North Korea’s Expanding Missile Base

Jeffrey Lewis 0:02

Yeah, with not much to do other than kick a soccer ball around and practice for nuclear war. You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog.

Aaron Stein 0:26

And I'm Aaron Stein. For now, a Contribute to the Arms Control Wonk blog. Oh, that's drama, Aaron. That's drama.

Jeffrey 0:35

Big news that may drop.

Aaron 0:37

Yeah, yeah, maybe after the new year. But for now, just a Contribute to the Arms Control Wonk.

Jeffrey 0:43

Podcast and on vacation for the next two weeks, except for this. A, a humble contributor. So, I, I thought, Aaron since it's been a while since we've done one of these, first of all, welcome back. We had a Thanksgiving hiatus, then I think we just had scheduling difficulties. Well, and I was ill. I'm actually still a little bit ill. I haven't had a drink in a month, so no cocktail pictures for me.

Aaron 1:07

Oh, yeah. Well, now I know. I can look back at your Twitter feed, and we can probably figure out when you got sick.

Jeffrey 1:12

Yeah, so I hadn't been feeling terribly well, and I'm on the mend, but I have not been really feeling up to podcasting. But we did some work, and it's work we're proud of, and I wanted to talk about it today.

Aaron 1:28

Yeah, you know, you, elements of your team were all over CNN and the South Korean foreign ministry. You elicited a response from the South Korean foreign ministry for all the open source work you've been doing.

Jeffrey 1:40

Yeah, so we found what is, I don't want to say probably an ICBM base in North Korea. But it's a really good candidate for an ICBM base. And I wanted to talk about how we did it and kind of what we do know about it and what we don't know about it. And really, I thought it'd be an opportunity to reflect on the bigger question, which actually Josh Pollack addressed in an op-ed today.

It was a great op-ed. Yeah, what all this open source stuff means. Because, you know, every time we publish something about North Korea, you know, we get pretty well attacked, right? And and I think that's because people don't believe that we actually do this work so that they think that we're like inventing these sites for one purpose or another.

So I wanted to talk about that bigger issue as well. But but first, the base.

Aaron 2:33

Yeah, let's start with the base. So. How did you and your team begin the process of saying, holy fecal material, we think we found a new missile base?

Jeffrey 2:43

Yeah, so it's a weird story. You know, we had been looking at this site for a long time. In fact, I had done a write-up, I think in 2015, after I originally found the old base for 38 North that they didn't want. Where, you know, there had been... There actually... Two sets of stories. One was a story in 1998 in the Washington Post, where there was a site that was identified as Yongodong.

Boy, you know, whenever you do geolocation, people cannot get Korean names right. You know, if it's Yongodong, you know that there's probably a Y in the name somewhere. But beyond that, you're just guessing.

Aaron 3:28

Yeah, it's a bad transliteration, I would assume.

Jeffrey 3:31

And I think because a lot of it is done orally, and I'm not a Korean speaker either, but when non-Korean speakers orally transmit Korean place names, it can be kind of a mess. Yeah, I can imagine. So in 1998, there was a post piece that said that this was going to be a Taepodong base, and that they had these tunnels that they were going to roll these missiles out from.

And so I, you know, I kind of wanted to go find it. And it broke out again a second time in the South Korean press, because even though it came out under Yongodong, it re-leaked under its correct name, Yong... Joe dong, or young Joe re kind of there's some disagreement about whether it's a re or a dong, but but you know, whatever, it's a little place.

And and the South Koreans actually said, Yes, that's a missile base. And they gave us the correct name. And so once we got into this era of open source in 2015, I was like, Well, shoot, I'm gonna go find this place. And there's actually a defector This crazy guy whose last name is, well, it's a pseudonym, but Aoyama, who the, actually the Japanese deported, like he was in Japan as a North Korean defector.

And they were like, nah, you got a Chinese passport. We're sending your ass back. He gave, I mean, he has a lot of, like, defector, like a lot of defector accounts, a bunch of his stuff I think is crap, but he gave a really precise description of where this place was, and it was really easy to find.

Aaron 5:05

Yeah, and I mean, one thing that you guys point out in your piece is the geography is already ideal, so it makes sense that you would put a missile base there based upon where it is in the country, the geography, the topography, and its relation to other bigger countries.

