Another North Korean Nuclear Test

Jeffrey Lewis 0:02

I don't accept that the Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA championship. It's totally illegitimate. I refuse to accept it.

Aaron Stein 0:15

You are listening to the Arms Control Podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament. I'm Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafiq Hariri Center for the Middle East.

Jeffrey 0:26

And I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Hey, Aaron, normally I say it's the foggy bit of California, but that's where the Institute is. I'm in the sunny bit, hiding out in the valley.

Aaron 0:42

That's right. It's another emergency podcast, and you are speaking to us from an undisclosed vehicle, probably in a parking lot somewhere, about our favorite topic.

Jeffrey 0:53

In the parking lot of the place where I hide out and work, where no one knows where I am, no one can bother me.

Aaron 1:00

Don't put that in any pictures, because your team will be able to geolocate you.

Jeffrey 1:05

They could in a second. Also, I don't want Kim Jong-un to nuke me.

Aaron 1:08

That's right. Well, first of all, we have a little order of business. The band's getting back together. It's been a while since we put on a podcast.

Jeffrey 1:16

It has. It has. The listeners should know that super producer Carl, who we love, had a lot of things going on, and we've been able to continue, and it took us a while, but we have a new producer.

Aaron 1:29

That's right. Shout out to Scott LaFoy, the new producer, and we're going to put together a new Patreon page. Right. Maybe we even get some new Patreons. Yeah, absolutely. It's good to be back, but it feels like we never left, because I think our last podcast was about the same topic. North Korea's up to it. Yeah, that's right.

Jeffrey 1:49

Well, thank you, Kim Jong-un, for being the hearty perennial of Apple.

Aaron 1:53

That's right. Keeping you and me in business and our listeners coming back for more.

Jeffrey 1:59

Oh, my God, Aaron, so I wrote a column about it, and, you know, I mean, in the column I'm joking, but actually I'm not joking. Why does he have to do these things on a school night?

Aaron 2:09

Yeah, no, can I just say that I actually showed those three paragraphs to my wife and said only Jeffrey Lewis can do that. You know, starting off, you know, for the listeners, why don't you give a background on what happened in the school night and the opening to your column?

Jeffrey 2:26

It's literally true. As the interviews are coming in, and the minute that North Korea tested a nuclear weapon, my phone starts going crazy. We have three kids, so we're already playing zone defense. And our middle child, he managed to sort of navigate between the contours of the zone, acquire the lotion, and decorate the television.

Aaron 2:51

There was a gap in the air defense?

Jeffrey 2:53

There was a serious, serious gap. You know, the older child, he's a little bit more mature. You know, you give him an iPad, and he just, like, hangs out, and, you know, the baby's the baby, so she's got to be baby. But, yeah, the middle child, he got up to no good. He's listening to this anyway.

Aaron 3:12

Yeah, I mean, for this, this is the fifth nuclear test, you know, that the North Koreans have conducted. And you have been all over the place, I think, with foreign policy, the Atlantic, giving the background and sort of why this one is a big deal.

Jeffrey 3:27

Yeah, you know, the thing is, every time one of these things happens, I want to write, like, a whole book. So I've got, like, multiple things I want to say, and I try to match them to different audiences. You know, it's – well, I'll say this. This is the fifth test, and that fact alone, that they have done five nuclear tests, I don't think has really sunk in with people.

People still act like it's their first nuclear test, and so they're kind of shocked when the North Koreans say that they've moved on to something newer or more advanced. And so one of the things I did for The Atlantic is I wrote a review of other countries' fifth nuclear tests.

Aaron 4:04

Right, and how that is, those fifth nuclear tests... Were design jumping off points for the next generation of warheads that goes together with the second thing that happened to North Korea, which is, you know, can you fit them onto a ballistic missile? Can you miniaturize them? Can you get more yield out of, you know, improved designs? And why this sort of fifth test is the benchmark or is a big deal?

Jeffrey 4:30

Yeah, you know, in March, back when we were still doing a podcast, Aaron. Right, what's back now? You know, Kim Jong-un posed with a mock-up of a nuclear weapon. And people, they remember he had the funny hat, the funny glasses, and the silly coat, and this whole, like, weird get-up.

Aaron 4:48

Yeah, it was Fat Man standing in front of Fat Man. Or behind Fat Man.

Jeffrey 4:51

Yeah, yeah, right. Well, I said, which one's Fat Man, which one's Little Boy?

Aaron 4:54

Right. Yeah.

