National security and scientific communication.

I science facing a new environment triggered by the alleged successful espionage by foreign parties, in particular China, aimed at the nation’s nuclear weapons secrets? Several much publicized reports, in particular that of the Cox Commission of the Congress†, the Rudman report by the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and the review of the findings of the intelligence community, have alleged security deficiencies within the U.S. defense establishment and in particular U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories. None of these reports have claimed that the presence of foreigners at U.S. academic research institutes or universities has in any way been involved in the alleged security breeches. Yet, remedial measures instituted by the U.S. government are far ranging and affect not only weapons-related activities but the U.S. scientific establishment in general. National security has many aspects, including economic strength, the morale and well-being of the people, as well as military prowess. In respect to the latter, some emphasize restrictions aimed at preventing information developed in the past from reaching unfriendly nations or parties. But then there are those, this author included, who conclude that national security in the past has been predominantly advanced by achievements in a free environment and that such achievements are endangered if undue security measures by restrictions are allowed to dominate. Both are needed, but to use the phrase coined by journalist Alan Barth, the ‘‘utility of freedom’’ is essential in advancing national security. During the ‘‘hot’’ and ‘‘cold’’ wars the spectacular achievements of United States science and technology were accomplished in unusually unrestricted environments. Mistakes and false starts were made but, just because the open nature of such errors drew criticism, corrections were readily taken. U.S. openness compared favorably with that of the United States’ opponent nations, in particular the practices of the former Soviet Union. This openness did not permit other countries to catch up; on the contrary, the technology gap between the U.S. and the Soviet Union widened throughout the Cold War. Even after the end of the Cold War there is evident need for protecting truly sensitive information, in particular in the interest of retarding, or hopefully preventing, the proliferation of nuclear weapons. But many reviews of U.S. security practices, in particular those carried out by committees of the National Academy of Sciences, have emphasized that security by restriction should apply only to those subjects whose release would demonstrably do major damage to national security. In other words, such restrictions should build high fences around few truly sensitive areas and not extend restrictive practices to wider areas of scientific communication. There are strong reasons for these conclusions, both born from the idealistic conviction that scientific results belong to the whole world and from the pragmatic conclusion that broad restrictions on scientific exchanges are not enforceable in practice, certainly not over a protracted period. Thus we strongly criticize much of the thoughtless extension of security restrictions over ‘‘sensitive’’ information that has no demonstrable direct security implications. The Cox Commission implicitly considers China’s thefts of U.S. secret information as a hostile act, yet essentially all nations in the world collect information from other countries whether they are friends or adversaries. The U.S. arrested an Israeli spy many years ago and more recently arrested an Australian agent without accusing Israel or Australia of hostile acts. Collecting information from other countries, which those nations do not wish to have disclosed, is part of the international mores of today. Generally, collection of such information is carried out clandestinely, and neither success of collection efforts nor penetration of secrecy barriers erected by nations are publicly acknowledged. Let me examine the accusations of widespread Chinese ‘‘thefts’’ of vital nu clear weapons secrets that are contained in the Cox Commission report. That report states that ‘‘The People’s Republic of China has stolen design information of the U.S. most advanced thermonuclear weapons.’’ Yet, in using the word ‘‘stolen’’ the report includes in that term indigenous efforts of China in designing their own nuclear weapons, information gathered from basic science or open scientific sources, and information obtained by espionage. In contrast to the conclusion of the Cox Commission, the intelligence community concludes that it cannot determine the extent of weapons information gathered from each of these sources. Although the Cox Commission does not address the range of information obtained by China between that publicly available and that still classified, it also does not assess the extent to which weapons that could be developed as a result of the ‘‘stolen’’ information could impact U.S. national security. The Cox Commission agrees that no complete nuclear weapons drawings or design details have been acquired by China. Can the information alleged to be stolen by the Cox Commission lead to new Chinese weapons designs that can be fielded without nuclear tests? In this latter connection, we note that China is a signatory of the Comprehensive Nuclear Weapons Test Ban Treaty and has given assurance that it will not conduct further nuclear weapons tests even in the absence of ratification of that treaty. What are the facts? China tested its first nuclear weapon 36 years ago and since then has accumulated between 400 and 500 nuclear weapons in its inventory compared with an enduring stockpile of more than 10,000 such weapons in the possession of the U.S. and about 15,000 nuclear weapons held by Russia. The composition of U.S. stockpiles are different from those of Russia. The U.S.