Jeffrey 5:21

Right. So, you know, we found it like with the train station. And then, you know, it's located kind of in the middle of the country, but then all the way backed up against the Chinese border, which is why it was leaking in South Korea. The reason it leaked in South Korea is that people were using it to justify longer range South Korean missiles, saying like, well, these are targets we have to hit.

But obviously, obviously, we... Thought well that would also be a really strong candidate for ICBMs you know I mean I think originally it was a no-dong base but like it's the kind of place so when you know when that CSIS report got published a month or two ago maybe it's a couple months now you know the underlying report was very good I mean the New York Times coverage was pretty shameful but the actual report itself was very good but at the time I had made this kind of like sarcastic comment like Like, shouldn't we be looking at the ICBM bases, right?

And so I'd gotten contacted by Zach Cohen from CNN, who was like, wait, you know where the ICBM bases are? And I said, you know, well, we don't really know, but there's this place, Yongzhou Dong, and it's, you know, it's supposed to have nodongs at it, but because of where it's located, all the way up against the Chinese border in the kind of the middle of the country, it's You know, it's a really good candidate for ICBMs.

And he was like, well, you know, maybe you could do a write up of that base for us. So Dave and I sit down and we're kind of going back over Yongzhou Dong. And, you know, like it hasn't changed a ton in the past 20 years. You know, it's still basically the same base. That, you know, like a couple of new roofs on old buildings, like whatever.

But God love him. Like Dave is kind of flying around the County which by the way, had been closed to the world food program. Right. So that County is like, you know, spooky things go on. And Dave is like, dude, look at that. And I don't think we ever would have found the new site, the second site, except they rebuilt the headquarters buildings.

And so this site had like really strong camouflage. Like it was really the signature wasn't very strong. But when they rebuilt the like administrative and headquarter building kind of at the mouth of this other valley, it was like, oh, my God, that's a missile base.

Aaron 7:46

Let me stop you there because you're talking about geolocation Jesus Dave Schmerler there. So you were looking, what tipped you off? I mean, you talk about in your piece that this was a missile base and not just some sort of thing that they built in a valley near a missile base.

Jeffrey 8:00

Right. So, you know, we found this new site. And I mean, the first thing is it is set in a valley just like the old base. And at the mouth of the valley, there is a headquarters area, which is like classic military. You know, I mean, nice buildings, but by no means are they like industrial buildings or are they like, you know, fancy hotels.

They look like North Korean military buildings. And of course, they're arranged around a soccer pitch, you know, which is like young men of military age and military bearing who like to stay fit. And they're up in a valley in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, with not much to do other than kick a soccer ball around and practice for nuclear war.

So then we go up the valley and start looking. And I got to tell you, the first thing we find is so well camouflaged. But we found a pair of drive-through shelters, right? And it's interesting. I guess I had to explain to someone what a drive-through shelter was, and it's, like, such an obvious aspect of, like, my existence.

Yeah, for missile nerds. Yeah, I was, like, trying to explain water. I mean, I'm like, well, it's a... You drive through it. What? But, you know, for normal listeners who have, like, real lives and don't, like, obsess, you know, these are basically, like, Earth-covered mounds... With a tunnel, you know, so that you can park your vehicle beneath the protection of that earthen mound and the North Koreans plant trees on top of them.

So they're really hard to see. And I don't think we would have been able to see the pair of them except there was a winter shot where there were no trees and you could see the entrance, you know, where you drive in and then you kind of drive through it out to the other side and it's along this like nice road.

So we looked at that and we were like, oh, those are drive-through shelters. Like that is definitely a missile base. And then what, and you know, like this thing was, the shelters had been there since 2010, right? So the new base, the quote unquote new base, is not really that new. I mean, it hasn't been disclosed in the public because nobody had noticed it before.

But it's not till like 2014 that they built the new headquarters building. And then we saw like the big payoff, which is over the past year, including in the months after the Singapore summit, they're digging a giant underground facility.

Aaron 10:36

Yeah. So you can see this. So like for listeners, you know, look beneath in the show notes and you can follow along because you can see those drive throughs. I guess it would be an image one of your guys's slide deck of images. But on image two. When it's overgrown, it is really, really difficult to see, as you say.

You sort of need that shadow and the no trees in order to see it. If you follow your eyes down, the tunnels give way to a road that then goes away, give to a road that sort of turns into a valley, and then that's where you guys have the, I'm just counting here, five visible tunnel entrances.

