Tag Archives: nuclear weapons

Middle East spiral?

Here’s a scenario of how the Syria war and larger Middle East instability could escalate into something much worse.

As in imperial Europe in the period leading up to the First World War, the collapse of an entire order in the Middle East is in process, while forces long held in check are being released. In response, the former superpowers of the Cold War era have once again mobilized, at least modestly, even though both are fearful of a spark that could push them into direct conflict. Each has entangling regional relationships that could easily exacerbate the fight: Russia with Syria, the US with Saudi Arabia and Israel, plus NATO obligations to Turkey. (The Russians have already probed Turkish airspace and the Turks recently shot down a drone coyly labeled of “unknown origin.”)

Imagine a scenario that pulls any of those allies deeper into the mess: some Iranian move in Syria, which prompts a response by Israel in the Golan Heights, which prompts a Russian move in relation to Turkey, which prompts a call to NATO for help… you get the picture. Or imagine another scenario: with nearly every candidate running for president in the United States growling about the chance to confront Putin, what would happen if the Russians accidentally shot down an American plane? Could Obama resist calls for retaliation?

As before World War I, the risk of setting something in motion that can’t be stopped does exist.

As I’ve said before, I don’t think any of this is Obama’s fault, but if it does ultimately lead to something very bad, the roots may be traced back to events that happened on his watch whether they were under his control or not (also, clearly, to direct actions taken by his predecessor), and his legacy could be the president who let the post-World War II and post-Cold War order slip away.

Russian nuclear materials

I thought we were told the Soviet nuclear materials were “secured” in the 1990s. I think what that meant is that most of them were moved from surrounding countries to Russia and placed under guard. But first of all, there may have been some unaccounted for. And second of all, it doesn’t much matter if they are under guard in Russia if there are corrupt Russian authorities stealing and trying to sell them, which apparently is what is happening:

Criminal organizations, some with ties to the Russian KGB’s successor agency, are driving a thriving black market in nuclear materials in the tiny and impoverished Eastern European country of Moldova, investigators say. The successful busts, however, were undercut by striking shortcomings: Kingpins got away, and those arrested evaded long prison sentences, sometimes quickly returning to nuclear smuggling, AP found.

Moldovan police and judicial authorities shared investigative case files with the AP in an effort to spotlight how dangerous the nuclear black market has become. They say the breakdown in cooperation between Russia and the West means that it has become much harder to know whether smugglers are finding ways to move parts of Russia’s vast store of radioactive materials — an unknown quantity of which has leached into the black market…

The most serious case began in the spring of 2011, with the investigation of a group led by a shadowy Russian named Alexandr Agheenco, “the colonel” to his cohorts, whom Moldovan authorities believe to be an officer with the Russian FSB, previously known as the KGB. A middle man working for the colonel was recorded arranging the sale of bomb-grade uranium, U-235, and blueprints for a dirty bomb to a man from Sudan, according to several officials. The blueprints were discovered in a raid of the middleman’s home, according to police and court documents.

I always find it depressing to think that after all the heroic efforts and relative success fighting nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism over the decades, it would only take one incident to bring it all crashing down.

There is a slightly comical side to this otherwise terrifying story. All the U.S. headlines are predictably about Islamic State. But in this story, the bad guys are the sellers – Russian and Moldovan gangsters. The buyers were not actual Islamic State, but FBI agents posing as Islamic State.

where good ideas come from

The other day I was talking to someone about how the members of an engineering team can be so busy doing their jobs that they have no time to discuss new ideas. That reminded me of Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From. Which is a book by the way, but here is the TED talk version:

The take-home is that you might have a lone genius come up with a brilliant idea every once in awhile, but much more often it is seemingly small ideas being connected to each other that end up turning into a big idea. So everyone, especially engineers, needs to find 15 minutes out of their day to discuss ideas, and leaders need to encourage a work culture where that happens.

I didn’t entirely like being reminded that GPS, which obviously has been a very positive technology for the world, was invented to allow accurate delivery of nuclear weapons. But it’s the truth and there it is.

July 2015 in Review

I’m experimenting with my +3/-3 rating system again this month, just to convey the idea that not all stories are equal in importance. The result is that July was a pretty negative month! Whether that reflects more the state of the world or the state of my mind, or some combination, you can decide.

