Theodore Postol

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Theodore A. Postol (born 30 April 1946) is a professor emeritus of Science, Technology, and International Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prior to his work at MIT, he worked at Argonne National Laboratory, the Pentagon, and Stanford University. He was on the editorial board of the journal Science & Global Security until 2019. Postol is also a prominent critic of U.S. missile defense systems, challenging the technical efficacy of military technologies through independent analysis. Some of this analysis has been criticized by colleagues for errors, flaws in methodology, and factual inaccuracies. According to The Daily Telegraph in 2023, Postol has spent much of his career "trying to make sure that the U.S. doesn't build ballistic missile defences". Postol rose to national prominence in the early 1990s when he challenged U.S. Army claims regarding the success rate of the MIM-104 Patriot missile during the first Gulf War. While the government initially claimed a near-perfect interception rate, Postol’s analysis—later supported by a House Government Operations Committee investigation—concluded that the actual success rate was likely below 10%. For his work in disclosing misinformation regarding national missile defense, Postol has received numerous honors, including the Leo Szilard Prize (1990) and the Norbert Wiener Award (2001). In recent years, however, Postol’s work has been the subject of significant debate. He has vocally disputed Western intelligence assessments and the findings of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons regarding chemical weapons attacks in Syria (2013–2019), prompting the Science & Global Security editorial board to reject publication of Postol's article after they "identified a number of issues with the peer-review and revision process", leading to Postol resigning from the editorial board. He has also challenged assessments of North Korean ballistic missile capabilities, though the analysis was criticized by organizations such as Bellingcat and...