On 'a continuum with expansion' : UK-US intelligence relations & wider reflections on international intelligence liaison

Since 9/11, intelligence liaison has increased exponentially. Yet, both in international affairs and within the academic fields of international relations (IR) and intelligence studies, the phenomenon of intelligence liaison remains under-researched and under-theorised. Moreover, intelligence studies remain remarkably disconnected from IR. Accordingly, this study attempts to advance a timely understanding of both international intelligence liaison generally, and UK-US intelligence liaison specifically, in a contemporary context. Methodologically, this is accomplished through conducting a qualitative analysis of UK-US intelligence liaison focussed on two ‘critical’ and ‘intensive’ case studies. These represent the key issues over which the UK and US have liaised, namely counter-terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) non-/counter-proliferation. In practical terms, the ‘rise’ of intelligence liaison can be substantially explained. However, the phenomenon itself can only be ‘theorised’ so far. Intelligence is, by its very nature, a fragmented subject. Accordingly, cascades of complexities increasingly enter, especially at the lower/micro levels of analysis - where the details and specifics concerning particular sources and operations matter further. Therefore, intelligence liaison effectively represents the concept of ‘complex co-existence plurality’ in action. This is both at and across all its different, yet closely interrelated, levels of analysis, and also when broken down into eight systemic variables or attributes. Notwithstanding this complexity, wider conclusions can be drawn, allowing this thesis to advance the proposition that we are now witnessing the globalisation of intelligence. Overall, this trend is facilitated through the developments occurring in a web of overlapping international intelligence liaison arrangements, which collectively span the globe. Reflective of a continuously evolving attempt for ‘optimum outreach’, these intraliaison developments include: firstly, the establishing of frameworks and defining of operational parameters for the intelligence liaison arrangements, and then their subsequent consolidation (or normalisation) and optimisation over time. These wider trends are simultaneously observable in the microcosm of UK-US intelligence liaison relations, which are also on ‘a continuum with expansion’ as the UK and US remain broadly exemplary ‘friends and allies’

Acknowledgment

¾ Clock delay and skew minimization are two important objectives in high speed VLSI circuit design. Buffer insertion has been used as an effective approach to achieve both minimal delay and skew. In this paper, we present a buffer insertion algorithm for optimizing highspeed clock tree. For a given wiring tree, the algorithm inserts the same number of buffers along every source-tosink path, such that both path delay and skew are optimized. After buffer insertion, each subtree rooted at the source or each buffer has almost the same average delay. This property helps to reduce signal delay and skew sensitivity due to process variations. Elmore delay model is used in our optimization procedure which provides a more accurate delay evaluation than that the simple wire length model does. The simulated annealing method is used in our algorithm to find the optimal buffer positions. I. INTRODUCTION With the remarkable evolution of VLSI technology, clock delay and skew minimization have become ..