Jeffrey 11:18

Wait, no, that's the old site. It's not that that's the wrong site. That's the old site that hasn't changed. The giant underground facility is at the new site. For both sites, they begin at the mouth of the valley with a headquarters area.

Aaron 11:32

Oh, I see.

Jeffrey 11:33

And then you get up the valley, and then there are two drive-thrus. Yes. And then at the old site, there are five tunnels. Okay, this is actually where I get confused. At the new site, there were no tunnels. Okay. And then this past year they start digging a giant freaking one. I mean, it's the amount of spoil they have pulled out in the past year is enormous.

Aaron 12:01

And so the point is, is the timing of the building of the tunnels at the new site, not necessarily that they had the drive-thrus earlier. Right. So the important thing here is that

Jeffrey 12:13

We knew about the old base. And when there are people whose job it is to pretend everything is fine. And so what they have gone back and said is to say, well, look, this base has been here since the late 1990s. And it's like, well, that's true for one of the two bases. But the other base dates to about 2010.

Right. And it really, I mean, you know, some aspects of it were there in 2010, but it started getting a big makeover in 2014. And then in the past year, it's gotten this giant underground facility that's being built. So, you know, the second base, the new base is still like under construction. And what was kind of interesting, I mean, about this whole process is when we found it, You know, we actually, when we published it with CNN, we did not call it an ICBM base.

I mean, we could see how it was sized, but like, unless I actually see an ICBM on a tel there, a transporter, I probably won't. I probably won't be all that confident. But the South Koreans, you know, who, by the way, really attacked that CSIS report, We got a very different reaction. A South Korean military official on background told a reporter that, yes, they think it's an ICBM base.

Aaron 13:45

Yeah, and I think, again, for followers of the show, it's not necessarily surprising that they would build ICBM bases. It's more that the timing of when you guys think the tunneling began for the second base.

Jeffrey 14:00

Yeah, because that just started in like last October. That started like a year ago.

Aaron 14:04

It matters because of the broader political stuff that's going on.

Jeffrey 14:10

Yeah, that's right. I mean, you know, and to be fair, and we have tried to be like straightforward about this, like North Korea has never offered to disarm. And every time I say that, people act like, you know, like I'm trying to be like negative about the process. But the reality is that's why stuff like this is going on, because the North Koreans are not giving up these missiles.

And it's, you know, like I really object to the characterization I saw in the New York Times of the CSIS piece where they said it was a great deception. Because like Kim Jong-un at the beginning of the year said they were going to mass produce and deploy long range nuclear armed missiles, including ICBMs. Like that's their goal for the year and they are following through on that.

So it's not deceptive at all. I mean, not in the least. But it is, I think, a useful counterpoint, and this, I think, gets to Josh's point. It's a really useful counterpoint to the lies coming out of the administration.

Aaron 15:12

Yeah, and so let's summarize Josh's piece before we turn to that part of this. It's like, so Josh, it was for NK News, you know, came out today, and he used the New York Times coverage of some of the open source work that's been done to talk about the responsibility now, you know, with the flattening of access to imagery and, In terms of framing the story right, and how OSINT is translated from our small microsphere into the wider audiences.

Is that accurate? Yeah.

Jeffrey 15:45

No, I think that's exactly right. I mean, it's... You know, look, I started my blog in 2003. I shouldn't call it my blog, because it's not really my blog anymore. It's a blog with a bunch of people writing. But, I mean, when it was my blog... I started it because I was super upset about Iraq. And Josh, God love him, revisits that experience and says, you know, hey, the New York Times got that one wrong too, right?

They were handmaidens to power. They put all this garbage into the public discourse that justified this stupid war, which we lost. You know, and which came at just an incredible cost to the people who lost their lives and the country as a whole. And civil society didn't have anything that it could usefully say about that intelligence. And, you know, okay, this is a different kind of lies, right?

These are, I think Josh calls them lies for peace. But, like, they're lies, you know? The government is being mendacious about what has been agreed. And so, you know, like, the whole point of what we do in civil society is to try to hold powerful people accountable by presenting, you know, evidence about what the truth is. And, you know, like, unlike intelligence information, you know, we can show our work.

Yeah.