Jeffrey 4:56

Did I tell you, by the way, I wrote that joke in a column, which one's fat man and which one's a boy. And one colleague didn't get it, and he thought that I literally couldn't tell whether it was an implosion or a gun type. And so he was cautioning me, saying, like, people are really... Going to question your expertise if you can't tell the difference.

And I was like, no, no, no, it's a joke. So he showed it to his wife, and she was like, that's funny. That's true, it is funny. Yeah, but he didn't get the joke. So Kim Jong-un was standing next to a mock-up of an implosion device, and what's so interesting about that moment is they described what it was, and they said that it was a device that had been standardized, Which I think means that they're going to make a lot of them for deployment on various types of missiles.

And what's interesting about this is that language about standardized got used in this test announcement. And so what I understand the North Koreans to be saying is, do you remember the mock-up that we said we were going to put on our missiles? This was that device, right? We tested the thing that Kim Jong-un stood next to.

Aaron 6:08

Right, and it's hard to tell, right? We obviously can't get a look. Well, they actually did give us the full monty. They showed us what the mock-up looked like. But you drew in a few of your pieces and some of the colleagues out there about the nonproliferation world, drawing inferences and conclusions based upon what the mock-up looks like, where they should be at the fifth test, and then what they say in their public press releases about the test, about what we think the guts of the nuclear weapon looks like.

Jeffrey 6:38

Yeah, I mean, that's right. I mean, ultimately, you know, I wrote the foreign policy piece first that said, look, they showed us this mock-up. They told us this mock-up was for arming their missiles, so that this is a step forward. This is a step away from just having a capability to actually saying, like, no, no, no, we're going to have a nuclear-armed missile force now.

Aaron 6:57

But, like, people didn't buy it.

Jeffrey 6:59

You know, people were like, well, how do you know? You know, how do you know that five tests in, they're not just bluffing? So the whole point of the Atlantic piece was to say, Well, right, other countries have done this many casts, and most, well, all of them, actually, by the time they had done this many casts, certainly had a device small enough to fit on a bomb and were well on their way to thermonuclear weapons.

And so it just, it was a kind of way to point out that the North Korean claims weren't so wild when you put them in the context of other countries that had done fired casts.

Aaron 7:29

Yeah, and I have to put you on the spot. I mean, what do you think, where do you think they are in their design? I mean, you have some thoughts on what their design actually looks like.

Jeffrey 7:38

Yeah, so, I mean, I try to keep in mind that, you know, they probably have access to all of the clients that the Pakistanis had, because those designs ended up in the con network, and they were a client of the con network.

Aaron 7:52

Let's say they were available.

Jeffrey 7:55

Yeah, I mean, right, you know, some dude in Switzerland had them, so, you know, and they were available for money. The North Koreans have money, so... Where I think they are is where they say they are. I think they have tested a device that is compact enough to put on a missile. I think it probably weighs a few hundred kilograms, like the design, the most advanced design from Pakistan that showed up in Switzerland.

And then I think two things which are kind of weird, you know, When Kim Jong-un posed with the bomb in March, he said it was a Korean-style mixed charge. I don't even know what that means. Yeah, so I think I know what that means. I think it's a composite. The bomb uses both plutonium and highly enriched uranium.

I don't think that they're building a bunch of plutonium bombs, well, a small number of plutonium bombs and a bunch of HEU bombs. I think when they say it's standardized, I think they've got really the one design they really like. And I think it has some plutonium and some HEU. And that means that they can stretch their stockpile of plutonium way further.

And so I think that like we're looking at, you know, if you figure they've got 40 kilograms of plutonium, you're looking at like 20 bombs. Right.

Aaron 9:17

With the promise of yet more to come. Right. Because they've announced that they'll restart plutonium production. I'm not making that up, right?

Jeffrey 9:24

And I think they probably up the yield by boosting it. You know, adding DT gas is just not that, well, it's not that it's not that complicated. It's that, you know, I was lecturing my students the other day about like taking into account dynamic situations. You know, I think the U S had U S intelligence community and, and the U S nuclear weapons establishment have kind of all said that You can't figure out how to do gas boosting from first principles.

You actually have to do it experimentally.

Aaron 9:59

But they've done five tests, so they've done it experimentally.

Jeffrey 10:02

So, you know, I think that they probably know how to do some gas boosting and that allows them to get more yield out of a smaller amount of fissile material.

Aaron 10:12

Right. So it's sort of, Warhead economics in terms of that they do have a small amount of fissile material at the moment, at least plutonium, we should say. And so they're designed... Yeah, although... Go ahead.

Jeffrey 10:25

Well, I was going to say, like 40 kilograms, you know, give or take. But that's enough. If you go down to 2 kilograms of plutonium, that's enough for 20 bombs.

