Trump..... (The Sophistry Thread)

johnny

I'll tells ya!
Staff member
Hey Johnny - do you know how DPRK managed to both get the expertise & equipment to build nuclear weapons?

Obviously, this has happened over decades, but surely the rest of the world could have done enough to stop critical pieces of information &/or hardware from being available to them?

What has gone wrong here?
Can't recall off the top of my head but I'd guess it was AQ Khan's network that provided the enrichment know how. The device itself isn't a huge leap, a simple gun type detonation device is pretty low tech. However the deliverable, minaturised implosion device they're believed to be able to manufacture is a big leap. The Chinese assisted with launcher tech and hardware, according to the open source and their missile tech comes from the original SCUD design. I'm not too big on the tech so probably best to do a little bit of reading on that - will post some if I come across it (thinking of an article I read yesterday, will have a look).
 

johnny

I'll tells ya!
Staff member
From Foreign Policy mag:


The Game Is Over and North Korea Has Won
Donald Trump can whine all he wants, but we're now living in a world where American power is less relevant than ever.
BY JEFFREY LEWISAUGUST 9,
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/09/the-game-is-over-and-north-korea-has-won/

The Game Is Over and North Korea Has Won

The Washington Post reported yesterday that North Korea has a large stockpile of compact nuclear weapons that can arm the country’s missiles, including its new intercontinental ballistic missiles that are capable of hitting the United States. That’s another way of saying: game over.

Also: I told you so.

There are really two assessments in the Post’s report. One, dated July 28, is that the intelligence community — not just the Defense Intelligence Agency, contrary to what you may have heard — “assesses North Korea has produced nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery, to include delivery by ICBM-class missiles.” The other assessment, published earlier in July, stated that North Korea had 60 nuclear weapons — higher than the estimates usually given in the press. Put them together, though, and its pretty clear that the window for denuclearizing North Korea, by diplomacy or by force, has closed.

These judgments are front-page news, but only because we’ve been living in collective denial. Both intelligence assessments are consistent with what the North Koreans have been saying for some time, for reasons I outlined in a column here at Foreign Policy immediately after the September 2016 nuclear test titled, “North Korea’s Nuke Program Is Way More Sophisticated Than You Think: This is now a serious nuclear arsenal that threatens the region and, soon, the continental United States.”

Authors rarely get to pick titles, and almost never like them, but I think the editors at FP got this one about right. It is about as subtle as a jackhammer, although even so the message didn’t seem to sink in.

Let’s walk through the evidence.

North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests. That is really quite a lot. Looking at other countries that have conducted five nuclear tests, our baseline expectation for North Korea should be that it has a nuclear weapon small enough to arm a ballistic missile and is well on its way toward testing a thermonuclear — yes, thermonuclear — weapon.

A lot of people got the wrong idea after North Korea’s first nuclear test failed, and subsequent nuclear tests seemed smaller than they should be. There was a common view that the North Koreans, well, kind of sucked at making nuclear weapons. That was certainly my first impression. But there was always another possibility, one that dawned on me gradually. According to a defector account, North Korea tried to skip right toward relatively advanced nuclear weapons that were compact enough to arm ballistic missiles and made use of relatively small amounts of plutonium. That should not have been surprising; both Iraq and Pakistan similarly skipped designing and testing a more cumbersome Fat Man-style implosion device. The disappointing yields of North Korea’s first few nuclear tests were not the result of incompetence, but ambition. So, while the world was laughing at North Korea’s first few nuclear tests, they were learning — a lot.

And then there is the issue of North Korea’s nuclear test site. North Korea tests its nuclear weapons in tunnels beneath very large mountains. When my research institute used topography data collected from space to build a 3-D model of the site, we realized that the mountains are so tall that they may be hiding how big the nuclear explosions are. Some of the “disappointments” may not have been disappointments at all, and the successes were bigger than we realized. I think the best interpretation of the available evidence is that North Korea accepted some technical risk early in its program to move more quickly toward missile-deliverable nuclear weapons.

The fact that North Korea’s nuclear weapons used less fissile material than we expected helps explain the second judgment that North Korea has more bombs than is usually reported. The defector claimed that North Korea’s first nuclear weapon contained only 4 kilograms of the limited supply of plutonium North Korea made, and continues to make, at its reactor at Yongbyon. (For a long while, experts claimed the reactor was not operating when thermal images plainly showed that it was.) The North Koreans themselves claimed the first test used only 2 kilograms of plutonium. Those claims struck many people, including me, as implausible at first. But they were only implausible in the sense that such a device would probably fail when tested — and the first North Korean test did fail. The problem is North Korea kept trying, and its later tests succeeded.

We also must take seriously that North Korea has perhaps stretched its supply of plutonium by integrating some high-enriched uranium into each bomb and developing all-uranium designs. North Korea has an unknown capacity to make highly enriched uranium. We’ve long noticed that the single facility that North Korea has shown off to outsiders seems smaller than North Korea’s newly renovated capacity to mine and mill uranium; we naturally wondered where all that extra uranium is going. (My research institute thinks it might be fun to estimate how much uranium North Korea enriches based on how much it mills, if you know anyone with grant money burning a hole in her pocket.)