Aaron 17:20

I mean, the way I like to think of, like, my... Future job is that you act as, in many respects, as a red team to the internal policy process. You know, it's your job to try and understand to the best of the ability what's going on. And then you weigh in where you think you can be of added value and then make implementable policy recommendations based upon that.

That's how I define impact myself as I go to work every single day. And I think what the open source stuff does Is it allows to you know better understand some of the fuzziness that goes on in the policy debate but also to, to, to red team, or at least to cross-check assumptions, at least as they're put out and talking point from government officials, if, if that all makes sense. And I think that's the real value of this, and why it's really, really important.

A, for us to explain it correctly, but two, is that for people to actually dig into it and deal in facts, not in click-baity headlines. I think that's something that came out of Josh's piece, too.

Jeffrey 18:30

Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. And I actually was really happy with how CNN covered, you know, our findings. I mean, you can always, like, complain here or there, like, well, I wish you'd written this, but, like, that's... I mean, people are either responsible or they aren't. And I thought CNN was super responsible. I do not think...

The New York Times was super responsible with the CSIS report to the point where, you know, Joe Bermudez got asked about the headline and he said, well, I wouldn't characterize it that way, which is a pretty big, like, it's a pretty big development, right?

Aaron 19:01

Yeah. Yeah. In a nice way. In a diplomatic and obvious way for those of us. Well, because if you'd read the CSIS, maybe we should summarize what the CSIS report said and the divergence and how the New York Times covered it. Because again, they use the word deception when there was no deception. Yeah.

Jeffrey 19:16

Yeah, I mean, it was just, CSIS did a really nice in-depth look at one of North Korea's many short-range missile bases. And, like, it was a good and interesting review of a site in real detail. And I, like, I enjoyed reading it, because we look at these sites all the time, but it's really interesting to watch someone go through one of the sites very carefully.

I don't know that it was newsworthy in the narrow sense, but like it was scholarly and useful and of genuine public interest. But the New York Times obviously spun it as some kind of deception, which, you know, again, I don't think there's any deception here. The North Koreans have been clear that their goal this year is to mass produce and deploy nuclear weapons.

And the only person who has said the opposite of that is the president. Right. And so, you know, if there's any deception here, it's it's on the part of of of Donald Trump.

Aaron 20:25

So, I mean, let me ask you this, because it's something I think we should all be thinking about, like as we grapple with. With more and more people who want to do imagery analysis, but maybe people that aren't very good at imagery analysis, and that's not a knock. It's just, you know, as the field matures, there's going to be good and less good people who do it.

Where does it go? Where is this field going? Because you guys are pioneers in this. And when you find something like all the stuff that you guys have uncovered in North Korea, how do you think that aids the policy process or doesn't?

Jeffrey 21:02

Well, I think it's generally good for the policy process because we actually produce unclassified information, which can then be used both as part of the public discussion, but also in discussions between governments. So, I mean, I think one of the early interactions I had like this is, you know, maybe 10, 15 years ago, Jeff Forden wrote something for arms control wonk.

In which he analyzed a video of an Iranian missile launch failing. And in the video, you could see one of the little graphite jet vanes pop off the missile before it spun out of control.

Aaron 21:35

Can I stop you? This was one of my favorite early posts when I was still a grad student reading the arms control blog. So shout out to Jeff Ford.

Jeffrey 21:42

Yeah, it was great. And so, you know, a couple of years later, I was in Beijing and the embassy was, I shouldn't say the embassy, a person at the embassy was like, thank you very much for that post. Tell Jeff it was really, really useful. And he wouldn't say any more. But then after WikiLeaks came out, I realized that they had at the same time been demarshing the Chinese over graphite sales to Iran.

So they must, you know, the implication was when they did the Dimarsh, it was useful for them, instead of using classified information, to be like, here, this is why high-strength graphite matters for the Iranian missile program. You know, so we can do that. And, you know, and then, you know, the flip side is... You know, if there are false claims, we, we can, we can call those out too.

You know, I mean, we, we, we don't have to like, you know, it's not always going to be pleasant for the state department, you know, sometimes we'll help them by giving them unclassified information they can use. And, you know, sometimes we'll, we'll point out that they're dirty, filthy liars.

Aaron 22:47

That's true. You know, so

Jeffrey 22:51

That's a joke. The State Department is, and they're rarely dirty, filthy liars, although maybe the Secretary of State is accepted from that claim.