Aaron 10:33

Exactly. So, you know, with the promise of more, as you just said. So this is something that when we used to do a podcast before we revived it today... Was, you know, it's my overarching point is that it's a quote unquote program. These are not just for show. I mean, it does appear that they're putting all of the backend logistical stuff to study how this works so that you can begin to make, you know, incremental design changes to say, fit it onto, you know, to miniaturize it and get reliability and put it onto a missile.

Do you want to hear a conspiracy theory? I, you know, I'm the Atlanta council senior fellow in the Rafiq career center for the Middle East. I live in conspiracies.

Jeffrey 11:15

Someone posed this to me on Twitter and it's an account, I think with a fake name who often says very insightful things. And this person posed this conspiracy theory and I could not shoot it down and it worries the hell out of me. So you know the experimental light water reactor they're building right next to the gas graphite reactor that's produced all the plutonium for bombs?

I do. How do we know it's actually a light water reactor? That's a good question. I don't. We don't know that. The only thing that makes it look like a light water reactor is that it has a dome.

Aaron 11:55

And they tell us?

Jeffrey 11:57

Yeah, they say, and it has a dome, and often, like, water reactors have a dome. It doesn't have to have a dome.

Aaron 12:04

No, that's true.

Jeffrey 12:05

Right? I mean, I actually don't know. And this person's question, which is a very good one, you know, is how do you know that that's not just another plutonium-producing graphite reactor built under the name of a light water reactor in order to, you know, like, reduce some of the political pressure?

Aaron 12:27

No, I mean, it certainly could. I mean... I was like, ah! Like, ah! It's one of those things... Light water?

Jeffrey 12:35

They said so? Yeah, no, it's just...

Aaron 12:38

This is one of those, you know, the great unknowns in the Hermit Kingdom, you know, and it's like when they put up... You know, and... You know, trying to understand them is, you know, like deciphering very oddly worded, you know, sort of mangled English press releases... And looking at seismic data to try and figure out what the design of a nuclear weapon looks like.

But then they do like to publicize when they shoot off missiles, which I think you and your team over at Monterey has made an industry of both modeling it and then geolocating it and then drawing inferences based upon all the videos that they put out.

Jeffrey 13:17

Oh my gosh. Schmerler, Dave Schmerler is a geolocating machine.

Aaron 13:23

Dude, like you posted a picture about like how he geolocated something and they even tried to block Schmerler. Like they even tried. Like I think they had Dave Schmerler in their minds when they took that photo and he still beat him. Yes.

Jeffrey 13:36

So, you know, we have a joke that they should name that little green screen after me that they put behind him. Because, you know, ever since we started geolocating him, that screen has appeared.

Aaron 13:48

Yeah, they put a green screen behind him.

Jeffrey 13:52

Behind Kim Jong-un, you know, it's a camouflage kind of screen, so you can't see where he is. But Schmerler is so much better than I am. What Schmerler did, which I just cannot fathom, you know, not this last missile test, but the one before it, both of them, by the way, happened on the same row. He was able to spot this tiny little gap.

Right, between the wall and ceiling, and he saw this yellow and black striping, right? And he was like, oh, that's a North Korean road sign. They put those on either side of the highway tunnels. And he went and found the freaking highway tunnel.

Aaron 14:28

I know. I actually, you posted that picture on Twitter, and I looked at it, and I was like, I don't have any idea how he found that. And then you revealed... Dave's got an eagle eye.

Jeffrey 14:38

So this last test, they did it in the same spot, but they tried to disguise it by reversing the video.

Aaron 14:44

Right. Like, you know, making it, you know, it looked left when it should look right, that kind of thing.

Jeffrey 14:49

Right. And it took Schmerler, like, I don't know, five minutes before he was like, oh, that's just reverse. He flipped it over, like, oh, here it is. That's what it's saying.

Aaron 14:59

Well, the test was noteworthy because, you know, something new popped up in the most recent one.

Jeffrey 15:07

Yeah. By the way, it happened during the, well, So my Israeli friends are calling it the G-20 missile because it happened during the G-20's weapon. That's right. It did. It did. Yep. Yep. So it seems really interesting. The U.S., well, Stratcom puts out a statement every time there's a North Korean missile launch. And the first statement was two intermediate range ballistic missiles, which would have been the Musunan and an unknown type.

And then they revised it to three Nodongs. And when we looked at the pictures, it wasn't any of those things. You know, the trucks, the transporter erector launchers were trucks for Scud. And we started looking at the missile and we think it is our first sighting of the elusive extended range Scud, which was sold to Syria as the Scud-D and very confusingly sold to Libya as the Scud-C, which is weird because there is such a thing as the Scud-C.

