Richard Garwin suggests a compromise space weapons treaty that would prohibit new anti-satellite weapon tests, but still allow for temporary and reversible attacks (ex. jamming, concealment, interference with the line of sight, etc) on non-strategic space assets.
The authors evaluate the risks from several popular doomsday scenarios including smallpox biological terrorism, grey goo, and nuclear terrorism.
James Clay Moltz looks at the debate over space weapons and offers several moderate proposals for achieving progress in space arms control.
The authors accuse the U.S. of rejecting a recent bioweapons protocol because it is committed to continuing and expanding its secret bioweapons research programs.
Joel Primack cautions that testing space weapons could exacerbate the space debris problem and a space war could "encase the entire planet in a shell of whizzing debris that would thereafter make space near the Earth highly hazardous for peaceful as well as military purposes."
The authors analyze the potential for nuclear terrorism in the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict and conclude "that an escalation to WMD is a credible concern that cannot be dismissed out of hand."
The authors suggest that to control the threat of bioterrorism, the Bush administration should strengthen domestic regulations to control and secure deadly pathogens and toxins and by launching the negotiation of a new ?biosecurity convention? to control these substances internationally.
Jeffrey Richelson covers the organization and history of the Nuclear Emergency Search Teams (NEST), a covert group of specialists that form the U.S.'s frontline of defense against nuclear terrorism.
Until recently, concerns about attacks on commercial nuclear power plants focused mainly on the vulnerability of reactor containment buildings. But nuclear power plants may have a weaker link?spent fuel ponds. ?Reactors are inside steel vessels surrounded by heavy structures and containment buildings,? says Gordon Thompson, senior scientist at the Institute for Resource and Security Studies. ?Spent fuel pools, containing some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet, can catch fire and are in much more vulnerable buildings.?
Richard L. Garwin critiques the administration's missile defense proposal and offers a remarkable alternative that would be less suspectible to common countermeasures, more accurate than the current system, and less likely to violate existing treaties and anger Russia and China.