Technology and new media innovation have fundamentally changed the conditions for statecraft and negotiating and implementing arms control agreements in the 21st century, said Rose Gottemoeller, assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification, and compliance. “My experience negotiating the New START treaty put me right in the middle of this revolution,” said Gottemoeller in a speech at the University of Washington in Seattle. She recalled her experience as a junior member of the US negotiating delegation for START I in the early 1990s, when US officials had to shuttle masses of paper among delegation members, and fax machines transmitted information back and forth between the Soviet Union and the United States. Today, noted Gottemoeller in her Tuesday speech, e-mail has displaced faxes and has made transmitting information possible within a matter of minutes and decreased the amount of trips negotiators must take back and forth to Washington, D.C.
The design of the launch facilities for the Air Force’s new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile are likely to undergo major revision, posing yet another challenge for the much-delayed and over-budget program to modernize the land-based component of America’s nuclear triad, officials said.