Arms Control Wonk

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Tang Jiaxuan Wraps Up Visit to Pyongyang

Chinese State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan (right, with the Il-iminator) is wrapping up a two day visit to Pyongyang. Kim Jong-Il reportedly told Tang that “the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was the behest of President Kim Il Sung.” Kim also…

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Zhang Liying: China's Missile Gal

Can’t anybody in the US intelligence community speak Chinese? Gregory Kulacki—the man who caught DIA repeating a hoax about a parasite microsatellite that was posted on a Chinese bulletin board—has caught another US intelligence entity just making shit up. Well,…

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Srebrenica — 10 Years Later

What does Srebrenica have to do with arms control? Well arms control and other cooperative security approaches efficiently solve security dillemmas, freeing up resources for dealing with real security threats that kill people every day like civil conflict and terrorism.…

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National Ignition Facility

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory comprises 192 lasers that will use inertial confinement to conduct nuclear weapons and fusion experiments. The project is the largest facility ever constructed at Livermore. For the technically inclined, three…

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Hameed Gul and the Islamic Bomb

Hameed Gul is Nuts. Pervez Hoodby—writing in the Los Angeles Times’ “Current” section —gets alarmist in service of a good argument: In a recent televised debate between myself and Hameed Gul — an influential Islamist leader, retired general and former…

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Steak and Cheesecake

The Chinese served steak and cheesecake to Assistant Secretary Hill and Deputy Foreign Minister Kim, sayeth Joel Brinkley at the New York Times.

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North Korea To Return To Six Party Talks

Maybe it was the duck, but North Korea is willing to attend Six Party Talks in Beijing the week of July 25. A senior administration official traveling with Secretary Rice told Joel Brinkley at the New York Times that North…

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BOING! State Department May Hit Boeing for 47 LARGE

Dominic Gates at the Seattle Times obtained a draft letter from the State Department to Boeing, notifying the company that Foggy Bottom “has prepared civil charges against Boeing alleging 94 violations of the Arms Control Act because the company sold…

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Tehran Tourists?

Let’s hope DPRK-Iran nuclear cooperation goes as well as their football matches. “A non-U.S. diplomat” gave Louis Charbonneau at Reuters “an intelligence report” that concludes “nuclear cooperation between [Iran and North Korea] has apparently increased significantly during the past year…

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Pike: No Yongbyon Construction

A few days ago, I argued that analysts could easily confirm with satellite imagery whether or not North Korea had resumed construction of the 50 MWe reactor at Yongbyon and the 200 MWe reactor at Taechon—something the North Koreans told…