The Soviet Navy viewed nuclear-tipped torpedoes as aircraft carrier killers. A Soviet Foxtrot class diesel submarine, B-59, had this ace-in-the-hole when it was being depth-charged to the surface by the U.S. Navy during the Cuban missile crisis. Did Adm. George…
The Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community is out, and it’s official: cyber is the new black. (The version presented to the Senate is linked above. Here’s the basically identical House version.) Judging by the many threats ably…
The Administration has proposed a massive increase in funding for the nuclear weapons complex, increasing the budget for NNSA by 13.4 percent (over what the FY2010 appropriation.) John Fleck has an excellent write-up of the announcement in the Albuquerque Journal.…
Funny thing about the Bomb: you can’t eat it. Going by what the North Korean government has said of late, they’re not exactly beating their swords into ploughshares or their spears into pruning hooks. But, we are told, national security…
I’ve been quiet about the START negotiations, save for the occasional tweet, in large part because it doesn’t make sense to second-guess negotiators, especially before they’ve completed their work. (Buy me a beer, on the other hand …) But Senator…
ISIS has released a long-awaited trio of papers on Burma’s very odd nuclear programs. Burma: A Nuclear Wanabee; Suspicious Links to North Korea; High-Tech Procurements (January 28, 2010) A look at Burmese high tech illicit procurement efforts, the cooperation with…
A cunning rock ‘n roll showman, David Lee Roth, once opined that, “The key to success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” Vice President Richard M. Nixon defended himself when he was struggling to stay…
Reader Michael Cucek, on his blog Shisaku, offers some commentary on the translation of Japanese Foreign Minister Okada’s letter to SECSTATE Clinton regarding the nuclear umbrella. One key passage involved whether Japanese diplomats did, or did not, tell the Strategic…
Abraham Kaplan wasn’t addressing national security, but what he wrote in 1964 is broadly applicable and still fresh today: I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer,…
For regular readers who also happen to be pre-doctoral or post-doctoral acadmics, the Stanton Foundation has funded a series of fellowships in nuclear security. Here is a list of participating institutions: ✽ Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard…
