A new report by the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the current plan to sustain and modernize US nuclear forces will cost $1.2 trillion over the next 30 years – or $41.4 billion per year. A study by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in 2014 projected the cost would be “over $1 […]
North Korea’s rapidly maturing nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile programs have prompted urgent reconsideration of what to do about them. A new report from the Congressional Research Service identifies and examines seven possible directions for US policy, none of them risk-free or altogether satisfactory: * maintaining the military status quo * enhanced containment and […]
The effort to establish a uniform policy for Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) is meeting opposition from some executive branch agencies who see it as unnecessary and unwelcome. CUI refers to information that is unclassified but that requires protection for reasons other than national security– such as privacy, proprietary concerns, law enforcement sensitivity, and so on. […]
The Department of Defense has spent more than $1.46 trillion for direct war-related costs since September 11, 2001, according to the latest Pentagon tabulation of war costs obtained by Secrecy News. The 74-page DoD report provides extensive and detailed reporting on war-related appropriations and expenditures. See Cost of War Update as of June 30, 2017. […]
President Trump will declare the escalating number of drug deaths from opioids as a “public health emergency” — but not a “national emergency” — in an announcement scheduled for today. The Congressional Research Service has issued a new report on aspects of the problem, including an overview of opioid abuse, a review of opioid supply, […]
By Hans M. Kristensen NATO reportedly has quietly started its annual Steadfast Noon nuclear strike exercise in Europe. This is the exercise that practices NATO’s nuclear strike mission with dual-capable aircraft (DCA) and the B61 tactical nuclear bombs the US deploys in Europe. In addition to nuclear-capable aircraft from Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, local […]
Some restrictions on U.S. arms sales to human rights violators in the Middle East have recently been relaxed by the Trump Administration, a new report from the Congressional Research Service noted. “In early 2016, Bahrain submitted a request to purchase a number of F-16s [from the U.S.] and to upgrade its existing aircraft in a […]
Updated below Four months after President Trump issued his National Security Presidential Memorandum 5 on US policy towards Cuba and ordered it to be published in the Federal Register, that has still not been accomplished. The Memorandum, posted on the White House web site on June 16, states that “The Secretary of State is hereby […]
What constitutes an act of war in the cyber domain? It’s a question that officials have wrestled with for some time without being able to provide a clear-cut answer. But in newly-published responses to questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Pentagon ventured last year that “The determination of what constitutes an ‘act of […]
By Hans M. Kristensen According to an NBC News report, President Donald Trump said during a meeting at the Pentagon on July 20 that “he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal,” according to three officials who were in the room. Trump’s statement came in response to a chart […]
The nominal deadline for release of the last remaining records concerning the assassination of President Kennedy under the terms of the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 is October 26, 2017. Agencies have an opportunity to request postponement of release, beyond the deadline, of a few thousand records that are still being withheld, subject […]
The Trump Administration budget request proposes a substantial cut to US spending on global health programs, as described in a new report from the Congressional Research Service. But Congress appears poised to provide at least some of the funds that the executive branch had sought to eliminate. “The FY2018 budget request includes almost $7 billion […]