GlobalSecurity.org

GlobalSecurity.org is a nonpartisan,[1] independent,[2][3] nonprofit organization[4] that serves as a think tank,[5][6] research and consultancy group,[7][8][9][10] and website. It is focused on national and international security issues;[11] military analysis, systems, and strategies;[9][12] intelligence matters;[13][14] and space policy analysis.[15][16] It was founded in December 2000 by John Pike, who had previously worked since 1983[17] with the Federation of American Scientists, where he directed the space policy, cyberstrategy, military analysis, nuclear resource, and intelligence resource projects.[4] GlobalSecurity.org is headquartered in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area in Alexandria, Virginia,[18][19] and John Pike is its director.[20]

The website's target audience includes journalists, policy-makers, scholars, political scientists, military and defense personnel, and the public.[21][19] It supplies background information and developing news stories,[22] providing online analysis and articles that analyze what are sometimes little-discussed topics[19] in categories that include WMDs, military and defense, security and cybersecurity, intelligence, and space technology.[23][24][25] It also disseminates primary documentation and other original materials,[19] provides detailed, high-resolution satellite images and video footage from war zones,[26][27][28] and provides definitions of widely used terms for the public.[29] The organization also serves as a defense, military, foreign policy, and national-security watchdog group.[28][30][31][32][33][34]

In part it seeks to find new approaches to international security, and promotes achieving cooperative international security and preventing nuclear proliferation.[19][24][35] To this end it seeks to improve intelligence-community capabilities to respond to new threats and to prevent the need for military action, while at the same time enhancing the effectiveness of military forces when needed.[24]

GlobalSecurity.org was listed in the War Intelligence category of Forbes' now-defunct "Best of the Web" directory from 2001 onward; the directory cited its "Depth of military information", and noted its "collection of satellite images and video footage from the war zone".[26][27] In his 2004 book Plan of Attack, about the behind-the-scenes decision-making that led the Bush administration to invade Iraq, Bob Woodward called the website "an invaluable resource on military, intelligence and national security matters".[36]