Running blind: The silencing and censoring of environmental threats to US national security

Tue, 13 May 2025 04:29:48 +1000

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://thebulletin.org/2025/05/running-blind-the-silencing-and-censoring-of-environmental-threats-to-us-national-security/>

"For more than half a century, US intelligence agencies and the armed forces
have analyzed threats to national security from a range of environmental
angles, including dependence on fossil fuels, competition for scarce water
resources and strategic minerals, and especially human-caused climate change.
These reports have been produced under presidential administrations across the
political spectrum.

Hundreds of assessments have come from, among others, White House National
Security Strategy reports, Department of Defense Quadrennial Defense reviews,
and studies from every branch of the military, all the war colleges, and the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Their consistent
conclusions: Environmental factors pose direct, indirect, and accelerating
threats to US forces, operations, bases, and national security interests.

Immediately after the inauguration of President Donald Trump in January 2025,
his administration began purging these reports from the public record: removing
environmental security studies from government websites or disabling those
pages, cutting funding for environmental security studies, and requiring
military and intelligence communities to suppress and censor references to
climate change. Trump also rescinded Biden’s executive order 14008 that said,
“climate considerations shall be an essential element of United States foreign
policy and national security.” This censorship was not limited to military and
intelligence work; the administration ordered other federal agencies to
“archive or unpublish” materials related to climate change as well.

These actions will not reduce the actual risk that environmental problems pose
for national security or the military—the physical reality of those threats
will be unchanged. Instead, they will blind the country to environmental
instability and real-world conflict risks that jeopardize our military and
national security."

Via Joyce Donahue.

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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