Strategic Demand for New Definitions of National Security

This week we revisit the paradigm StratDem proposes as an essential element of national security thinking — the necessity of a broader, deeper understanding of security and the integral connection between national security and global security. Our responsibility is to go beyond the conventional

Looking beyond the disarray within the White House as the first National Security Adviser resigns and a president attacks the US press as “an enemy of the people” in his first press conference and slings out daily ‘Tweets’ and misinformation/disinformation as he charges others with false facts — we come to energy, climate, and the larger challenges of securing environmental security.

The current attacks on science coming from the Republican ranks is a reminder of the influence of money-in-politics and how interest groups influence policy. Beyond the machinery of Washington politics however is a question again of facts and falsehood — and how a functioning democracy, a republic, needs informed decisions made with careful, balanced assessment of facts and good science.

Which brings us to the denial caucus in the US House of Representatives and, unfortunately for the future of the nation’s security, to the Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Lamar Smith on Where to Find the “Unvarnished Truth”

“Better to get your news directly from the president,” Smith said. “In fact, it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth.”

Via Vox — Let that sink in …

Stepping back to November 2015, as skirmishes turn to an uncivil war in the Science Committee

“Top Science Committee Democrat expresses disgust, dismay at committee chair’s behavior”

Strategic Demands associated research group, GreenPolicy360, has for years reported events within the House Science Committee and its increasingly strident attacks on science broadly and specifically NASA/NOAA and their Earth Science programs. We would note that the first generation of policy makers, such as Stewart Udall and George E. Brown, would be in shock if they were alive, as well as they watched decades of profoundly successful policy initiate missions from Landsat to GPS/GIS, creating new economies and industries across the US and world … Whether we look at computer technology that delivered mapping via GPS and every associated land-based guidance system for transportation and hundreds of billions in income and a first era of profoundly needed environmental monitoring of natural resources, weather, safety and more… the results are there for those with eyes to see.

Yet now, we watch as a current generation of political voices attack this legacy and science and future generations will attempt to endeavor ‘why’ and today’s generation, particularly in the United States Congress acted and chose not to act in defense of national and comprehensive security.

Visit Earth and Space Politics at GreenPolicy360.

Watch video of Lamar Smith and, in the US Senate, Jim Inhofe