U.S. and North Korea relations, disposal of nuclear weapons components and much more.

From the Blogs

• Strategy Lacking for Disposal of Nuclear Weapons Components: According to an internal Department of Energy contractor report, there is a “large inventory” of classified nuclear weapons components “scattered across” the nation’s nuclear weapons complex and awaiting disposal. But, there is no effective disposal strategy currently in place.

• Improving Intelligence on Emerging Bioweapons Threats- New Engagements Needed Between Intelligence and Academia: With advances in life sciences and biotechnology, there has been an increase in bioweapons capabilities access for a number of actors. In a new op-ed posted on the Virtual Biosecurity Center, Dr. Kathleen Vogel, Professor at Cornell University, about the need for more engagement between the academic and intelligence communities to detect new types of bioweapons threats.

• Sandia Scientists Model Dynamics of Social Protest: Steven Aftergood writes that researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have been studying the ways that information, ideas and behaviors propagate through social networks in order to gain advance warning of cyber attacks or other threatening behavior.

• Helping Kosovo Help the Dutch: Why should the residents of the poorest nation in Europe spend time or money today that might help to address a problem that won’t affect them and that probably won’t have much of an impact for decades or longer? In a new post on the ScienceWonk Blog, Dr. Y examines how carbon dioxide emissions, (specifically from the KEK power plant) will effect Kosovo.

Google in North Korea: Pyongyang Kowtow or Smart Diplomacy?

Last week, a Google delegation visited North Korea, with many questioning the true purpose of the visit. In an article published on The Strategist,  Mark Jansson, Special Projects Director, and Eddie Walsh, Adjunct Fellow for Emerging Technologies and High-end Threats, examine how this visit will further impact U.S. and North Korean relations.

Read the article here.

FAS in the News

• Jan 18: The Times of India, “Pakistan has World’s Fastest Growing Nuclear Stockpile“
• Jan 15: Huffington Post, “8 Things I Miss About the Cold War”
• Jan 14: Global Security Newswire, “Russia Might Still Use Sea-Fired Nuclear Cruise Missiles”