Aaron 16:09

Just whatever the Libyans had that they called the Scud Sea wasn't. Gaddafi makes things complicated.

Jeffrey 16:15

Yeah, I don't really understand. Like, if you look at, you know, this is like me going back and, you know, being annoyed with how the Bush administration handled it. They referred to it as an extended range 800 kilometer Scud Sea. Which is not a Scud C if it's extended range, 800 kilometers. But when that missile shows up in Syria, right, with basically similar range, we call it a Scud D. And when it shows up in North Korea, we call it an extended range Scud or ER Scud.

But I think it's all the same missile with some slight differences. The ones they sold to Libya and Syria went sort of 650 to about 800 kilometers. The ones in Libya were a little longer range. And the ones in North Korea are like 1,000 kilometers, maybe a bit more.

Aaron 17:08

So why do we care?

Jeffrey 17:10

Oh, yeah. So two reasons I think we care. One is I don't know how you get a scud up to 1,000 kilometers without switching from steel to aluminum. Okay. As an airframe. And so it's a sign that the North Koreans are making fancier airframes. We'd already seen aluminum in the space launcher. And, you know, an aluminum nodong will go a lot further.

Right. And it just generally means that their missiles are going to go further and be better. But I also think it's a very appealing export missile because... If you go from a Scud to a Nodong, if you want that extra range, you had to buy all new trucks. But in this case, you could just buy the missiles.

You could just buy the missiles and use them on your existing Scud launchers. It's like you could get more range without having to really change your infrastructure, hence the appeal to, I think, Libya and Syria that already had shorter-range Scuds. So, you know, I'm looking at you, UAE, and looking at you, certain other countries, maybe Burma, that all might be really appealing markets.

And so, you know, if your goal is to cut off North Korean proliferation, this missile seems like bad news.

Aaron 18:40

Yeah, you also have a hobby of the trucks. I know you love the trucks. I do, I do.

Jeffrey 18:50

You know, I'm so embarrassed, though, because I had this great presentation, and it never occurred to me, somebody else came up with the name, you know, Dude, Where's My Towel? Yeah, I remember that.

Aaron 19:03

Yeah. Yeah.

Jeffrey 19:07

So there we are.

Aaron 19:08

So, I mean, you have two components to an effective, you know, you have the fifth nuclear test, right, and then Tweaks or at least design improvements to older missile technology that, again, just signals that the North Koreans are making incremental and logical progress moving forward, which obviously dictates... So it obviously increases anxiety in the region, which prompts U.S. action to try and...

Address these things? Well, wait, there's more. Am I missing something?

Jeffrey 19:50

Well, you didn't miss something, but we put a piece with James Pearson and Reuters about not just the changes, just not the nuclear tests, not just the missiles, but we started looking at all of the plants associated with making missiles, from the place that makes the machine tools all the way up to the plant that does final assembly, and they've all been renovated.

Aaron 20:14

So the great, you know, for the lathe machines, you know, all of that work, you know, found a home in a new renovated place?

Jeffrey 20:24

Yeah, in fact, there's this one place called the January 18th Machine Plant, which missile components, not the whole thing, might make the engines. We're not completely sure. It's gotten a total overhaul. And, like, in satellite photographs, you can see Most of the buildings have new roofs, a whole bunch of new buildings. And when Kim Jong-un visited it, he joked that, you know, somebody who came back and saw the renovated version wouldn't recognize it and they would think it was a resort.

I actually think he said an old person's home, but I think nursing homes in Korea are rather a less depressing idea than perhaps in the U.S. You know, it just...

Aaron 21:07

But other parts of their military, if you believe a lot of the open source, is atrophying. Especially their Air Force and stuff like that. It does look like they're dumping all of the money into this particular program, which again should be worrisome.

Jeffrey 21:23

I'm going to write something on their nuclear strategy, but I think we don't understand their nuclear strategy. And frankly, we've looked at Both defector descriptions of how they plan to use nuclear weapons, but also the things they've published and the tests they've done. And they're all pretty consistent, which is they say that the whole point of having nuclear-armed missiles is that they're not going to sit around like Saddam did and watch the U.S. build up forces to topple them.

When U.S. forces start to come into the Korean Peninsula in big numbers, right, as a prelude to an invasion, their plan is to use lots and lots of nuclear weapons against Seoul and Busan and U.S. forces in theater in order to stop the invasion, both to physically repel it, but also then, I think, to shock us and cause us to halt because we're afraid that, you know, the next wave are the ICBMs targeted at the U.S.