Unless the intelligence community knows exactly where North Korea is enriching uranium and how big each facility is, we’re just guessing how many nuclear weapons the country may have. But 60 nuclear weapons doesn’t sound absurdly high.

The thing is, we knew all this already. Sure, sure it isn’t the same when I say it. I mean, I am just some rando living out in California. But now that someone with a tie and real job in Washington has said it, it is news.

The big question is where to go from here. Some of my colleagues still think the United States might persuade North Korea to abandon, or at least freeze, its nuclear and missile programs. I am not so sure. I suspect we might have to settle for trying to reduce tensions so that we live long enough to figure this problem out. But there is only one way to figure out who is right: Talk to the North Koreans.

The other options are basically terrible. There is no credible military option. North Korea has some unknown number of nuclear-armed missiles, maybe 60, including ones that can reach the United States; do you really think U.S. strikes could get all of them? That not a single one would survive to land on Seoul, Tokyo, or New York? Or that U.S. missile defenses would work better than designed, intercepting not most of the missiles aimed at the United States, but every last one of them? Are you willing to be your life on that?

On a good day, maybe we get most of the missiles. We save most of the cities, like Seoul and New York, but lose a few like Tokyo. Two out three ain’t bad, right?

I kid — but not really. Welcome to our new world. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
 

johnny

I'll tells ya!
Staff member
Interesting analysis Johnny, so what does NK gain if it attacks Seoul? What will it achieve other than it's eventual downfall?
It doesn't gain anything as it is a deterrent and that means PY doesn't ever want to carry it out as that means everything has gone to shit.

A deterrent is based on two things, essentially - capability and will. You have the capability to carry an act out and the willingness to follow through on the threat. Nukes work in the same way. DPRK lets everyone know they have these artillery ranks poised to annihilate Seoul and their previous activities (sinking Cheonan, shelling Yeongpyong Do, attempted assassinations, special ops infiltration, etc.) suggest that they are aggressive and not afraid to fight it out. That deters people from taking risks because you can't stop much of that artillery before it fires off and the consequences are huge.

So, PY doesn't want to shell Seoul but they do want everyone to know that they have the capability to do so and that they will carry through with it if they are pushed too hard. They don't want to use it because that means people know that this risk exists but they're willing to run it - which means the deterrence failed the fundamental test and secondly, once you use a deterrence you lose it. Exactly the same basic strategy for nukes.
 

flamin'trek

Likes Bikes and Dirt
North Korea is sounding more and more like a bigger version of the Waco thing with the Branch Davidians. Kinda want to be left alone, but armed to the teeth, mentally 'different' and no real plans for prosperity.
 

johnny

I'll tells ya!
Staff member
North Korea is sounding more and more like a bigger version of the Waco thing with the Branch Davidians. Kinda want to be left alone, but armed to the teeth, mentally 'different' and no real plans for prosperity.
That exports violence on a global level, exports huge amounts of drugs, kidnaps huge amounts of innocent people, attempts to sell nuclear tech on the black market.....etc. etc.

I also don't recall David Koresh starving everyone in his compound, executing and torturing them either.
 

Knuckles

Lives under a bridge
North Korea is sounding more and more like a bigger version of the Waco thing with the Branch Davidians. Kinda want to be left alone, but armed to the teeth, mentally 'different' and no real plans for prosperity.
That exports violence on a global level, exports huge amounts of drugs, kidnaps huge amounts of innocent people, attempts to sell nuclear tech on the black market.....etc. etc.

I also don't recall David Koresh starving everyone in his compound, executing and torturing them either.
Yep, more akin to silk road.....if the deep web were run by a Rosie O'Donnell impersonator with daddy issues, a jack Russell complex and a deep seated hatred of his hairdresser.
 

pink poodle

気が狂っている男
That exports violence on a global level, exports huge amounts of drugs, kidnaps huge amounts of innocent people, attempts to sell nuclear tech on the black market.....etc. etc.

I also don't recall David Koresh starving everyone in his compound, executing and torturing them either.
The world was too impatient for David.
 

pharmaboy

Eats Squid
Far out johnny, so depressing.

Sometime in the future someone's going to have to play a bit tougher on nuclear arms - what's next afghanistan?, Saudis, tripoli?

So from that it seems the Chinese have helped - what I can't quite figure out is why the heavens name they think that is a good idea?
 

johnny

I'll tells ya!
Staff member
Yep, more akin to silk road.....if the deep web were run by a Rosie O'Donnell impersonator with daddy issues, a jack Russell complex and a deep seated hatred of his hairdresser.
Lol, even the DPRK is not immune to the vile plague that is the hipster.

Take a look at grandpa Kim Il Sung. Apparently the advice was that he only had 5 years under dad (where as KJI had 20 under KIS) so best look the part with the hair and the paunch because a 30 something with SFA OJT needs all the legitimacy he can muster.

In saying that, the hand he's played has been a right chip off the old block.
 
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moorey

call me Mia
Jury is definitely out there. I know who fired first but most else will never be be clear.
I don't think the jury is out on his sexual exploitation of the young girls....or the separation of those lonely, suggestible people from their families.
edit. I think I meant impressionable.
 
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dej

Likes Bikes
Where is NK getting all the raw materials/tech to build these weapons, or where to they buy them from? why not go after the suppliers?
 
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