Negative stories (-21):

  • In The Dead Hand, I learned that the risk of nuclear annihilation in the 1980s was greater than I thought, and the true story of Soviet biological weapons production was much worse than I thought. (-3)
  • Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, among others, are concerned about a real-life Terminator scenario. (-2)
  • I playfully pointed out that the Pope’s encyclical contains some themes that sound like the more lucid paragraphs in the Unabomber Manifesto, namely that the amoral pursuit of technology has improved our level of material comfort and physical health while devastating the natural world, creating new risks, and leaving us feeling empty somehow. (-1)
  • Bumblebees are getting squeezed by climate change. (-1)
  • The Cold War seems to be rearing its ugly head. (-2)
  • There may be a “global renaissance of coal”. (-3)
  • Joel Kotkin and other anti-urban voices like him want to make sure you don’t have the choice of living in a walkable community. (-2)
  • I think Obama may be remembered as an effective, conservative president, in the dictionary sense of playing it safe and avoiding major mistakes. Navigating the financial crisis, achieving some financial and health care reforms, and defusing several wars and conflicts are probably his greatest achievements. However, if a major war or financial crisis erupts in the near future that can be traced back to decisions he made, his legacy will suffer whether it is fair or not. (-0)
  • We can think of natural capital as a battery that took a long time to charge and has now been discharged almost instantly. (-3)
  • James Hansen is warning of much faster and greater sea level rise than current mainstream expectations. (-3)
  • Lloyd’s of London has spun a scenario of how a food crisis could play out. (-1)

Positive stories (+7):

evil empires

Part of my light, uplifting summer reading program. The 80s were my grade school years. I certainly remember the Cold War being a big deal. But knowing that by 1989 it was pretty much over, and knowing about what went down in the 60s, I just always assumed that things were winding down by the 80s. This book has changed that perspective. By the 80s, the arsenals were  at an all time high, and communication was at an all-time low. What is really chilling is the picture painted about the Soviet paranoia in the early 80s – the leaders really were terrified that a U.S. nuclear first strike could come at any moment. The book describes how Reagan gradually came to realize this, that the Soviets could actually see the U.S. as the bad guys, and at that point he dropped the “evil empire” rhetoric and started talking with them. So although you can argue that he was recklessly belligerent early on, you have to give him some credit for at least partially defusing the situation. Then when Gorbachev comes along, he gets the rest of the credit. Another interesting sub-story here is how the KGB just completely got the best of the U.S. intelligence. And ultimately, that played a role in the U.S. being in the dark and misreading Soviet intentions throughout much of the period.

Even if there are no clear good or bad guys in this story, the Soviets are certainly not the good guys when it comes to biological weapons. They pursued them secretly, vigorously, and cynically for decades. It is truly chilling to think some of these weapons are still out there. Luckily, genetic engineering technology hadn’t really come into its own yet, so all they had to play around with was garden variety germs like smallpox and plague. Today of course, the technology is here and much more accessible to the average Joe Dictator or madman than back then. Even if there are no “evil empires” out there.

April 2015 in Review

Negative stories:

Positive stories:

  • Mr. Money Mustache brought us a nice post on home energy efficiency projects. This was a very popular post.
  • Biotechnology may soon bring us the tools to seriously monkey with photosynthesis. (This is one of those stories where I struggle between the positive and negative columns, but clearly there is a potential upside when we will have so many mouths to feed.)
  • Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, is retiring. That might sound bad, but his ground-breaking ideas are continuing on and actually seem to be going mainstream.
  • Lee Kuan Yew, who took Singapore “from third world to first” in one generation, passed away (in March, but I wrote about it in April. Let me be clear – I am an admirer and it is his life I am putting in the positive column, not his death.)
  • Donella Meadows explained how your bathtub is a dynamic system.
  • Robert Gordon offers a clear policy prescription for the U.S. to support continued economic growth.
  • I explain how a cap-and-trade program for stormwater and pollution producing pavement could work.
  • Joel Mokyr talks about advances in information technology, materials science and biotechnology.
  • Some U.S. cities are fairly serious about planting trees.
  • Edmonton has set a target of zero solid waste.
  • Saving water also saves energy. It’s highly logical, but if you are the skeptical type then here are some numbers. Also, urban agriculture reduces carbon emissions.
  • Peter Thiel thinks we can live forever. (positive, but do see my earlier comment about mouths to feed…)
  • A paper in Ecological Economics tries to unify the ecological footprint and planetary boundary concepts.
  • Philadelphia finally has bike share.

“tactical” nuclear weapons

This is disturbing. Members of the elected legislature of a democratic country are openly advocating the use of nuclear weapons. This is happening in the only country in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons before. This is from 2013:

Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., R-Calif., appearing on C-SPAN, encouraged Washington to get ready for war, arguing that “if you have to hit Iran … you do it with tactical nuclear devices and you set them back a decade or two or three. I think that’s the way to do it, with a massive aerial bombardment campaign.” …

Play out Hunter’s proposal and one quickly sees how devastating it would be. While Hunter doesn’t specify what type of “tactical nuclear device” he would propose for such an attack, the Federation of American Scientists notes that launching the least powerful of such weapons would cause nuclear blasts that would “blow out a huge crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation field over a large area.

