Definition of the week: depraved indifference (legal definition): when a person has an utter disregard for the value of human life – not because he or she means to cause grievous harm, but because he or she simply does not care. Lyrics of the week: Sister brother do you understand? It’s hard seeing farther than the …
Archives for October 2020
The 2020 North Korean Military Parade
by | October 21, 2020 | No Comments
On 10/10/2020, the 75th Anniversary of the Founding of the Worker’s Party of Korea, the DPRK showed of a lot of missiles. Again. In addition to all the stuff they’ve been testing over the last two years, they introduced a new, oddly shaped solid-propellent missile, the Pukguksong-4, and what appears to be the largest TEL-based liquid …
Putin Votes for Trump
by | October 21, 2020 | 4 Comments
Quotes of the week: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave…when first we practice to deceive.” ― Walter Scott, Marmion ““Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” The Wizard of Oz Vladimir Putin has joined tens of millions of Americans in voting early. He and Donald Trump would like to play “Let’s Make …
Burevestnik Testing To Resume
by | October 20, 2020 | No Comments
Russia Preparing to Resume Nuclear-Powered Cruise Missile Tests Michael Duitsman and Jeffrey Lewis New satellite photographs taken by Planet Labs and analyzed by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies show that Russia is preparing to resume test flights of its Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile at a launch site above the Arctic circle. The images, taken …
The President’s Sole Authority for First Use
by | October 12, 2020 | 4 Comments
Note to readers: Because of its renewed relevance, I have updated a post that appeared in ACW under the heading “A Three Person Rule for Nuclear First Use” on April 17, 2017. A shorter version of this essay was published in the New York Times on April 13, 2017. Quote of the week: “Ours is …
Saving the World with Datayo
by | October 9, 2020 | No Comments
Melissa Hanham, director of Datayo and Deputy Director of the Open Nuclear Network, joins Jeffrey and Scott to talk about Datayo, a project aimed at reducing nuclear risks and fostering a transparent, collaborative, and high-quality analytic information environment. Scott fawns over Datayo’s video annotation capabilities for military hardware tracking, and Melissa talks about how much …
The Deal
by | October 9, 2020 | No Comments
Now that a few episodes have dropped, Anne and Jeffrey talk about Jeffrey’s new project, The Deal. Jeffrey chronicles how researchers like Corey Hinderstein chased down data before satellite imagery was so easily available, Wendy Sherman’s incredible memory for names, and just how many BBs Jeffrey has in his car. The Deal tells the story …
Air-Launched Cruise Missiles in Uiju, DPRK.
by | October 4, 2020 | No Comments
This article was co-authored with Jeffrey Lewis, who pulled the historical documents and made the connection between the KN05 and the Styx storage site. North Korea has air-launched cruise missiles, and it looks like they store them at an airfield in Uiju, near the PRC border. We normally talk about the DPRK’s ballistic missile programs …
Extending New START for Five Years
by | October 4, 2020 | No Comments
Verse of the week: “To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life” — William Shakespeare, Hamlet Lyrics of …