So... You know, like, in a way, it makes sense. Why spend all your money on conventional armaments when you've got this more appealing option of spending the money on missiles and trying to kill those forces when they're in port before they actually get, you know, offloaded from the ship and then, you know, are kind of on their merry way to Pyongyang?

Aaron 22:36

Right. No, this raises two things. You know, it's one is the viability, you know, of... Regional and then ballistic missile defense. And then the stability-instability paradox that you'll build upon that.

Jeffrey 22:54

Yeah, so, I mean, what freaks me out about this is when I look at U.S. and especially South Korean responses... You know, we had a terrible time hunting scuds in the Gulf War. And although there are some new technologies that might make that less difficult, I think most people are still pretty pessimistic about our ability to go out and find and kill all those ballistic missiles.

And so, like, what's the most vulnerable point? If you're afraid that Kim Jong-un is going to push the button, Kim Jong-un is the most vulnerable point, right? We've seen the South Koreans spend All this money on ballistic and cruise missiles with the explicit goal of killing him before he can give the order to use nuclear weapons, right?

I mean, they fly the cruise missile into a target ship like the Kumsusan Palace. They talk about it flying through an office window or Kim Jong-un's office window. You know, they've made it really clear that this is for decapitation. And the North Koreans have picked up on that, right? The North Koreans have been screaming about South Korean plans for Decapitation strike.

And so I think the thing that freaks me out about this situation is both North Korea and South Korea intend to go first in a conflict. But they can't both go first, right? Somebody has to go second. And so each of them has these incentives to escalate the conflict very early in order to get the jump on the other one.

And I think I told Zach Beauchamp of Vox Right. That's the textbook definition of unstable.

Aaron 24:30

Right. And then there's a third actor involved, obviously.

Jeffrey 24:33

Us. Yeah. And yeah, we think we're going to go first too. You know, so I've been trying to keep this up. You know, there are these you hear about Oakland 5027, right? Which is our old war plan. And we're shifting as, you know, we're planning to eventually transfer wartime control of the conflict. Right now in a war, us would have operational control of the forces.

And I think the goal is to get to the point where the South Koreans would have that control. That was something the Bush administration wanted to do. It's been repeatedly put off. But they're developing a new series of war plans for that eventuality, right? They have a different series of numbers. I've seen them called 5012 and 5015.

I suspect that that's just because it's taken them 10 years. But my understanding is, whereas the traditional thought about our war plan in Korea is we absorb this massive North Korean invasion, we grind it to a halt, then we push them back, that that's not the plan anymore, right? The plan is we go first with the South Koreans.

And so, you know, you have these three interlocking war plans. The North Koreans planning to go first with nuclear weapons in a really big way before we keep it going. Us planning to go first with the South Koreans in order to get the jump on the North Koreans, and I think the South Koreans planning to go first in the same way that we tried that strike against Saddam before Operation Iraqi Freedom, right?

Like, everybody plans to beat the others to the punch. That's a horrible situation.

Aaron 26:12

Right. I mean, so then the question becomes, what is the thing that escalates a conflict? So if you have these – what we speculate are the war plans, what trips those into going into action? And I think that's a big question.

Jeffrey 26:28

Yeah, somebody was asking me about that the other day, and I think the correct answer is that will always be undefined because if you're going to ask a military official, they're going to tell you, like, when we come up with plans and we give the president options, And it's up to the president to decide in his or her mind when that option needs to be executed.

And so, and actually, I should say, I'm actually, I'm sympathetic to this. As much as I think it's a crazy idea to go try to kill Kim Jong-un, I think it's the least crazy of all the crazy ideas. Just the problem is, Everyone's best strategy involves going first. So you have this offense-dominated situation, which we always think of as unstable.

And militaries are always going to sort of come up with the best plan. And I think a president is, first of all, not going to want to say what the clear red lines are for fear of inviting aggression below that red line. But also not going to want to say it because the president doesn't want to lock him or herself in.

Aaron 27:37

I think, you know, President Obama discovered hastily stated red lines can prove to be embarrassing at a later date.

Jeffrey 27:46

And frankly, you know, I think they don't truly know. You know, I think that's the thing I worry about is miscalculation. You know, I always call it, you know, the South Koreans, someday the North Koreans are going to push the South Koreans too far. Right. And that's because the North Koreans don't correctly calculate what too far is.

And maybe because whoever's the South Korean president at that moment hasn't made it clear in his or her mind what too far is.

Aaron 28:11

No, absolutely. Hey, you know who pushed us too far? Who?

