CTBTO 2019

Jeffrey Lewis 0:06

You are listening to the Arms Control Wong podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wong blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:23

I'm Aaron Stein, the director of the Middle East program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Anne Pellegrino 0:28

And I am Anne Pellegrino, a project manager and research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. We're in Vienna, Aaron.

Aaron 0:37

It's hot over there, the news tells me.

Anne 0:40

It's disgusting. Oh, I can't. This is why I live in Monterey.

Jeffrey 0:48

I am dousing myself with Viennese spritzers, which are, as far as I can tell, white wine and sparkling water. I had three for lunch the other day.

Aaron 0:59

I think my parents would give me those at Passover, just to make sure I sat in my seat. They would use 7-Up and Manischewitz.

Jeffrey 1:09

So many things are becoming clear to me, Aaron. So for listeners, Anne Pellegrino and I are here in Vienna at the CTBTO's, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization's Annual Science and Technology Conference, which is only half a science conference.

Aaron 1:31

It's in one of my favorite cities. I really like Vienna. I mean, although I don't think the air conditioners work, but it's a great place to do these things, I think.

Anne 1:40

I mean, the setting is absolutely gorgeous. It's in the Hofburg Palace this year, so for listeners who haven't seen my Twitter, our current setup is we are tucked in some back corner of the palace, and to reduce the echo between myself and Jeffrey, Jeffrey has lodged himself between two sets of quite ornate doors, and For comedic effect, he keeps poking his head out from behind the doors and staring at me.

Yep, there he goes right now.

Jeffrey 2:17

These are not just any random rooms. These are apparently a Maria Theresa's apartments. I don't know which Maria Theresa, which Empress of Austria, but I guess this is a place that one of them lived.

Anne 2:32

She had good taste. There's a nice chandelier in here.

Aaron 2:35

And she lets you guys slum it up for our podcast? Well, she's dead, Aaron.

Jeffrey 2:39

Yeah. She's dead and the Habsburg Empire has crumbled.

Aaron 2:45

It's left a legacy of spritz.

Jeffrey 2:47

It's just dancing horses and spritzers now. I like it.

Aaron 2:51

So where do we want to take this podcast?

Jeffrey 2:54

Well, I thought we would talk about where things are going with the CTBT because, you know, there's a distinct perspective that emerges when you're at a conference like this, which is really a very interesting kind of hybrid. On the one hand, it's a very technical conference. Like the papers are like pretty intimidating in terms of how technical they are.

But then there's a whole political track of the conference, which is much more like, say, the Munich Security Conference or the Shangri-La Dialogue. So, like, on the one hand, you have really technical discussions going on about how one goes about monitoring a treaty or conducting on-site inspections. And then you have a pretty high-level political dialogue playing out.

So it's a kind of nice opportunity to just take stock of where things are with the CTBT. And, you know, it's a chance to go back and talk a little bit more about Nevaeh's Emilia, which is why Anne's here. And talk about what role the CTBT plays with North Korea, which is why I'm here.

Aaron 3:56

And do you want to walk us through the Novaya Zemlya part about this and how it linked into the broader themes of the conference?

Anne 4:03

Sure. So I basically gave an abbreviated version of the research that Jeffrey and I did last year on our open source project of Nobias Emilia, but I focused specifically on using satellite imagery to monitor the test site. So creating a blueprint, going back through both historical declassified satellite imagery and looking at more recent commercial stuff. That has a higher resolution so that we can see when things are new at the site.

And so the big banner item that we previously discussed was the existence of what we believe is a subcritical... Hi, Jeffrey. Jeffrey's waving at me. This is going to be a really hard podcast to get through. Okay, sorry. What we think that we had found was a newly constructed subcritical test facility, and so I was briefing people on that fact, and I think it went well yesterday.

I'm pretty sure I blacked out because I was running on two hours of sleep from jet lag, but Jeffrey assures me that I did well.

