GlobalSecurity.org

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]