Suitcase nukes, red mercury, Hitler’s bomb and the EMP apocalypse: persistent nuclear myths, and how they fall apart.
A while back, a reader asked me whether or not “suitcase nukes” actually existed. I expressed my skepticism, but deferred to a more knowledgeble colleague. Now, AP’s Katherine Shrader has a very nice, readable deconstruction of the rise and fall…
Reader Chris Camp, who submitted as essay on disarmament “winners and losers“, has been thinking about the curious tale of Red Mercury lately. He sends along this dispatch: The curious tale of Red Mercury by Chris Camp In the lore…
Red Mercury. It does not exist and anyone promising you riches for it is a conman. Following CJ Chivers massive story in the New York Times magazine about the red mercury hoax, inlcuding efforts by groups like ISIS to obtain…
German historian Rainer Karlsch has written a book, Hitler’s Bomb, which— according to press reports—concludes “Adolf Hitler had the atom bomb first but it was too primitive and ungainly for aerial deployment.” Karlsch reportedly claims Germany tested the weapon in…
“Laßt mich in Ruhe mit euren Gewissensbissen, das ist doch so schöne Physik!” –Enrico Fermi, arguing with his colleagues on the Manhattan Project about the ethical implications of developing the atomic bomb. What? I thought Enrico Fermi was Italian! And…
Sorry about not blogging for the past few weeks. I haven’t submitted a Foreign Policy column, either. As some of you may know, things have been pretty tough on both personal and professional fronts for a while now. Am modestly…
Too many articles about Chinese espionage are about as sophisticated as the plot of a Hong Kong action flick. At least John Woo made stuff blow up. Somebody at the Wall Street Journal saw Hard Boiled one too many times.…
No, Hilary Clinton did not sell America’s uranium to Russia. Aaron and Jeffrey attempt to patiently discuss the Uranium One purchase of Willow Creek uranium mine, the US firm that bribed Russian officials to win trucking contracts, and why this…
Slashdot notes the recent publication of images of Polyus-Skif—a Soviet satellite unsuccessfully launched in May 1987 Polyus-Skif is an object of interest because some space hawks claim it was a space-weapon. Typical is Jim Oberg, who wrote in the New…
One of the persistent problems with the intelligence community (and its critics) is a form of selection bias—some of the folks who take an interest in intelligence matters do so because they’ve seen one to many James Bond movies. Even…
Did you know that, in the 1990s, the Aum Shinrikyo death-cult acquired two remote-controlled helicopters and considered using them to deliver chemical weapons? It’s a wild story, write Brian Scheu and Philipp Bleek — although one that raises more questions,…
The website Spacewar placed this photo (at right) alongside an AFP article about the inclusion of North Korean missile programs in the 6 Party process (“US to look into North Korea’s missile threat,” August 24, 2007). Although the AFP article…
