Science, Technology, and Global Security

The 1960 Arms Control Issue

Within this program area, the Academy undertakes studies to explore how the international community can devise new cooperative structures to improve global security and employ science and technology to enhance the human condition. The activities of several longstanding committees, including the Committee on International Security Studies, are grouped under this program area.

Global security has long been a concern of the Academy. One of the earliest volumes of the Academy's journal, Dædalus, was a 1960 special issue on arms control that helped fashion an intellectual framework for the fledgling area of nuclear weapons arms control. Since the publication of that seminal issue, the Academy has retained its strong commitment to engaging contemporary security challenges, especially as they expand to include such new concerns as overpopulation, environmental degradation, terrorism, small-arms trade, corruption, carbon-based energy dependence, and the development of space-based weapons.

Other Science, Technology, and Global Security projects draw on the Academy's unique mix of scientists, humanists, social scientists, lawyers, and others to analyze the international impact of rapid developments in science and technology; suggest approaches to governing those transformations; and formulate a broader understanding of the social implications of these advances.

Current Program Activities

• Initiative for Science, Engineering, and Technology: Launched in 2006, this major Academy initiative explores how science and technology are changing, how to help the public understand those changes, and how society can better adapt to those changes.
  
  
• The Global Nuclear Future: This project seeks to generate an integrated set of policy recommendations for balancing the growing global demand for civilian nuclear power with the need to promote nuclear safety and strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
  
  
• Reconsidering the Rules of Space: This study examines the global security implications of expanding commercial and military uses of space, and considers international rules and principles needed to maintain a balanced use of space over the long term.
  
  
• Securing the Internet as Public Space: Free and unrestricted public use of the Internet involves the fundamental building blocks of Internet communication – trust, identity, power, and control. This project considers the social, political, economic, legal, and technical factors that affect the evolving design of the Internet.
  
  
• Alternative Models for the Federal Funding of Science: With the United States’ preeminence in science, engineering, and technology being challenged in the new global economy, the Academy assembled a panel of experts to examine current science funding policies, mechanisms, and processes, and to recommend strategies for maximizing the impact of federal dollars.
  
  
• Science in the Liberal Arts Curriculum: Less than one-third of American undergraduates major in the natural sciences, mathematics, or engineering. This project examines the goals of science requirements for nonscientists, and how students fulfill those requirements, in an effort to inform curriculum policies at higher education institutions.
  
  
• Countering Corruption in Nation-States: What is corruption? How does it work? Why does it matter? This project considers these questions and investigates the link between corruption and political and economic transformation, as well as the effects of corruption in the larger international setting.

Past Projects & Publications

• International Security in the Post-Soviet Space: This series of studies explored issues affecting international security in the former Soviet states.
  
  
• War With Iraq: Costs, Consequences and Alternatives: This December 2002 report analyzed the possible political, military, and economic impact of war with Iraq.
  
  
• Global Security Implications of Joint Missile Surveillance Data: An Academy study group evaluated the potential of a proposed joint US-Russian center for the exchange of data on missile launches.
  
  
• The United States and the International Criminal Court: The International Criminal Court is designed to bring to justice individuals who commit genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The Academy brought together legal, political, and military experts to examine the proposed International Criminal Court and its meaning for US security.
  
  
• Humankind's Origins: This project brought together experts in the biological sciences, physical sciences, and social sciences to examine the evolution and origin of human biology, behavior, and society.
  
  
• Governance of Innovation in the Biosciences: An Academy working group explored emerging issues in the governance of biotechnology.
  
  
• 1990s
  
  
• 1980s
  
  
• 1970s
  
  
• 1960s
  
  
• 1950s

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