Aaron 22:59

No, but I think – I mean, the way I think about what's going on with this field and the cutting edge of it is – For some reason, I was actually telling the story about how the arms control blog started today to somebody at Compass Coffee on 14th Street. It was actually in the context of the North Korea debate.

You can draw a narrative on the U.S. side that sanctions have never been more effective. The Trump administration has gotten China on board with the U.N. Security Council, at least on two different instances. And therefore, there could still be some time to work for the allow the diplomatic process to work. If you're not really well versed into North Korea, which means that the diplomatic process has moved forward because North Korea has made so much rapid progress on ICBMs and thermonuclear weapons.

And I think that is ultimately where the open source really, really matters. Is clarifying those misstatements within the U.S. policy debate about whether they have a functioning ICBM, whether or not they can make it, although we can't quite make that for sure, and then building out of the Singapore statement, you know, matching up what we can see the North Koreans can do with the statement, with the public rhetoric from the highest levels, the highest, I guess, the commander-in-chief's Twitter feed about whether or not there's actual verifiable progress there.

I guess, in matching what he says the North Koreans are going to do versus what the North Koreans are actually doing.

Jeffrey 24:35

Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. I mean, you can use these skills to create a factual universe which constrains the otherwise free statements of officials.

Aaron 24:51

Yeah.

Jeffrey 24:52

So, you know, one example is, you know, like the North Koreans built monuments at all the sites where they did their, at both sites where they did their first Hwasong-14 and Hwasong-15 launch. You know, and we can see in satellite images that groups, I presume they're groups of North Koreans, have visited Hwasong. Those monuments, right? So they still do have an internal propaganda value, but the North Koreans sort of turn that down and don't show that in KCNA, right?

And so that's a kind of useful example of saying like, Maybe North Korea's outward-facing propaganda has changed, but it's actually not clear to me that the inward propaganda has changed. You know, they no longer talk about the dual-track policy of investing in nuclear weapons and in the economy. They only talk about investing in the economy. But, like, there are defectors coming out saying, like, no, privately, you know, internally they still mention those things.

Like, if you can... Understand what's happening in the country, right then I think it helps frame and shape and constrain, you know, all, all the like flights of fancy that, that seem to happen when, when policy gets under discussion. And I would assume that no three-letter agency is giving you these. No, yeah, I mean, that is a really Fascinating like interaction where I mean just some people just absolutely believe that like we're just laundering other people's work

Aaron 26:30

As somebody who goes to a country that I won't name that has a problem with arresting people arbitrarily, when you get called that stuff, which I have, it's actually quite worrying. So I feel for you guys.

Jeffrey 26:40

Yeah. I mean, I got the for that North Korea story, we spent $2,800 on satellite images from digital globe. And I literally have the receipt. Bill Watson.

Aaron 26:57

Yeah. I can imagine that.

Jeffrey 26:58

Yeah. I mean, you know, of course, You know, I mean, a lot of our students go on to those kinds of careers for sure. And, you know, I mean, I, you know, like there are obviously natural synergies there, but nope, we find these things ourselves. It actually leads to a kind of funny, like frustration I have where, you know, people will be saying that like, you know, like we're like somehow like, you know, targeting the diplomatic process.

And it's like, well, what do you expect us to do? Do you expect us to find something that looks like an ICBM base, and then somehow I'm going to convince Dave that the two of us have to suppress this information in the service? That's ridiculous. And if we did that, if we just refused to publish things because they conflicted with our policy preferences,

Aaron 27:55

That would be wrong like i would not do that that would that would be horrible and by the way i couldn't do that because dave would be like dude yeah and that's true i mean so where's this going i mean last question before we we wrap it up here do you think we need to have a come to jesus moment with our rhetoric within the u.s or do you think we can continue to limp along until 2020

Jeffrey 28:19

I don't know. I was actually just discussing that very question with a reporter today. Because at one level, it seems like the president's strategy is to just muddle through.

Aaron 28:28

Yeah.

Jeffrey 28:29

It's just to ignore these stories, call them fake news, and say everything is going fine. And I think at some level, that's kind of indefinitely sustainable. But, like, it's not... I mean, by indefinite, I mean it doesn't have an obvious end point. But it also is clear that that probably can't last forever. You know, that at some point, you know, I mean, like Moon Jae-in is term limited to a single term and his popularity has dropped a lot.