Jeffrey 28:20

Saddam Hussein probably did not anticipate that an attack on the U.S. by a totally unrelated actor would result in his ouster.

Aaron 28:29

No, exactly. He really miscalculated there. Right. And then we miscalculated on escalation, but countries do dumb things all the time. Exactly. And so you have an incentive to de-escalate situations, but there's an aversion to doing what I think has to be done on this particular case. And then there's... We try to put a Band-Aid over a very gushing wound, in my opinion, by – we have the same playbook, right?

It's to kit out the allies with increasingly – with missile defense and then to do low passes of either a B-1 or a B-2 or a B-52 over South Korea with a South Korean fire escort, right? Yep. And, you know, I'm all for missile defense in certain limited things, you know, but, you know, it seems like the response at this time has been for THAAD.

I think it's in Japan in particular, for our own forces in Guam, and I'm not sure about South Korea. You're going to have to fill me in on the rest of the details there.

Jeffrey 29:43

Well, yeah, so, I mean, this is really problematic for me because on the one hand, I think South Korea has every right to defend itself. And so, you know, I don't object to South Koreans wanting missile defenses. And they're not just buying THAAD, by the way. They've got a very robust domestic program to develop their own missile defenses that look, you know, shockingly like Russian ones.

And so, you know, there's this, like, Protest in South Korea over THAAD that strikes me as strange. On the other hand, while I don't understand the people who are protesting that I worry that it's a little bit of an escapist fantasy, like having and actually we, we can talk about it, but you need more than one, having a series of THAAD batteries plus some Korean defenses Might help reduce the casualties in the event that the North Koreans used a bunch of nuclear weapons.

And so that's fine, but I worry that the idea that it might reduce casualties has turned into a kind of fantasy about escaping from vulnerability, right? And the problem with escapist fantasies is that they sometimes cause you to not do the other stuff you need to do. And so, like, I'm a fan of FAD. I think they should deploy more than one FAD system.

They need at least two. Well, we can talk about why they need at least two. Do it right now because it's a good point.

Aaron 31:17

No, no, do it. Jump in because I have one more. Jump in why they need more than two.

Jeffrey 31:22

Oh, yeah. So FAD has a forward-looking radar, and it only sees 120 degrees. And the problem is, so if you put THAAD where they plan to put it, which is a good spot, and it looks north up at North Korea, it basically covers the land mass but not the oceans. And why do we care? Yeah, the North Koreans have tested this submarine-launched ballistic missile.

So all the submarine has to do is go out a little bit to sea, and it's shooting behind THAAD's radar. And so the first time the THAAD system would see the missile coming in is when the nuclear weapon exploded them. Which would be bad. The other thing, so you need two fad batteries to make sure you can cover the oceans, but you need them for another reason, which nobody ever talks about.

And I keep wondering if maybe there's been some fundamental technical change that I don't know about, but you know, we used to be really worried about radar blackout attacks, right? You detonate the nuclear weapon Before the interceptor hits it. It's not that it destroys the radar, it's that it temporarily blacks out the radar's ability to see all the missiles coming behind it.

And so if you imagine a situation where you're trying to You know, overwhelm the missile defense system. You fire a whole bunch of missiles at once. The first couple explode in a way that blacks out the radar, and then the rest come, like, streaking through. And so the advantage of having multiple batteries in different locations is some of the batteries may still be able to see because they'd have to do all the blackout attacks at the same time.

So it just makes it harder for them.

Aaron 32:56

So, like, you know, I'm all for deploying lots and lots of missile defenses around South Korea.

Jeffrey 33:02

I just am just freaked out that people have escapist fantasies about what those missile defenses are going to be capable of doing.

Aaron 33:11

And I believe this was you, but correct me if I'm wrong, is that you recently wrote a piece of... Oh, it was you, about how... About how in times of crisis in the U.S.-Russia potential collaboration, the time for the president to actually make a decision about launching a counterattack is, I think, ultimately eight minutes by the time it finally gets to his or her desk.

Jeffrey 33:35

Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's probably less than that because it's the time from the aide who's designated as the crisis coordinator deciding the U.S. is under attack. You've got to find the president, sit the president down, explain what's going on with the president, tell the president the president's options, and the actual true decision time where the president has all the information that he or she is going to get.

You know, is like maybe two minutes. But, you know, because you lose time. I mean, the famous case is the 9-11 case where Bush gets told America is under attack, but he's in a room full of schoolchildren. And I'm very sympathetic. Like, he does not want to panic and rush out of the room. So he sits there for another five minutes, which is fine, and it's the right thing to do.

But the problem is it's totally inconsistent with this crazy plan we have that he's supposed to jump up with his hair on fire and run out of the room.

