Lyric of the week: There’s gonna come a time when the true scene leaders Forget where they differ and get big picture ’cause the kids at their shows, they’ll have kids of their own The sing-a-long songs will be our scriptures We gotta stay positive We gotta stay positive We gotta stay positive We gotta …
Archives for April 2020
The Day After Hiroshima
by | April 20, 2020 | 2 Comments
Quote of the week: “If necessary, we shall continue the war alone, and we are not afraid of that. But I trust you realize, Mr. President, that the voice and force of the United States may count for nothing if they are withheld too long.” – new Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s first secret cable to …
Roof repair work spotted at the Pyongsan uranium mill
by | April 17, 2020 | No Comments
In exciting news, Planet Labs snapped its first Skysat (0.8m resolution) image of North Korea’s uranium mill at Pyongsan on April 14, 2020. The image shows North Korea completed roof repair work on the largest building at the complex. This is a part of a long running cycle of rust and repair conducted at the …
The IAEA’s questions for Iran
by | April 17, 2020 | No Comments
The International Atomic Energy Agency has questions about three sites in Iran — but Iran doesn’t feel like answering. Aaron, Anne and Jeffrey discuss the atomic archive, access to suspect facilities, and environmental sampling. Plus, there are a few things in recent IAEA reports that worry us. Support us over at Patreon.com/acwpodcast!
Tracking the PLA Rocket Forces
by | April 15, 2020 | No Comments
The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Forces used to be a nearly opaque organization to all but a few open-source researchers. Now, increased availability of satellite-imagery and public media enable open-source exploitation and tracking of PRC missile forces like never before. Decker Eveleth joins Jeffrey and Scott to discuss open-source tracking PRC missile brigades, his geolocated …
The Covid-19 and Nuclear Plagues
by | April 13, 2020 | 2 Comments
Poem of the week: “Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw little that is Good Steadily hastening towards immortality, And the vast all that is call’d Evil I saw hastening to merge itself And become lost and dead.” – Walt Whitman, “Roaming in Thought” Will this wretched virus help us to take more effective …
Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something…Yellow?
by | April 10, 2020 | 1 Comment
This is a guest post from my colleague Margaret Croy. Dual Use in the DPRK: Uranium Extraction from Phosphate Fertilizer Factories Last June, while going through Google Earth and trying to geolocate some of the facilities linked to North Korea’s nuclear fuel cycle, I bumped into some of my old research on nuclear safeguards challenges …
Mort Halperin and the Okinawa Decision
by | April 10, 2020 | No Comments
Mort Halperin a giant as an academic and a policy practitioner. And he’s working on a memoir that covers his sixty year career in foreign policy. Mort played an important role in the US decision to revert Okinawa to Japanese control without nuclear weapons — a case study Jeffrey teaches in is class on decision-making. …
The Most Consequential Step
by | April 3, 2020 | 3 Comments
Diversion of the week: I strongly recommend the movie “Heart and Souls” (1993) starring a very young Robert Downey, Jr., the great Alfre Woodard, the under-appreciated straight man, Charles Grodin, Kyra Sedgwick and Tom Sizemore. We usually settle for one, movie-ending feel good moment. Guys: think of the having-a-catch-with-Dad scene in “Field of Dreams.” Gets …