Jeffrey 5:22

Yeah, well, so I was sitting next to the speaker before Anne was a Russian who gave a highly technical account of testing at Semipalatinsk and Novaya Zemlya. And he went back and sat with all his Russian buddies in the row immediately behind me. And they did nothing but talk loudly in Russian about Anne's presentation at every slide.

So she definitely had their attention. That's good.

Anne 5:47

Yeah, I'm sure that they did not like us Americans being able to glean so much about their site from the sky. Today, when Jeffrey and I were milling about in the art lounge, we were taking a second look at the site and came across even more ground photos that are Very clear, some guy, Anton, thank you, Anton, was in a helicopter, must have been some part of, I'm assuming the Russian Navy, just flying along the coast of the Strait, just snapping pictures, and they are incredible.

And I wish that I had those photos before I gave the presentation, because I think if they had seen those, then... Or Anton may... Be chillin' in a Russian prison. Or he's at the bottom of the strait, right? Exactly, exactly. But I imagine those would have sent them... Would have turned them apoplectic. It was those... I can't wait to show people.

Jeffrey 6:58

You know, the other presentation on that panel was a look at North Korea's test site, somebody who had with the AWE the atomic weapons establishment in the UK who had done a lot of the same work that we have done taking digital terrain models of the North Korean test site, and then trying to relate those to images and maps that the North Koreans had looked like.

And so this was really a series of talks about Novel ways of understanding what's going on at test sites around the world in ways that are very different from the mandate of the CTBT. So one of the big takeaways for me, I don't know what you think, Anne, but the CTBT as a treaty was signed in 1996, and it has a It envisioned a certain set of verification activities that actually are very much 1996.

Do you want to mention those?

Aaron 7:58

I mean, how they did it?

Jeffrey 8:01

Well, you know, what they do is they look for explosions. Right. Right. And so they've got seismic monitoring stations, radionuclide stations, hydroacoustic stations for underwater and infrasound stations in the case of atmospheric blasts. But if there is an event like that and then they have to go do an on-site inspection, like the way they do that is still really like 1996.

Like you, you know, maybe you have a map of the site. Right. And so what all of these presentations were nominally, not nominally, what those presentations were all about is how one can fuse ground truth images, historical sources, satellite images, digital terrain models in order to build these really complex models, which, you know, would support going in and doing an on-site inspection.

If you needed to do that. And that's, you know, like not something that the CTBTO was set up to do, even though because you couldn't in 1996, but you can now.

Aaron 9:05

I was involved in their first sort of ever inspection as their first ever simulation trying to trigger a special inspection. And I won't. They brought on like a scientist. I won't say what country he was from. And he so flubbed the presentation. It was, let's say, skewed towards an outcome of getting a special inspection. But because he screwed up the explanation of the explosion so badly that the entirety of the sort of – of the simulated delegates – Wouldn't sanction it so it caused a massive panic we had to figure out a way to jury rig it at the end but the point is it all came down to like because everybody goes home early if you don't do the inspection right but the point is it's like it all came down to how you you know there was no none of these these these imagery these images that were there it was all technical data and then they had some sort of fictitious you know u.s spy satellites that that they didn't really produce good imagery but like even then i mean this was i can't remember when this was

Jeffrey 10:05

Yeah, so the guy who did the North Korea presentation was on a 2014 one of those. And so he really was focused on this idea of how do you use digital models in order to train people to go ahead and do these inspections.

Anne 10:20

His models of the... What was the name of the exercise in 2014?

Aaron 10:32

IFE 14. Was that the one in Jordan?

Anne 10:36

Yes. Yes. And he was showing us his digital terrain model of the site. And it was incredibly detailed. And he said that... When he last gave a presentation at S&T and there were several inspectors who were like yeah we've never had any of this data before we just go in blind to these sites sometimes and being able to being able to give somebody like a 15-minute briefing On the site in that way before you arrive, I think, is something we all agreed after we were talking yesterday that is really powerful.

