Global Security Program
The Lab’s work in global security aims to reduce and mitigate the dangers posed by the spread or use of weapons of mass destruction and by threats to energy and environmental security. Livermore has been working on global security and homeland security for decades, predating both the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. LLNL staff have been heavily involved in the cooperative nonproliferation programs with Russia to secure at-risk weapons materials and assist former weapons workers in developing peaceful applications and self-sustaining job opportunities for their expertise and technologies. In the mid-1990s, Lab scientists began efforts to devise improved biodetection capabilities, leading to miniaturized and autonomous instruments that can detect biothreat agents in a few minutes instead of the days to weeks previously required for DNA analysis.
Today, Livermore researchers address the full spectrum of threats – radiological/nuclear, chemical, biological, explosives, and cyber. They combine physical and life sciences, engineering, computations, and analysis to develop technologies that solve real-world problems. Activities are grouped into five programs:
- Nonproliferation. Preventing the spread of materials, technology and expertise related to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and detecting WMD proliferation activities worldwide.
- Domestic security: Anticipating, innovating and delivering technological solutions to prevent and mitigate devastating high-leverage attacks on U.S. soil.
- Defense: Developing and demonstrating new concepts and capabilities to help the Department of Defense prevent and deter harm to the nation, its citizens and its military forces.
- Intelligence: Working at the intersection of science, technology and analysis to provide insight into the threats to national security posed by foreign entities.
- Energy and environmental security: Furnishing scientific understanding and technological expertise to devise energy and environmental solutions at global, regional and local scales.
Read more about this topic: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Famous quotes containing the words global, security and/or program:
“However global I strove to become in my thinking over the past twenty years, my sons kept me rooted to an utterly pedestrian view, intimately involved with the most inspiring and fractious passages in human development. However unconsciously by now, motherhood informs every thought I have, influencing everything I do. More than any other part of my life, being a mother taught me what it means to be human.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“Is a Bill of Rights a security for [religious liberty]? If there were but one sect in America, a Bill of Rights would be a small protection for liberty.... Freedom derives from a multiplicity of sects, which pervade America, and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society. For where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“To the cry of “follow Mormons and prairie dogs and find good land,” Civil War veterans flocked into Nebraska, joining a vast stampede of unemployed workers, tenant farmers, and European immigrants.”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)