Category: intelligence

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Possible ICBM Modernization Underway at Sundian

This article was co-authored with Decker Eveleth. Decker Eveleth is a junior at Reed College studying International Comparative Policy Studies. He sometimes moonlights as the disembodied head of an Iranian weapons designer. China may be modernizing some very old ICBM…

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Not Your Usual Game of Whack-A-Mole

My colleague Olivia Vassalotti is back with another guest post, this time with an update on the recent activities of Glocom, a North Korean intelligence-linked company selling military communications technology overseas. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in North Korea’s…

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Recent Activity at Nampo

My colleagues Catherine Dill, Cameron Trainer and I were reminded when looking at satellite imagery of Nampo, taken yesterday morning, that North Korea’s evasive tactics are successfully keeping the country’s coal and iron exporters in business. Prior to being sanctioned by the UN,…

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Glocom Is at It Again

Readers may recall my earlier rantings about a company called ‘Glocom’, a North Korean military communications firm masquerading as Malaysian, and selling missile navigation systems and other arms-related products around the world. The company was outed by the UN Panel…

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2005 Iran NIE Details

Regular readers know that I have tried to accumulate all the information I can about the 2005 NIE on Iran’s nuclear program — it is interesting in its own right and as a predecessor to the much misunderstood 2007 NIE.…

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Monitoring the Test Ban

I am working on a series of longer posts related to monitoring the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, but wanted to share an amusing paragraph from the March 2009 edition of Science & Technology Review, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s…

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Aftergood Catches ODNI Being Lazy

I failed to mention that Steven Aftergood caught ODNI passing off flimsy Russian news accounts as intelligence regarding Russian counterspace capabilities: Some of the DNI’s statements are surprisingly flimsy. For example, he declares (question 17) that “In 2003, the Russian…

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Estimative Language, Then and Now

Of the many reasons I have a soft spot for the intelligence community, one is this: imagine how hard it is to produce a document that is both precise and readable. That’s the same challenge I face on the blog,…

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Gormley on PRTBs

I meant to add that Richard Clarke’s most recent book, Your Government Failed You has a fantastic account about tracking Russian nuclear weapons deployments. The story, which involves the great Dennis Gormley, centers on Soviet units called “Mobile Technical Rocket…

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Sabotage! Dutch-style.

Conversations about a recent news report in the Dutch paper De Telegraaf — that Netherlands has recalled a spy/saboteur from Iran’s nuclear program in fear of an impending attack — are filling my inbox. Here is the crucial bit of…