Tag: weapons of mass destruction (WMD)

Featured article: Improving the Intelligence Community’s Contribution to Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction by Timothy W. Fisher There is, of course, no such thing as a perfect weapon of mass destruction (WMD) threat assessment. Some of the brightest minds in the intelligence community continuously work WMD issues. The intelligence community, consisting of seventeen organizations from six departments and one independent agency, […]

Featured article: Cape Ray Diplomacy: How a U.S. Merchant Vessel Took Center Stage in Foreign Relations by Chi K. Cheung In August 2013, chemical weapons attacks against civilians in Syria resulted in more than 1,400 deaths, including 426 children. As a result of international pressure, the Assad regime agreed to accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention […]

Featured article: A Clear Deterrence Strategy Required for Cyber by Terrence S. Allen With the press of a button, a nation goes to war. Much of that nation’s livelihood will be destroyed with this button press. In the U.S. there is always an operator ready to hit their button, ensuring a devastating retaliatory attack. This was […]

Featured article: Nuclear Terrorism – Imminent Threat? by Brendan G. Melley The 2015 National Security Strategy of the United States stated that “No threat poses as grave a danger to our security and well-being as the potential use of nuclear weapons and materials by irresponsible states or terrorists.” On March 25, 2014, in The Hague, […]

Featured article: Fostering Interagency Collaboration for Upstream Counterproliferation by Matthew D. Rautio The proliferation of emerging and disruptive technologies, such as additive manufacturing and gene editing, is changing the way we think about national security. Such trends in science and technology inevitably increase the likelihood of hostile nations or non-state actors acquiring weapons of mass destruction […]

Featured article: Kinetic Energy Weapons: The Beginning of an Interagency Challenge by Daniel C. Sproull In 1948, the UN Commission for Conventional Armaments defined weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as “…atomic explosive weapons, radioactive material weapons, lethal chemical and biological weapons, and any weapons developed in the future which have characteristics comparable in destructive effect […]

Featured article: Concurrent Biological, Electromagnetic Pulse and Cyber-attacks: The Ultimate Interagency Response Challenge by Patricia Rohrbeck The critical infrastructure components of an advanced society—telecommunications, transportation, banking and finance, petroleum and natural gas, food and water, public health and healthcare, and security—have at least one feature in common: All depend upon electrical and cyber power. Two well-known threats— electromagnetic […]

Featured article: Optimizing the CWMD Enterprise Across the Interagency by Michael J. Kwon In recent decades, interagency cooperation has enabled the U.S. government in countering weapons of mass destruction (CWMD) organizations. This interagency cooperation, collectively referred to as the U.S. CWMD enterprise is an ongoing effort to protect the nation from the threat of WMD. Progress, such […]

Featured article: Plutonium and Picasso – A Typology of Nuclear and Fine Art Smuggling by Joshua D. Foss The global security environment continues to evolve. Globalization, advances in technology, and greater connectedness of people and economies have enabled transnational organized crime and new and existing illicit markets to expand. Never has the prolific and rapid dissemination of technology and information […]

Featured article: A Nation Unprepared: Bioterrorism and Pandemic Response by John B. Foley In 2001, senior U.S. policymakers converged to participate in the still famous Dark Winter exercise. The exercise contemplated a covert, bioterrorist attack against the U.S. The scenario began with simultaneous attacks, involving smallpox, on shopping malls in 3 separate states, resulting in […]