Technology Archive

This month, Israel launched a new surveillance satellite reportedly aimed at monitoring Iran’s nuclear program. In an email interview, Deganit Paikowsky, a senior researcher the Yuval Neeman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security and an adjunct lecturer at the Security Studies Program at Tel Aviv University, explained the evolution and objectives of Israel’s space program. WPR: What is the background of Israel’s space program, and how has it evolved recently? Deganit Paikowsky: Israel has a long and successful legacy in space, having developed robust and competitive space industries and applications for national and commercial use. The Israeli Space Agency (ISA) […]

Americans are having a hard time coming to terms with the effect of National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks and the damage they have done to America’s status in the world. In part, U.S. leaders do not want to admit that the leaks were merely the final straw for the growing discontent with American global leadership that predated Snowden and has many causes, including failure in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global economic crisis that spread from Wall Street. The unipolar moment was never popular—the leaks confirm that it is over. Snowden’s material has been shaped to portray […]

Everyone knows that the United States needs to shrink its defense budget and national security organization; the challenge is doing so intelligently. Without attention to the long-term effects of the downsizing, the rush to cut could stifle creativity and fail to cultivate strategic visionaries. The net effect would be pawning America’s future security to make today’s budget. Fostering creativity is not easy for an immense, ponderous bureaucracy even in the best of times. This is particularly true for the national security organization, which instinctively leans toward risk aversion, cautious consensus-building and a focus on the short term. Senior officials know […]