Jeffrey 11:20

Yeah, and I mean, to put the correct Or to put it correctly in perspective, it's not really a failing of the treaty. It's just kind of an interesting fact that when you negotiate something in one technological era, as things change, you have to sort of try to keep up. And that's actually, I think, a fundamental purpose of this conference is to make sure that there is the kind of integration of new tools and techniques available So that the CTBT can can take advantage of them.

So, you know, I actually interviewed Steve Letigar, who was the US ambassador who negotiated the CTBT before he passed away. And because he was Closing in on passing away. I think he told me a lot of things that maybe he should not have. But like, I think he didn't care at that point. He just wanted the record to sort of be, in his opinion, accurate.

And he was really blunt that when they negotiated the on-site inspection protocol, they had no idea how it was going to work. You know, like they had a general sense, but you don't really know until you start doing exercises. And then if the treaty comes into force, doing them for real. So, you know, the fact that inspectors didn't have this kind of, you know, information isn't really a criticism of the treaty, but more of a kind of positive statement about the value of doing this kind of conference and the techniques that are now available to the CTBTO.

Aaron 12:50

How did it feel being amongst your members of your subspecies, these digital modelers?

Anne 12:57

There are so many tools that I now want to buy.

Jeffrey 13:01

Yeah, we did a little show and tell. Where, you know, it's like, oh, we have this software. Oh, well, we use this software. And it's, yeah, it's pretty cool.

Anne 13:12

Yeah, and in our, you know, our Pongiri model is farther along than this other model, though the tools that he has built his model with are way more advanced than ours. And so I've been making mental notes about how to go about acquiring these when I get home.

Jeffrey 13:35

And he can project his in 3D. What? If you put on the 3D glasses, the whole thing's in 3D.

Anne 13:42

So you can walk through the site. Oh, that's cool.

Jeffrey 13:47

Like literally walk through the site and have it look like it's in 3D. You can project it up on a wall and it looks like you're looking through a window into the 3D site.

Anne 13:58

So we could theoretically put our North Korea model into this software and then have people be able to actually walk the tunnels into the cavities.

Aaron 14:12

Is this guy actually part of the AWE or is he used to be part of AWE and now he's out?

Jeffrey 14:18

No, no. He's part of AWE. In fact, he took it very well. There are a bunch of people on Twitter miffed at me. Because the former, I guess, chief scientific advisor to MOD who negotiated the nuclear cooperation treaty between the UK and France, he was talking about the UK's Orion laser, which is very similar to the National Ignition Facility in the United States.

And on Twitter, I called it Pound Shop NIF. Yeah. And it turns out he worked on Pound Shop Niff and pointed out that there were a lot of things about Orion that he felt were better than Niff. But he took it pretty well. He was a good character.

Aaron 15:09

Did we do everything about Novaya Zemlya? Was there anything else you wanted to add?

Anne 15:14

What did I want to add? So I was trying to go back in my mentions and look at a tweet because I was tagged in a tweet from Grace Liu where somebody in the opening ceremonies had Stated they're like the recent allegations by the United States of low-yield nuclear testing is the elephant in the room right now and nobody has mentioned it and so Grace was like hopefully Anne will address this in her presentation and so I was planning on solely talking about satellite imagery aspect but then I did end up pivoting to the political like policy bottom line which Was that the existence of this subcritical facility is not a bad thing.

It should not freak anybody out when they see it in satellite imagery. They should take it as an opportunity for some confidence building and transparency measures. I believe that the Soviets, well, the now Russians, Previously did their subcritical tests in the old test tunnels. And so it's actually a good thing if they are now locating all of their tests in a central facility, which makes it easier to monitor.

We can watch traffic coming in and out of those specific facilities, much the way that we have the Nevada National Security Site, or U1A, out in Nevada.

Jeffrey 16:53

So one theme of this meeting for me has been how the CTBTO stays abreast of technological developments, right? So inviting people like Anne and others to come and talk about new technologies. But then the other piece which relates to the panel I am going to be on tomorrow is what Anne described as the elephant in the room.

