Regular readers will notice that Jane Vaynman has been guest blogging for the last couple of weeks. Well, she hasn’t been guest blogging. Jane—who is spending the year in Moscow on a Fulbright—is replacing Paul, who will be starting his…
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a very short statement confirming that the North Korean test was nuclear. Thom Shanker and David Sanger’s article in the New York Times says that US intelligence has concluded that the…
Normally I don’t bother with Gertz, but this is priceless: Nuclear volleyball Intelligence photographs of North Korea’s nuclear test site showed technicians playing volleyball this week near the tunnel where a nuclear device was unsuccessfully set off on Sunday. The…
The Carnegie Moscow Center held a discussion yesterday on the 123 Agreement, which would allow for nuclear cooperation between Russia and the US. The presentation was given by Robert Einhorn of CSIS, and there will be a summary on the…
NHK and Yonhap have both reported on what Japan and South Korea have found in the atmosphere after the DPRK’s Monday test: bagel. According to NHK: Japan’s 47 prefectures say no radioactive substances have been detected at any measuring points…
I was at an event this morning where Michael Swaine raised the question of identifying North Korean uranium in the event that it were used in an attack by another state or terrorist organization. This subject has come up a…
Just for fun…back in the day, Powell described the likely US response to a North Korean nuclear test in a 2003 interview with Business Week : Q: And if the North Koreans test nuclear arms? A: If they test we’ll…
Well. Japan’s MFA is apparently saying that North Korea may have conducted a second test, according to AP. South Korea seems to say otherwise, though: …a South Korean official said seismic monitors did not detect any tremors that could indicate…
One possible explanation for a failed test is that the North Koreans attempted to skip directly to an operational weapons design (say 1000-2000 lbs like the US Mk 7). Indeed, this was precisely what was reported in the press in…
Well, the French are the first to drop the F-bomb on North Korea—failure. Speaking to reporters, French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie (right) said “it was an explosion with a force of about half a kiloton, which is not an extremely…
