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I'm sitting at some boring ethics lecture and was surprised that few academics worked with formally classified or otherwise dangerous information.

I'm curious how this knowledge is published, stored, and disseminated in practice.

A few ideas come to mind:

  • Research on the blast radius of munitions
  • Imaging and communication systems for military hardware
  • Culture of pathogens such as Anthrax

What happens if your research was commissioned by the DoD?

Rodrigo de Azevedo
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Mikhail
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    Possible duplicate of Can a PhD thesis be confidential? – Ric Jul 31 '16 at 22:28
  • @Ric Hi Rick, this isn't limited to PhDs, it also includes publications and venues for this work in general. For example, this there a Nature Classified Communications ? – Mikhail Jul 31 '16 at 22:29
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    Many institutions have a requirement that research conducted there be open, not secret. Here is Cornell's policy: "Given the open nature of Cornell University, research projects which do not permit the free and open publication, presentation, or discussion of results are not acceptable. [...] [R]esearch which is confidential to the sponsor or which is classified for security purposes is not permitted at Cornell University." – Nate Eldredge Jul 31 '16 at 22:32
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    Usually such research would not be conducted at universities or published in the open literature. It would be conducted within a government or military institute; their results might be "published" in internal communications, but that would be subject to the organization's internal rules. – Nate Eldredge Jul 31 '16 at 22:34
  • @NateEldredge Hi Nate, thanks for the info. It might be good to put it as a formal answer. – Mikhail Jul 31 '16 at 22:35
  • @NateEldredge Historically Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun had a thesis on munitions, only part of which was classified (see Wikipedia). Not sure if this is modern approach. – Mikhail Jul 31 '16 at 22:36
  • @Mikhail Your question ends with "What happens if your student's PhD thesis was commissioned by the DoD?" You might want to update it to include other work if you're interested in that. – Ric Jul 31 '16 at 22:44
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    In my field (communication networks), there is a major conference that has both "open" sessions/proceedings and export controlled or classified sessions/proceedings. See MILCOM. – ff524 Jul 31 '16 at 22:47
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    The specific question that is being asked here is unclear to me, however, Perhaps you can [edit] your post to clarify (in particular: to specify in the title what your question is, not just what it is about.) – ff524 Jul 31 '16 at 22:50

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For the US Department of Defense there is the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). It is like PubMed Central but for DoD documents. Some of the content has been cleared for public release and is open to the public. Much of the content, however, has not been cleared for public release and access is controlled by a DoD employees common access card (CAC) and the network that DTIC is being accessed from. Not cleared for public release is not the same as classified/secret/top secret. Access to classified material is again CAC controlled and requires a dedicated computer on a protected network. I think, but am not sure, that DTIC is the gateway to much of the classified literature within the classified network.

StrongBad
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