Which is the treaty is in tough shape, right? It was signed in 1996. The United States signed it, but still has not ratified it. As a consequence, China has not ratified it. India has expressed zero interest in signing or ratifying it. It cannot enter into force until a list of states that includes the United States and China and India and Israel and North Korea all ratify the agreement.

And so we are living in this world where we have challenges emerging, whether those are allegations that the Russians are resuming low-yield testing or just where things are with North Korea. And... Like, we got to figure out what to do with that. So there's the technical piece, but then there's the kind of political dialogue that's taking place.

And there have been some really interesting discussions. Like, you know, obviously this is a treaty organization. And so their goal is to Demonstrate their ability to properly administer the treaty if it were to come into force, because it's technically a provisional secretariat, right? Pending entry into force, but this is like year 23 of provisional. And so it's not really provisional, right?

It is what we have. It is a really important technical system for monitoring things. And it raises this question of like, what is the CTBT in this era when it's a part of our life and it plays an important role, but it's still technically not a real thing. And I think North Korea illustrates that really well, because North Korea went, and this is the panel I'm on tomorrow, North Korea shuts down its test site.

And the only other case we have where a country shut down a test site in a kind of international way like that was South Africa. And when South Africa did it, it was the IAEA that had to verify that. Today, presumably... The CTBTO is the entity that should have been asked in to verify North Korea's shutdown of its Punggi retest site.

But right, they didn't do that. They invited some journalists to take a look. So trying to understand what role we want the CTBTO to play in this era and how we want it to relate to things like the DPRK is pretty interesting to me.

Aaron 19:59

I mean, and so, I mean, we maybe jumped a little bit. Is that one of the ways to do it is, you know, outfitting them with new tools? I mean, is that what I'm reading correctly? Or to integrate updated means to provide them with... No, I mean, this is a separate track.

Jeffrey 20:14

So, I mean, this is a very strange conference. Sorry to talk over you, Anne.

Anne 20:18

No, it's all right.

Jeffrey 20:21

This, if you sit down and look at the... The program, this is not like any other conference I've ever been to. You have straight up scientific papers on the most minute issues of radionuclide detection, infrasound monitoring. I mean, work that is, you know, likely to be published in Genuine scientific journals. Right. And so that's one track, right?

And so that's why Anne's here, because Anne's here for the conversation that says, you know, how do you, how do you go beyond the monitoring system and integrate new technologies? And, you know, we're also doing some work with Ferenc Delnacu-Veras back at CNS, because he's looking at, you know, new techniques like anti-neutrino detection, right? So that stuff is very technical.

But then there are these panels, like there was a panel of journalists yesterday. And the journalists were charged with this question of like, how does one talk about the CTVTO? Because it is this strange institution, right? It's not like the IAEA. It is still a provisional institution. Secretariat because the treaty has not entered into force. So this was, it was always imagined that, you know, the thing would be provisional for a couple of years.

They would take advantage of the time it took to get the treaty ratified, to get up and running so that when the treaty entered into force, you know, everything would be ready. But things stalled after the U.S. didn't ratify in 1999. And so you, you, we live in this world where Where the CTBT is not in force.

If a country were to conduct a nuclear explosion, all of the provisions for onsite inspections don't legally exist. The CTBTO knows how to do those things and has that capability. But because the treaty is not enforced, they don't have the legal authority to do that. And so that then raises the second set of questions like if this is going to be it for the foreseeable future, like what does that mean for an organization?

That's not at all technical. It's a purely political question. And from my perspective, like I would love to have seen the CTBTO verify the closure of the Punggiri nuclear test site.

Aaron 22:45

What do you think about that, Ian?

Anne 22:47

Well, okay, so I, just as an overarching comment, I imagine when the treaty opened for signature and there was this whole question about how are we actually going to verify X, Y, and Z, they thought that the hardest part would be coming up with the science and the technologies to do so, not the other way around. If I've learned anything from this conference so far, it's that the science will continue, that the science is The easy part in this scenario.

