[Article updated May 11, 2021] The United Kingdom announced yesterday that it has decided to abandon a previous plan to reduce it nuclear weapons stockpile to 180 by the mid-2020s and instead “move to an overall nuclear weapon stockpile of no more than 260 warheads.” The decision makes Britain the first Western nuclear-armed state to […]
Space is at risk of developing the equivalent of the ocean’s “drifting island of plastic.” Unless we act now, we may find that, as with climate change, we wish we had acted much sooner.
The Pentagon’s case for the ICBM replacement program, known as the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) needs to be reevaluated in light of cost escalation and surrounding budgetary pressures.
Sustained investment in the industries of the future is crucial to national security, American healthcare, and a green economy.
Updated below For the past three years, the Trump Administration refused to provide an annual tally of the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. nuclear stockpile or the number of weapons that had been dismantled each year, though that had been the practice under the Obama Administration and through 2017. The Federation of American Scientists […]
The use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) electronic parts in nuclear weapons systems may reduce the reliability of the US nuclear arsenal over time as the electronics age in ways that are hard to predict, according to a newly disclosed report from the JASON science advisory panel. “Most of the electronic materials and components within a weapon […]
The Administration should establish the Venture Science Doctorate (VSD) to train graduates to combine research and entrepreneurship.
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 […]
Is it possible to reliably detect persons with malicious intent by remotely measuring their physiological state or studying their involuntary verbal or behavioral signs? That is a problem that is far from having a technological solution, the JASON science advisory panel told the Department of Defense in a 2008 report that was released under the Freedom […]
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 […]
As the U.S. continues to grapple with the pandemic, there are growing concerns about the risks posed by variants of SARS-CoV-2 – the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Recent data have shown that at least one SARS-CoV-2 variant is more transmissible than the original, and there are questions as to whether any variants could be more deadly. The […]
The pandemic accelerated an already rapid ongoing shift to a tech-driven world. We must similarly accelerate investments in IT.