And so you could have a domestic political crisis in South Korea that makes this untenable. You know, although Shinzo Abe congratulated Donald Trump on his great victory in the midterms.

Aaron 29:14

Yeah, that was pretty good. That was pretty good.

Jeffrey 29:16

He knows his audience. Yeah, he does. Right. The rest of us know that he lost 40 House seats. And so Donald Trump's political situation here could shift. And, you know, frankly, the North Koreans, although they are getting stuff out of this, particularly the suspension of large scale exercises. You know, like how long are they going to be satisfied with that?

Because they do seem kind of pissed that sanctions have not eased. Right. So like, are they willing to just like paper over things forever? Or, you know, will there come a point where they're going to get a little tougher? And I, I interpreted that weapons test that they did. As a shot across the bow. It was pretty muted.

There was one picture. It's hard to tell where it was. They didn't say what kind of weapon it was. There was no weapon in the picture. But it was, I think, like a little... It's like when the mafiosi walks in your store. It's like, nice little thing you got here. Be ashamed if something happened to it. It was soft, but I thought somewhat ominous.

One of these... One of these wheels I guess it's a tricycle it's a tricycle of stupid I mean like one of the tricycle wheels you know could come off and then the whole thing falls apart right so yeah

Aaron 30:39

I think we should end the podcast on this note. We don't want the wheels to fall off.

Jeffrey 30:44

No, no, we don't. I mean, I, you know, every time I talk to South Korean officials, like I understand what they're doing. I get it. It makes a lot of sense to me. I support it. I just, I'm concerned that they are playing with fire.

Aaron 30:58

Yes. I think that's ultimately, if I had to speak for you and Josh even says it, It's not that you don't support the diplomatic track. It's that you see a potential massive car crash because of self-delusion and want to ensure that all actors can't comfortably sit in front of a television and tell themselves that everything is all good, all day, every day.

Until it isn't, and you have a big meltdown. I would say, and so you want to prevent the meltdown by saying, this is all the information, so no need for a meltdown, we can still make forward progress.

Jeffrey 31:35

Yeah, and the analogy to that is, during World War I, no one in German society would admit that they were losing, and that they were outmatched, and that they were badly led. And so... Came as quite a shock to the German public. And instead of understanding that the failure of Germany to achieve its war aims was a consequence of poor decisions, right, they lapsed into conspiracy theories and scapegoats.

And I worry that something very similar will happen here, which is the president has made all these grand promises, and if they don't come true, he is not going to blame himself. He is going to seek to blame Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping. And so, you know, somebody like Bolton is going to be empowered by a failure.

And I want to make it absolutely clear as we go through this, right, that They are not honestly giving diplomacy a try in a way that if it fails, suddenly will justify trying something different. Like if this diplomacy fails, Natural conclusion to draw from it is next time try real diplomacy rather than the fakey kind because you know, a lot of people like Bolton, when this collapses, will say, see, we told you, you could never trust Kim Jong-un and you know, now it's back to the tough stuff, and that's crazy. Yeah, I think on that happy note it, I should say, it's good to be back.

Aaron 33:24

No, I'm leaving the country for two weeks, so you'll be away from me for two more weeks until we can start properly going again in the new year.

Jeffrey 33:31

Ah, yeah. Well, you know, we'll have to come up with little things in between. But, you know, it was good to get to talk to you again.

Aaron 33:36

Yeah, yeah, it's been good. I hope you're feeling better. I actually didn't know that, so feel better. And, you know, good work out there on the West Coast. Thanks, man. Wait till you see what we drop next week. I'll be in Turkey. But thank you, Jeffrey. Thank you, everybody, for listening. If you like what you're listening to and want to support the podcast, head on over to patreon.com slash acwpodcast, where if you have a .edu address and are a student, for as little as $3 a month, you can get into our Slack channel, where we talk about this stuff all the time.

And for us normal people, at $5 a month, you get the same access. And in the new year, we really will be... Rolling out a fully fleshed out version of Brilliant Pebbles, our short podcast, about 10 minutes on an arms control, nonproliferation, or disarmament topic that is too short for a big podcast, but something that we talk about oftentimes in the Slack.

So take a look out for that. And with that, thanks everybody for listening.