Jeffrey 23:23

Yeah, which I think you see with Anne's Nevaeh's Emily at work, right? We're super upset that the Russians are conducting experiments because some people think that those are low-yield nuclear experiments. The technical piece of getting the answer to that is not hard. The hard part is the political will of wanting to get an answer and the Russians wanting to give us an answer.

And so that to me is what is so fascinating about this conference is the gulf. Between the vast technical expertise, which you'll come from one of those papers into a room where it's a much broader discussion of reporters saying, we can't really explain to people what you do. I mean, it's a very unusual hybrid.

Anne 24:09

What I also think is interesting is that The CTPTO and this conference and what we are discussing is not just related to nuclear explosions. There's a whole side of the conference that's discussing how these technologies can further sustainable development goals and combating climate change, all sorts of things that are outside of the traditional... Role that the CTBT was is supposed to play and so I think that that's part of I imagine that that is part of a survival mechanism the evolution of what you know how important the IMS is not just for our field but for a very large number of fields I think that You know, if the CTBT never enters into force, there is still a role for everything that the CTBTO has built to play.

Jeffrey 25:23

Yeah, you know, just like we creep on civil data in order to like learn things about nonproliferation, there's a kind of Inverse process that happens with the CTBTO, which is they have this monitoring system which nominally exists to verify this treaty. But, you know, obviously a system of seismic monitoring stations has all kinds of value in terms of monitoring earthquakes and predicting tsunamis.

Anne 25:54

They monitor whale migrations with hydroacoustic data.

Jeffrey 26:00

Right. So you have this really cool verification system for the treaty, which then has these kinds of secondary civil applications, which, you know, like. Obviously, the thing we really want is for the treaty to go into force so that there is a verifiable end to nuclear testing. But if the treaty collapsed and the thing we'd. Of course we would be most upset about the return to nuclear testing, but then it turns out there would be a whole variety of civil applications that you would also lose, which would also like be a bummer.

Aaron 26:35

One of the things that struck me for both of you guys talking about this is, you know, the science is quote unquote easy, but it's, you know, one of the problems, of course, is that the U S hasn't ratified it, you know, signed, but ratified it, you know, and, In our own political debate, the science will never be good enough, right?

Because it's not really about the science. It's about the politics of giving up sovereignty. And that's always struck me as a really difficult thing because we've sat here. We know that you could probably detect most – to a reasonable degree. But trying to synthesize that down in testimony in the Senate in ways that – are people actually interested in being convinced or are they just looking for ways to take potshots about that?

Because for me, if you're looking about the future of arms control, like the broader theme here – It's the inability to depoliticize what are essentially not political things. I mean, there is a political component to signing a treaty, but the verification of that is mostly technical. And it's integrating things that are technical into your political space. But if the political space is just totally averse to technical fixes, then the science could be the greatest thing in the world, but just nobody believes it.

Jeffrey 27:51

Yeah, I think there's this interesting thing that happens when you see technical presentations, because obviously, anytime you have an honest person presenting technical information, there's always a limit to how good a verification system can be, right? It's never perfect. The whole point of a technical paper is to discuss what it can do, but also what it can't do, what the shortcomings are.

And there's this kind of, I find, like, bathtub curve. Like, when you... Are like far away. I guess it's not, I probably, that's a terrible metaphor because it's not exactly right. But I just, I feel like when you, when you don't know anything about the system, right, and you hear that it has these shortcomings, you're like, oh, that's a, you know, it's a terrible system.

And when you know like a little bit about it, you're like, wow, that's a really cool system. I think when you get to the other end, you know, you kind of live in this world where you're like, Okay, it is a very good system. It has these shortcomings and these limitations. But because you understand how impressive it still nonetheless is, and you have realistic expectations about what one can do, in some way it's even more impressive.

It's even more impressive because of its flaws. Because you really understand how much ingenuity it took To get to the point where there was, you know, the residual uncertainty that will always exist. So, yeah, I find the very technical papers are really fascinating in that way.