“Suppose Hunter would opt for something more lethal. If the United States were to use a more powerful tactical nuclear weapon, like the B-61, it could unleash an explosion many times more powerful than Little Boy, the atomic weapon the United States dropped on Hiroshima. Any such nuclear attack would incinerate untold numbers of Iranian civilians, including those working in Iran’s nuclear power facilities, and those in nearby urban centers.

We’re lucky in this country that the grownups are in charge most of the time. But there are moments when they are not, so while they are they should do whatever they can to idiot-proof the place before our next Lord of the Flies moment arrives.

Cold War III will be fought with sticks and stones…

Germany and Russia again? Seriously?

I feel like Ukraine is not front and center in the U.S. headlines like it was late last year, but I don’t think that means things are any better. It’s just that events in the Middle East are grabbing the headlines. This BBC article is from February:

Nato is to bolster the alliance’s military presence in Eastern Europe in response to increased fighting in eastern Ukraine between government forces and pro-Russia rebels…

The six bases are being set up in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria.

France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and Britain are taking the lead in establishing the new rapid reaction “spearhead” force, with its lead units able to deploy at two days’ notice.

“Right of Boom” and “7 Deadly Scenarios”

The New York Times recently had a review of this book:

Here is the Amazon description:

A nuclear weapon explodes in a major American city and no one can prove who is responsible. The devastation is horrifying, but even more alarming is the limited options available for the United States government to respond. What happens next?
In Right of Boom, national security specialist Benjamin Schwartz looks at what could happen after a nuclear explosion takes place in the United States, the event that Presidents Obama and Bush, as well as would-be Presidents Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton, have acknowledged as the greatest single national security threat we face. Hypothesizing an explosion in downtown Washington, D.C., Schwartz maps out the likely ramifications while going deep into history to explore the limited range of options available to a Commander in Chief. Drawing from his experience as an analyst at the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy, Schwartz offers a fully panoramic view of a terrifying reality.

However, the review said not to read that one and to read this one instead:

A global pandemic finds millions swarming across the U.S. border. Major American cities are leveled by black-market nukes. China’s growing civil unrest ignites a global showdown. Pakistan’s collapse leads to a hunt for its nuclear weapons. What if the worst that could happen actually happens? How will we respond? Are we prepared?

These are the questions that Andrew F. Krepinevich asks—and answers—in this timely and often chilling book. As a military expert and consultant, Krepinevich must think the unthinkable based on the latest intelligence and geopolitical trends—and devise a response in the event our worst nightmares become reality.

As riveting as a thriller, 7 Deadly Scenarios reveals the forces—both overt and covert—that are in play; the real ambitions of world powers, terrorist groups, and rogue states; and the actions and counteractions both our enemies and our allies can be expected to take—and what we must do to prepare before it’s too late.

I think it’s important to think about not just the military implications, but the implications for the global economy and overall confidence of the public. Considering that the 9/11/2001 attacks killed 3,000 people, caused a sharp recession, and led the United States to launch two wars and spend at least a trillion dollars, the effects of a much worse attack or a series of them are very concerning.

January 2015 in Review

I’m dropping my “Hope for the Future Index” this year. If anyone out there is particularly attached to it, you can let me know.

Negative trends and predictions:

  • According to Mikhail Gorbachev, “Today’s key global problems – terrorism and extremism, poverty and inequality, climate change, migration, and epidemics – are worsening daily.”
  • Exxon predicts the rate of greenhouse gas emissions will stop growing…by 2030…at a level that will still cause atmospheric concentrations to continue rising. They try to present this as good news, but it is clearly a pathway to collapse if you think about it just a little bit.
  • Johan Rockstrom and company have updated their 2009 planetary boundaries work. The news is not getting any better. 4 of the 9 boundaries are not in the “safe operating space”: climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land-system change, altered biogeochemical cycles (phosphorus and nitrogen).
  • By several measures, 2014 was the hottest year on record.
  • The Doomsday Clock has moved from 5 minutes to 3 minutes from midnight due to “climate change and efforts to modernize nuclear weapons stockpiles”.

Positive trends and predictions:

  • Taxi medallions have been called the “best investment in America”, but now ride-sharing services may destroy them. I put this in the positive column because I think the new services are better and this is a good example of creative destruction.
  • Remote controlled, robot-assisted surgery is here.
  • The ongoing tumble in oil prices was of course a big story throughout the month. We won’t really be able to say until we look back years from now whether this was just a short-term fluctuation or the reversal of the decades-long trend toward higher energy prices. My guess is the former.
  • It is starting to seem politically possible for the U.S. to strengthen regulation of risk-taking by huge financial firms.
  • Robots can learn to perform physical tasks by watching videos.
  • Howard T. Odum was a genius who invented a “system language” that, if widely understood and applied, might give humanity the tools to solve its problems. Unfortunately, so far it is not widely understood or applied.
  • There may be a realistic chance for a de-escalation of the Middle East nuclear arms race.