GlobalSecurity.org is an American independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that serves as a think tank, and research and consultancy group.
The site is focused on national and international security issues;[1] military analysis, systems, and strategies;[2][3] intelligence matters;[4][5] and space policy.[6][7]
It was founded in December 2000 by John Pike, who had worked since 1983[8] with the Federation of American Scientists, where he directed the space policy, cyberstrategy, military analysis, nuclear resource, and intelligence resource projects.[9] GlobalSecurity.org is headquartered in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area in Alexandria, Virginia,[10][11] and Pike remains as its director.[12]
The website's target audience includes journalists, policy-makers, scholars, political scientists, military and defense personnel, and the public.[13][11] It supplies background information and developing news stories,[14] providing online analysis and articles that analyze what are sometimes little-discussed topics[11] in categories that include WMDs, military and defense, security and cybersecurity, intelligence, and space technology.[15][16][17] It also disseminates primary documentation and other original materials,[11] provides detailed, high-resolution satellite images and video footage from war zones,[18][19] and provides definitions of widely used terms for the public.[20] The organization also serves as a defense, military, foreign policy, and national-security watchdog group.[19][21][22][23][24][25][excessive citations]
In part it seeks to find new approaches to international security, and promotes achieving cooperative international security and preventing nuclear proliferation.[11][16][26] 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.[16]
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".[18] 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".[27]
