The Center for Defense Information was founded in 1972 by retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Gene La Rocque. The CDI is dedicated to:
- strengthening national and international security through international cooperation;
- reducing reliance on unilateral military power to resolve conflict;
- reducing reliance on nuclear weapons;
- transforming and reforming the U.S. military establishment; and
- prudent oversight of defense programs.
Currently operating under the aegis of the World Security Institute, it is composed of academics and high-ranking retired U.S. military officers who conduct critical analyses of U.S. defense and security policy.
The CDI regularly publishes the "Defense Monitor". The group also maintains a website that includes information about terrorist activity.
After the 2008 U.S. elections, the CDI released "America’s Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress", a collection of briefing papers by a dozen defense intellectuals and retired military officers.
Winslow T. Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at CDI, expects costs for the F-35 Lightning II to significantly increase, in one example of the positions he has taken on military weapons systems. The reform project is funded by Philip A. Straus Jr., a photographer, and family. Wheeler, a former U.S. Senate and Government Accounting Office staffer, is a periodic contributor to CounterPunch's on-line site, among other publications.
The Center for Defense Information now exists in a research capacity as a component of the larger World Security Institute.
Read more about Center For Defense Information: Criticisms
Famous quotes containing the words center, defense and/or information:
“There is nothing more natural than to consider everything as starting from oneself, chosen as the center of the world; one finds oneself thus capable of condemning the world without even wanting to hear its deceitful chatter.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“He said, truly, that the reason why such greatly superior numbers quailed before him was, as one of his prisoners confessed, because they lacked a cause,—a kind of armor which he and his party never lacked. When the time came, few men were found willing to lay down their lives in defense of what they knew to be wrong; they did not like that this should be their last act in this world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Computers are good at swift, accurate computation and at storing great masses of information. The brain, on the other hand, is not as efficient a number cruncher and its memory is often highly fallible; a basic inexactness is built into its design. The brain’s strong point is its flexibility. It is unsurpassed at making shrewd guesses and at grasping the total meaning of information presented to it.”
—Jeremy Campbell (b. 1931)