John E. Pike (born 1953) is a national security analyst and director and founder of GlobalSecurity.org. An easily accessible pundit, he was active in opposing the Strategic Defense Initiative, and International Traffic in Arms Regulations, and consulting on Near-Earth objects that are potential threats to the Earth.
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John Pike was born in New Orleans. He attended Vanderbilt University as an undergraduate, where he studied technology and public policy.
From 1982 until 2000 he worked for the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), where he built their website. Making extensive use of open sources, he documented the intelligence policy and programs, and technology policy and programs.
Pike in 1983 established the Space Policy Working Group, composed of Congressional staff and advocacy organizations concerned with missile defense issues.[1] He was a major critic of the Strategic Defense Initiative.
In 1984, he participated in a Congressional Office of Technology Assessment workshop Arms Control in Space.[2]
In 1991 he participated in the NASA International Near-Earth Object (NEO) Detection Panel, and consulted for the NEO Working Group of the International Astronomical Union.[1] In 1991 he was awarded the FAS Public Service Award.[3]
In 1994, he uncovered the plans for a new National Reconnaissance Office headquarters building at Chantilly, Virginia, that had been paid for out of a slush fund, in its black budget.[4]
In 1997, he was awarded the Golden Candle Award, by the Open Source Society, (Robert David Steele).[5]
In 1998, he was involved with the dual use controversy. Congress dismissed his critique, and passed the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). (Please refer to the Congressional Testimony section).
In 1998, he was on the Steering Committee of the Brookings Institution U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project.[6]
In 2000, he founded Global Security which is a prominent media source in the public policy and event commentary of defense, space, intelligence, WMD, and homeland security.
In 2003 he submitted a declaration in support of the FOIA suit by the Federation of American Scientists to find the budget total for the CIA.[7]
In 2006, he was named to the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University's Hall of Fame.[8]
The stuff that I find out is findable - and basically findable with fairly rudimentary methods that would be familiar to any journalist or any intelligence officer. I have methods, but I don't have any sources - I don't have people telling me this stuff. I have to find stuff out.
I don't know that I would view myself as being left of center because I've found myself in strange company on many issues.
Intelligence is our first line of defense. Our intelligence agencies contribute more to our national security than any other part of the national security community. Intelligence is basically the way the government figures out what is going on. Intelligence gives you the ability to solve problems while they are still manageable.
We are working to restructure American conventional military forces from obsolete Cold War practices, towards new capabilities aligned with the post-Cold War security environment. We seek to improve the capabilities of the American intelligence community, reducing the need to resort to the use of force, while enhancing the effectiveness of military forces when needed.
We are working to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons and the risk of their use - both by existing nuclear weapons states as well as by other states seeking to acquire such capabilities - leading to the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons.
GlobalSecurity.org is also committed to articulating a vision for the use of space technology to enhance international peace and security.[4]
He has set the standard for what an individual can do in political life based on their own creativity.
I think he was the preeminent individual critic of the Strategic Defense Initiative during the 1980s. More recently, he has pioneered the public interest exploitation of satellite imagery. And he was the primary architect of the FAS Web site, which without boasting is a unique resource in national security policy matters.
If there's an ideology - it would be access to information and freedom to express an opinion. He has taken freedom of expression far beyond most other people - and far beyond what the government would like,[4]
He worked around the clock, to the point of exhaustion, and with tremendous creativity, ingenuity and selflessness in sharing his work.
I view him as the Edwin Land of our community - Land never graduated from Harvard. He was a great genius, and he didn't have time for college. John didn't have time for anything that didn't interest him. As opposed to working on lost causes, John works on things that are ripe for media attention - and he's been far more successful at managing the media than any scientist at FAS.[9]
He is the perfect Internet defense analyst, because if you want to talk about anything fleeting, audacious, anarchic, that's John Pike.[4]
John Pike ... knows more about more aspects of space and national security than almost anyone outside the world of classified programs. His mixture of diligent research and pungent sound bites made him one of the most effective critics of the Star Wars program in the 1980s. Now he is a born-again webmaster, presiding with evangelical zeal over the bountiful resource that is the FAS Web site. Pike has a slightly fevered air, with a laugh that sounds like automatic gunfire on a battlefield. [10]
Pike is one of the most respected space policy analysts in the world[10]
But one defense analyst familiar with Pike's work, who asked not to be quoted by name, said that Pike's passionate curiosity is both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. Pike is not particularly disciplined or methodical in his work, the analyst said. And the FAS Web site, a perfect reflection of Pike's quirky mind, is far from comprehensive. "If it were an encyclopedia, it would be non-publishable," the analyst said, adding that he has no trouble understanding why FAS funders found Pike's "defense policy anarchy unpalatable."
A senior U.S. intelligence official was no less critical: "In his mad rush to release any morsel of information that he acquires about the intelligence community, he sometimes loses sight of the possible consequences." [4]