Aaron 29:35

So, I mean, maybe to both of you as we just pivot here to the end so you can get back to your spritz is, what's the future?

Jeffrey 29:43

Spritzes. Spritzes. It's a plural.

Aaron 29:45

Spritzes, you know.

Jeffrey 29:47

God gave me two hands for a reason, Aaron.

Aaron 29:49

Double fisting. Double fisting spritzes. But like, what's the mood? I mean, Vienna's lovely. The dumplings are good. Spritzes are good. But is it somber? Or are people hopeful?

Anne 30:05

I would say that a number of people have remarked that a lot of the high-level panels and remarks by ambassadors, what have you, have been Are slightly negative. Yeah, I think in terms of that political aspect, but I mean, there's been no, I mean, it's and I think it's unfortunate, but I understand why this is the case that all high level panels are The political aspect, how do we talk about science, but not a lot of the science is being displayed apart from smaller side sessions.

And so I imagine that those sessions are way more optimistic than the higher level political ones. But I would say that the CTBTO youth group has come out in force, and obviously us young people are more optimistic. So there's a nice flavor of youthful joy, I guess.

Jeffrey 31:15

No, I think that's the thing that stands out to me. I mean, the scientific papers are just scientific papers, and so there really isn't a mood one way or the other. You know, it's like... You know, like, I can do this cool thing. The more political conversation, I would really second Anne's observation about the generational divide. And, you know, even to the point where, like, old people, like, are complaining about millennials.

It's really strange.

Anne 31:46

Yeah, there was one conference. There was one session where it was a lot of, like, ugh, millennials. And I was like... No, no.

Jeffrey 31:57

It was a little weird to hear them, like, trashing, like, millennials not having attention spans, like Anne is presenting. Like, what? Yeah. That's a f***ing attention span.

Anne 32:06

Like, there's a whole, there's a whole, there have been multiple panels. I mean, the whole, half of the women in science and technology panel that was the banner session for the first evening. Young women. I mean, again, the CTBTO youth group out in force. There is a whole bunch of art on display from young people who are visualizing what nuclear weapons mean to them.

I'm usually not one to get angry at the older generations for shitting on millennials. But, like, we aren't the ones that cause these problems. And, you know, we generally want to fix them. So, you know, back off, please.

Jeffrey 32:54

Yeah, it's really strange. No, it actually came up in the meeting today because I – you know, I shouldn't – it was a private meeting, so I shouldn't say, but – I want to because basically there were some older people being all grumpy and the most senior person at the meeting is like, Why are you so grumpy?

Like, don't you see all these young people walking around? Like, they're not grumpy. They're like, focused on fixing these problems. So like, shouldn't you be that way? So I shouldn't really disclose the contents of that conversation. But you know, like, I think one of the older people here was like, you know, what the hell's wrong with my fellow old people?

Aaron 33:34

Come on.

Jeffrey 33:36

So that's a really interesting dynamic. And I should say Grace Liu, who's at CNS, was on the Women in Security panel and is associated with the CTBTO youth group. And, you know, I find it's, you know, I know I'm supposed to hang out with my age group, but like they're pretty inspiring and fun bunch.

Aaron 34:01

Is that a happy note? I think that is a happy note.

Jeffrey 34:09

Yeah. I mean, we're happily waiting for baby boomers to die. Then, you know, problems will get fixed.

Aaron 34:18

Darkly comedic. Darkly comedic. Well, thank you for Anne and Jeffrey for joining me from an apartment adjoining a palace with no air conditioning and Jeffrey for sitting in a little hovel. Much appreciated for the sound quality. For listeners, thank you for joining us. And if you like what you hear, you can head on over to patreon.com slash acwpodcast.

And for as little as $3 a month if you're a student or $5 a month if you are a normal person, you can... Get access to our private Slack channel, and where we have some pretty cool stuff going on in there. With that, Jeffrey and Ed, enjoy Vienna. Thank you. And I'm going to enjoy the California sun.

That pool is calling my name. And thanks, everybody, for listening.