Aaron 34:33

Right. Do you see where I'm going with this?

Jeffrey 34:35

And push the button and end the world.

Aaron 34:36

Do you see where I'm going with this?

Jeffrey 34:40

Yeah. Well, why don't you go there, and then I'll tell you how to do it.

Aaron 34:44

What's the missile flight time between North Korean potential launch sites and South Korea? What's the decision-making time for a potential South Korean president under attack And what does that do for the incentives to go first?

Jeffrey 34:59

Yeah, I think that once the missiles are up, well, you know, so it's not much. And that's a real problem. But, you know, I think it ends up being even worse than that because it's not just that they're going to detect them and be like, oh, gosh, we got to go. I think a South Korean president is going to decide that once the missiles are up, it's already too late to execute their strategy.

Aaron 35:19

Up meaning put on their launchers, put in the upright position, start to be fueled.

Jeffrey 35:25

So I think, well, I think they got, no, I think they even have to kill Kim before that.

Aaron 35:30

Before that, okay.

Jeffrey 35:32

Like, I think they got to kill Kim before she gives the order.

Aaron 35:37

Ooh. Well, that really is unstable. Yeah.

Jeffrey 35:39

You know, I think it's real, real early. The one comforting thing I will say is I think the requirements are so unrealistic on all sides. Right. That these plans, as dangerous as they are, may not be executed precisely because, you know, like the argument for Kim is you have to use nuclear weapons now. And he sort of thinks like, well, I'm still hoping I'm going to get out of this one.

And similarly, I think that the argument is you've got to, to the South Koreans, you have to kill Kim now. And they're going to think like, well, you haven't even given the order yet. It's like, well, yeah, that's the point. So it may be that these plans, and this is what I think is such a good analogy, like our nuclear, like we call it launch under attack, the good news is it's so unrealistic that it'll probably never happen.

The bad news is, you know, basing your policy on unrealistic fantasies has certain downsides, some of which is accidental.

Aaron 36:44

Countries do dumb things. It's one of my major things because I talk about Syria all the time. Yeah. Countries do dumb things, like sending a whole bunch of tanks into the heaviest ATGM environment the world has ever seen. But, you know, countries do dumb things. People are stupid. People make mistakes. Yeah, people do make mistakes.

Jeffrey 37:05

I mean, I have this conversation all the time in my class with my students who are always, like, totally convinced that, you know, that there's some rational explanation for everything. And it's like, nope, that person was just wrong. Like, that person had a piece of factual information that was incorrect. That person was a bad decision maker. That person was biased.

Like, all that stuff matters.

Aaron 37:30

Yeah, or a leader who's been in power for a very long time and loses touch with his own populace and the interests of his country based upon a narrow set of yes-men.

Jeffrey 37:42

Oh, you know, my favorite example of that, which relates to Korea, is why the Bush administration chose to confront the North Koreans about their enrichment programs. The people in the State Department who wanted to downplay it said, we need to go take this meeting because we need to talk to them about this. And the people who were opposed agreed to go let them take the meeting because they were like, the North Koreans will blow it up.

Like, people had competing policy preferences, but they both agreed on the method because each of them figured the other one was wrong. And, you know, in fact, one side was wrong, right? So, you know... It's like gambling, right? People put money on both sides of a sporting event with a line, and about half of those people will turn out to be wrong.

Aaron 38:31

So what do we do as we wrap up the podcast here? On the day of recording, I think we just flew a B-1B over with South Korean fighter escorts. What else should we be doing?

Jeffrey 38:46

Well, so there are two... It's really one thing, but I kind of break it into two parts. First, we're not going to be able to build our way out of vulnerability with North Korea. We can manage it. We can reduce it. We can add to North Korea's vulnerability. But at the end of the day, if they want to put a nuclear weapon on Seoul and in all probability Tokyo, I think they're going to be able to do that.

If, and if we do nothing, eventually, if they want to put a nuclear weapon on Washington, they will be able to do that too. They're not there yet, but, but they will be. And so we have to find a way to persuade them not to do more. Right. And that means negotiating with them which is unpleasant because we're not going to get as good of a deal as we would have gotten in 2000.

And we're not going to get a perfect deal and it's going to suck. But if we keep going the way we're going, they're going to end up with an ICBM with a thermonuclear weapon. And that's that's going to be bad. But it gets to this kind of the second piece of it, which is the bigger reason. The reason it's so hard to negotiate with them is we don't accept it.

