian drone, a non-weaponized variant of the military’s MQ-9 Reaper, last week completed a test flight through civil airspace from Palmdale, California to Yuma, Arizona, the company announced. The April 3 flight demonstration, sponsored by NASA, marks a further step in the planned integration of drones into the National Airspace System. General Atomics said […]