nonproliferation

NATO Security Summit in Chicago, NSA declassification blunder, weapons in space and much more.

NATO Security Summit

• The 2012 NATO Security Summit is underway in Chicago, with heads of state and governments of NATO member states convening to discuss regional and global security challenges. Key items on the summit agenda include a transition plan for NATO forces in Afghanistan after the end of combat in 2014, NATO’s defense and security goals, and tactics to enhance NATO partnership with non-member states. For more information on the NATO Summit, visit our policy page here.

From the Blogs

• NSA Declassifies Secret Document After Publishing It: The National Security Agency last week invoked a rarely-used authority in order to declassify a classified document that was mistakenly posted on the NSA website with all of its classified passages intact. The article is a historical study entitled Maybe You Had to Be There: The SIGINT on Thirteen Soviet Shootdowns of U.S. Reconnaissance Aircraft.  It was written by Michael L. Peterson and was originally published in the classified journal Cryptologic Quarterly in 1993.

2012 Nuclear Security Summit,secret drone technology, nuclear limbo and much more.

2012 Nuclear Security Summit

• Listen to the new edition of the FAS podcast series, “A Conversation With An Expert,”  featuring FAS President Dr. Charles Ferguson. In this podcast, Dr. Ferguson discusses the goals of the upcoming Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, securing fissile materials, and nuclear terrorism.

• Visit our 2012 Nuclear Security Summit policy page on our website which highlights FAS work and resources on nuclear security, fissile materials and much more.

• FAS President Dr. Charles Ferguson examines the national and international efforts to control and secure radioactive materials, and offers suggestions on how to reduce the risk of radiological terrorism in a new paper published by the US-Korea Institute at SAIS. 

Lessons learned from Fukushima, future of nuclear power, Russia’s nuclear forces and much more.

Fukushima: One Year Later

• Listen to the new edition of the FAS podcast series, “A Conversation With An Expert,”  featuring FAS President Dr. Charles Ferguson. In this podcast, Dr. Ferguson discusses the lessons learned from Fukushima, safety of U.S. nuclear plants, future of nuclear power use, and Japan’s new energy policy post- Fukushima.
• FAS President Dr. Charles Ferguson is the executive producer and featured in the Council on Foreign Relations nuclear energy multimedia guide, which explores the past, present and future of nuclear power.

• Fukushima- A Year Later: March 11 marks the one year anniversary of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan, setting into motion the events that culminated in multiple reactor meltdowns. Dr. Y reflects on a few lessons we have learned as a result of this accident on the ScienceWonk blog.

• FAS President Dr. Charles Ferguson presented at a conference hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to examine the impact of the Fukushima accident. Dr. Ferguson spoke about the potential implications for the use of nuclear power post Fukushima and implications for safety, education, economics and waste disposal. You can view the slides from his presentation here.

• Japan’s Nuclear Dilemma:  In a new interview with Toni Johnson of the Council on Foreign Relations, FAS President Charles Ferguson spoke about Japan’s future energy program and states that Japan’s economy is taking a huge hit due to loss of significant power generation and high imported energy costs. Yet, Japan is not open to renewable energy as an alternative. Post-Fukushima, should Japan use nuclear power?

FAS Roundup: March 5, 2012

Syria and WMD, Chinese ICBMs spotted, DoD responds to nuclear targeting questions, why sanctions on Iran won’t work and much more.

From the Blogs

• DoD Responds to Questions on Nuclear Targeting: Are U.S. nuclear forces on hair trigger alert? Not exactly, a Department of Defense official told Congress. “Although it is true that portions of the U.S. nuclear triad are capable of rapid execution upon authorization from the President, a robust system of safeguards and procedures are in place to prevent the accidental or unauthorized launch of a U.S. nuclear weapon,” said James N. Miller, Jr., Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.

• Chinese Mobile ICBMs Seen in Central China: Hans Kristensen writes that recent satellite images show that China is setting up launch units for its newest road-mobile Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) in central China. Several launchers of the new DF-31/31A appeared at two sites in the eastern part of the Qinghai province in June 2011; which is part of China’s slow modernization of its small (compared with Russia and the United States) nuclear arsenal.

• Court Says Agency Classification Decision is Not “Logical”: DC District Judge Richard W. Roberts did an astonishing thing that federal courts almost never do: He probed into the decision to classify a government document and concluded that it was not well-founded, in an opinion that was published this week. He ordered the agency to release the document under the Freedom of Information Act.

FAS Roundup: February 27, 2012

Status of China’s nuclear forces, strides in DoD classification reform, photos and video from FAS Awards Ceremony and much more.

From the Blogs

• Pentagon Defends Record on Secrecy Reform: The Department of Defense has done a better job of complying with changes in national security classification policy than it has gotten credit for, Pentagon officials told a Senate Committee.  The number of classification guides that are up to date has increased from 30% to over 70%, the officials said, and a new four-volume information security guide that has been under development since 2009 is in final coordination.

• Media Orgs File Amicus Brief in Sterling Leak Case: Dozens of major news media organizations joined together to defend the notion of a reporter’s privilege to protect the identity of a confidential against compulsory disclosure. The brief is an emphatic chorus of support for James Risen (the New York Times reporter who has been subpoenaed to testify in the case of Jeffrey Sterling, the former CIA officer who is accused of leaking classified information to Mr. Risen), and it offers a clear statement that the public interest in free press is at stake in this case. One thing it does not do, however, is simplify the matter for the appeals court or help to devise some kind of resolution of the conflict between the parties.

• Chinese Nuclear Modernization-Smaller and Later: Last week, Congress received its annual threat assessment from the U.S. intelligence community. Hans Kristensen writes that China’s nuclear arsenal is at a size that makes comparison with U.S. nuclear force level meaningless – even at the lowest level feared by the critics. The threat assessment showed that China’s nuclear force modernization has been slower than predicted during the Bush administration.

• DoD Reports “Impressive Strides” in Updating Classification: Steven Aftergood writes that the Department of Defense says it has cancelled more than 300 of its 1800 classification guides as a result of the ongoing Fundamental Classification Guidance Review (mandated by President Obama’s 2009 executive order to identify and eliminate inappropriate classification requirements).  The defunct guides can no longer be used to authorize the classification of national security information.