220 posts
The other day, I posted a picture of an Iranian give-away at the IAEA General Conference — a laser-pointer shaped like a centrifuge. Another reader, who also must remain anonymous, sent along this image of the booth. Gosh, that’s a…
Readers know that I yield to no one in my love of atomic schwag. A colleague, who sadly must remain anonymous, snapped this picture of a giveaway from the IAEA General Conference held last month. Yes, the Islamic Republic of…
In February 2004, senior IAEA officials led by then-Director General Mohamed ElBaradei held a one-off meeting in Tehran with former President and parliamentarian Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Based on an assessment of Iran’s nuclear program which the IAEA is currently preparing for the…
Critical foreign languages won’t make or break a career, but they can help aspiring wonks gain comparative advantage in the job market. Learning a critical foreign language can also lead to great travel opportunities, and travel, as Mark Twain once…
Jack Murphy and several colleagues at SAIC have released a very interesting paper that uses a variety of geospatial and seismic data to locate the 2006 and 2009 nuclear explosions conducted by the DPRK, as well as estimate the yield…
Twenty-five years ago, the world’s highest-stakes poker game was played in Reykjavik. This characterization comes from a man with a pretty good poker face, George Shultz, who was the US Secretary of State at the time. Secretary Shultz appeared to…
At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in June, outgoing-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates dropped a little bombshell: With the continued development of long-range missiles and potentially a road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile and their continued development of nuclear weapons, North Korea…
Is it any wonder why Pakistan produces excellent fiction writers? Fiction has to be exceptional to top newspaper accounts. The latest saga begins with outgoing Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs, Mike Mullen, who speaks the unvarnished truth that Pakistan’s…
Several readers have mentioned a piece that Bridge Colby and I wrote in The Diplomat (“How To Worry Kim Jong Il”) arguing that the Obama Administration should seriously consider modifying the B83 to hold at risk certain targets in North…
I really hate putting public service announcements on the blog, in part because there are so many worthwhile causes. Still, I make an exception every now and again. Friday, September 30 is the deadline for two really important opportunities. First,…