Right. They're a horrible, awful government. You know, they kidnap people. You know, I am I am me and my me and my right wing buddies. Like we all think they kidnapped that American kid, you know. I think his name is Sneddon. They use people as means to an end, which Kant would tell you is a deeply immoral thing.

And so the problem is, if you truly think that this regime is abhorrent, Deterrence can't function. Because deterrence is not just about threatening someone with punishment if they misbehave. It's about agreeing not to punish them if they comply. And the problem is, we hate them and we're never going to get there.

Aaron 40:41

Do you know what I think is a decent... You wrote that in a piece and it was one of those things where I was thinking it over. Because I don't know when it became sort of Standard talking points in the American political system that we can't talk to nasty people. And I was thinking about SALT. You know, SALT became sort of my de facto go-to.

That's an arms control agreement that didn't remove vulnerability but tried to freeze a specific sort of aspect of a nuclear weapons delivery and development program.

Jeffrey 41:20

Yeah, I think that, I mean, ultimately, that's why arms control is so unpopular. Is because most foreign policy discussions, in my experience, are just popularity contests. Do you like this country or not? And a lot of these countries are pretty unlikable. And so it's always easy to say, ooh, look, Iran, scary bad. And we are the people who roll in and say, yes, I know they're scary bad, but no matter how scary bad they are, The reality is there's no magic wand.

There's no magic missile defense system that makes this problem go away. There's no offensive missile system that makes this problem go away. The ugly truth is we are stuck with them. And so we do share an interest and we have to cooperate with them to protect those interests even though we don't like them. And that's like the most unpopular thing you can possibly say, right?

Like people would much rather do what we have done for the past 20 years Which is, well, 16 years, which is talk about how much we hate North Korea and how much we won't accept all the things they're doing. Even though what that actually means in practice is totally accepting everything they're doing because we're not making any compromises to stop it.

It's the easiest thing in the world. I wrote a Twitter parody that really made people angry where I said, I don't accept that the Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA championship.

Aaron 42:47

It's totally illegitimate. I refuse to accept it. Right? No, yeah, but God also hates Cleveland. but you know, like, it doesn't matter what. I refuse to accept. Like, it's happening. And I think it's the same with North Korea. And this is the final point here, and the final questions. Yeah, you know, with Iran, what we did, you know, you can take away one of two capabilities, right? You can take away delivery vehicle.

Or you can take away fissile material. And with Iran, what we did was take away fissile material and largely left the missile program subject to the same restrictions that were in place before the JCPOA, right? What do you do with a country like North Korea? What do you try and take away or limit? Or you can do both.

That's a broader arms control arrangement similar to what we have with the Russians at the moment. You try and limit both. What incentives do you trade to get those limits?

Jeffrey 43:41

Well, sadly, I think the problem is North Koreans are never going to give up anything they've already done. I think they've always been willing to trade things that they haven't done for promises that things will get better.

Aaron 43:52

What things will get better?

Jeffrey 43:53

Like political relations with the U.S.? Yeah. They've been willing to trade missiles they haven't built for promises of better relations. They've never been able to trade things they haven't built for promises. And so, and frankly, I don't blame them. Like, I wouldn't trade a missile I have for a promise either. So, you know, ultimately, I think we're at the point where what we're trying to do is get the cheapest price possible for the stuff they have not yet done, right?

So I'm worried about increasingly long-range solid-fueled missiles. I'm worried about... Them testing their ICBM. I'm worried about them building a thermonuclear weapon. And I'd like to see if at all possible I can freeze the amount of fissile material they've produced at, you know, however many bombs they are now. The problem is all of that leaves in place a pretty substantial nuclear weapons capability.

And I understand that politically, you know, that that's a loser on Capitol Hill. But at least I see a difference between Terrible situation we're in now and the god-awful situation that we'll be in in 10 years. That's not a happy note. No, it's a wonderful note. You know why?

Aaron 45:16

Why?

Jeffrey 45:17

Because the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies has a steady stream of work for the coming decades.

Aaron 45:24

And this podcast will never get stale. We'll always have a new nuclear test to talk about. Absolutely. I mean, come on.

Jeffrey 45:34

This is going to be awesome.

Aaron 45:35

Right. So the band is back together. We've got material coming for the next couple of years.

Jeffrey 45:40

We've got a couple of arms races going. You've got to embrace the band.

Aaron 45:49

I'm all for it. Thank you, Jeffrey, for joining the podcast from your undisclosed vehicle in the undisclosed parking lot in the undisclosed part of the sunny bit of California.

Jeffrey 46:00

You're welcome. Thank you for driving today, Aaron, and thank you for generally keeping us on track.

Aaron 46:08

I think I like to ramble. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Have a good rest of the day.