The new National Intelligence Council's report on what the world may look like in 2025 is so dense that a lot of really interesting findings couldn't be included in the story written when the study was unveiled on Nov 20. So Nukes & Spooks thought we'd throw some out there - in no particular order - for popular consideration:

One factor that could mitigate the socio-economic impact of aging workforces in many countries over the next two decades is the economic empowerment of women. The report finds that recent improvements in health care, education and employment opportunities for women and girls have contributed as much to increased economic productivity in recent years as technological improvements. "Over the next 20 years, the increased entry of women in the workplace may continue to mitigate the economic impacts of global aging," the report said.

It added that "nowhere is the role of women potentially more important for geopolitical change than in the Muslim world." The report noted that Muslim women do far better assimilating in Europe than Muslim men and that they may in the future "help show the way to greater social assimilation and reduce the likelihood of religious extremism."

Experts expect HIV/AIDS to remain a global pandemic through 2025, with Sub-Saharan Africa continuing to be the "epicenter of infection," the report said. Even if an effective vaccine or a "self-administered microbicide" are developed by then, it is unlikely that either will be "widely disseminated," the report continued.

If prevention efforts and the effectiveness of life-extending anti-retroviral therapies remain at current levels, the world's HIV-positive population is forecast to climb from the estimated 33 million today to an estimated 50 million by 2025. Nearly half of those cases will be in Sub-Saharan Africa. If an all-out prevention campaign were in place by 2015, the world's HIV-positive cases would peak and then fall to about 25 million by 2025.

Even with a massive effort to develop clean fossil fuels and renewable energy sources, all current technologies "are inadequate for replacing traditional energy architectures on the scale needed," according to the report. "New energy technologies will probably not be commercially viable and widespread by 2025," it continued.

"Simply meeting baseline energy demand over the next two decades is estimated to require more than $3 trillion of investment in traditional hydrocarbons by companies built up over more than a century and with market capitalizations in the hundreds of billions of dollars. We expect any new form of energy to demand similarly massive investment," the report said.

The geopolitical consequences of reducing global use of oil and gas will be "immense," according to a section of the report called "Winners and Loser in a Post-Petroleum World." The biggest loser: Saudi Arabia. It will suffer "the biggest shock," and its leaders could face serious challenges from religious conservatives as they try to implement major economic reforms to diversify the economy, including full participation by women in the economy.

Another major loser would be Iran, whose populist economic policies would be undermined by reductions in oil and gas prices. Such a development could fuel demands for economic reform, including opening up the economy to Western investment and stronger ties with Western countries including the United States. "Iranian leaders might be more willing to trade their nuclear policies for aid and trade," the report said.

Experts currently consider 21 countries, whose combined populations total 600 million people, to have shortages of arrable land or fresh water. That number is forecast to rise to 36 countries, whose populations will total about 1.4 billion people, by 2025. "Lack of access to stable supplies of water is reaching unprecedented proportions in many areas of the world and is likely to grow worse owing to rapid urbanization and population growth," the report said.

Relations between the United States and Russia may be their worst since the end of the Cold War, but that hasn’t stopped the sides from forging ahead with efforts to prevent nuclear weapons-grade materials from falling into the hands of terrorists.

In the latest measure of progress, U.S. and Russian experts have completed a project to strengthen security at one of Russia’s largest facilities for storing nuclear weapons-grade materials, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The facility is located at the Mayak Nuclear Association, a sprawling decades-old nuclear weapons plant that suffered accidents in the 1950s and 1960s that exposed workers and residents in the surrounding area of Chelyabinsk to radiation.

The security upgrades at the storage facility, which contains the largest amount of nuclear weapons-grade material of any such site in Russia, were funded by the United States at a cost of $15 million under an agreement that President Bush signed in February 2005 with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin while Putin was president.

Russia refuses to disclose how much material is being kept at Mayak. Rosatom, Russia’s state-run nuclear energy agency, and the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, the Department of Energy agency that oversees the U.S. nuclear arsenal, completed the work at Mayak three months ahead of deadline.

The Bush-Putin accord, known as the Bratislava Initiative, bolstered U.S.-Russian cooperation in upgrading the security of nuclear weapons-grade materials, improving emergency responses to nuclear mishaps and converting reactors around the world from using highly enriched uranium, the fuel used in nuclear bombs, to low-enriched uranium.

The work has continued unhindered despite grave tensions between Moscow and Washington over the installation of U.S. missile defense sites in Eastern Europe and this summer’s Russian invasion of the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

“It’s absolutely clear that the United States and Russia are committed to taking steps to preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism,” NNSA Deputy Administrator Will Tobey told Nukes and Spooks in a telephone interview.

Tobey said the United States has spent close to $2 billion since the mid-1990s on helping Russia secure its nuclear weapons-grade materials, destroy excess Cold War era nuclear warheads, missiles and chemical and biological weapons and nuclear bombers, and employ Russian weapons scientists.

The United States also has a “second line of defense” program of installing radiation detectors at Russian ports, airports and border crossings to detect attempts to smuggle nuclear weapons-grade materials out of the country, he said.

U.S. and Russian experts have converted 62 research reactors in 31 countries from using highly enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium, and returned almost 2 metric tons of fresh and spent fuel to Russia, Tobey recounted.

   Four years after he was killed in Iraq, a Marine Corps lance corporal has been selected as the first recipient of the Intelligence Community Medal of Valor.

   Lance Cpl. James E. Swain, an intelligence analyst with Company K, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regimental Combat Team, 1st Marine Divison, died during the Battle of Fallujah on Nov. 15, 2004, according to an announcement issued by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell. He was from Kokomo, Ind.

   According to McConnell, Swain was manning a vehicle mounted machine gun during an operation to collect targeting intelligence. As his colleagues were about to enter a building, he noticed that insurgents had set up an ambush and he opened fire. His shots alerted the other Marines and averted the ambush, but left Swain exposed, and he was mortally wounded.

   Swain's family is to be presented with the award, which recognizes heroism and courage, at a ceremony at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va., on Nov.14.