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Former Crypto-Analyst Analyzes the Danger of Nuclear Weapon Stockpiles
An anonymous reader writes "IEEE Spectrum reports that noted encryption pioneer Prof. Martin Hellman has a new passion; estimating the risk of our current nuclear weapons policies. His web site, Defusing the Nuclear Threat, asks the question, 'How risky are nuclear weapons? Amazingly, no one seems to know.' Hellman therefore did a preliminary analysis and found the risk to be 'equivalent to having your home surrounded by thousands of nuclear power plants.' The web site and a related statement therefore urgently call for more detailed studies to either confirm or correct his startling conclusion. The statement has been signed by seven notable individuals including former NSA Director Adm. Bobby R. Inman and two Nobel Laureates."
I find the summary misleading. I thought the risk analysis was about incidents with nuclear weapons when at peace, but he only calculates the risks of all out nuclear war.
While it's an interseting number it's not a useful one to take a decision, since one of the sad premise of today's war strategy is that, since others have the nuclear weapon, you must have it too. No one is going to dump his nuke stocks because he might have to use them some days.
It's like doing an article summary saying "having a gun in your room is dangerous", when it really means "a gunfight is something that might happen".
I would have been more interested by numbers about the effects of an all out nuclear war. The only ones I can remember are that a US president was told (during the cold war) that scenarios predicted 300 million american death *at best* in a *winned* nuclear war against Russia. The second one ( which I'm not sure about) is that, at the peak of the number of nukes between US and Russia, they could have "destroyed the earth 52 times" (killed everything on it? phisically shatter?).
Does anyone have more details concerning these numbers?
Don't take my posts literally; it's just code to control my botnet.
Basis of his 'estimates'? Access to SIOP? Access to any other data, either physical or strategic of our, our allies or our 'adversaries' nuclear weapons/plans? Oh.. zero? By all means lets trumpet his 'work' outside his area of training as authoritative, complete with requisite frightening headlines.
...which are managed by a monkey and operated by people with a god complex.
You might find this refreshing then.
Quite frankly, I reckon even if these (carefully screened) individuals who control the nuclear arsenal were trigger-happy, they'd quickly rethink their situation when they realize they have the destiny of the world in their hands. Yes, even the chief monkey in the White House.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
While he may have "woken up" to the threat of nuclear weapons, and can use his established reputation to help reduce the threat they pose, he is certainly not an expert and his opinions (for that is all they are) carry no greater weight than yours or mine.
Beware of celebreties with a cause.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
That's reassuring, because it seems unlikely that my home will ever be surrounded by thousands of nuclear power plants.
and found the risk to be 'equivalent to having your home surrounded by thousands of nuclear power plants.'
So if one of these nuclear power plants exploded (that's the risk being talked about here?), how large would the crater be, expressed in Libraries of Congress? Also, how likely would such an event be, expressed in chances of successfully dropping a penny from the top of the Empire State Building into someone's pocket?
You just got troll'd!
The only way to make a nuclear power plant explode is to fill it with dynamite and light the fuse - the fissionables have zero chance of exploding.
The only threat from surrounding your house with thousands of nuclear power plants is that the cooling towers would affect the wind patterns around your house....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I work very close to the issue at hand and can testify to seeing major gaps in the "careful screening" that goes into clearing the persons responsible. And it's distressing - Minor security incidents that clearly implicate cleared individuals go largely uninvestigated (petty theft, etc.) But, on a bright note, there's so much redundancy and security-bureaucracy that the security environment for special nuclear material or critical weapons components is actually very good (if rather expensive).
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Just be glad they aren't NUCLEAR oil refineries!
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
``Our desire for cheap international trade based around largely uninspected shipping containers exposes us to an enormous risk.''
The counter point to this is that while, indeed, the system is far from secure, things seem to be going alright.
I find this is the key difference between Real World security and computer security. In computer security, weaknesses, once known, _will_ be exploited on a massive scale. In the Real World, things are often far less grave. This explains both why so few people get computer security right (applying a Real World "it will be ok" attitude to computer security is a mistake), and why I think people should just relax and not worry so much about, for example, terrorists blowing up airplanes.
Security should, at least in my opinion, always be a cost-benefit trade-off. More severe security measures can reduce the risk of a disastrous security breach, but security measures incur their own cost, which you pay every day, even if no security breach is even attempted. The trick is finding the right balance.
Of course, it isn't a very comfortable idea that you or your friends might be blown up anytime, or get ruined by identity fraud, but I'd honestly rather live with that idea than to spend my life locked up in my house, afraid to go out because the bus might be blown up, and afraid to order anything online because my credit card data could be stolen...and _still_ run the risk to get killed in an earthquake.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
(But that is a reasonable question -- you get points for skepticism.)
This teaches 2 related lessons about journalism and science:
(1) There are 2 kinds of publications in the world -- those that check their facts and those that don't. The first are reliable; the second aren't. This is why some obscure guy publishing a blog can be more reliable than most major newspapers and TV stations. (Or in this case, why IEEE Spectrum is more reliable than most daily newspapers.)
(2) There are 2 kinds of scientists in the world -- those who gather a consensus of experts before going public, and those who don't. The first are reliable; the second aren't. (This is why that story recently about cell phones causing brain cancer by an Australian neurologist was complete bullshit.) Hellman is competent enough in science to know that.
According to TFA http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/apr08/6099
Hellman's method isn't unfamiliar to those trying to gauge the risk of failure for complex systems, such as nuclear reactors. IEEE Spectrum asked J. Wesley Hines, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee, to examine Hellman's methods, which were detailed in the appendix of the Bent article. "I only read the appendix but feel his argument is rational and also feel his methods are justified," says Hines. "Some could argue with the numbers he used, but he does give logical reasons for using those numbers and admits that they have large uncertainties since the events have been rare in the past."
Robert N. Charette, who runs the risk-management consultancy ITABHI and is a regular contributor to IEEE Spectrum, agrees with Hines. However, he says Hellman should have also turned the analysis on its head. "The other side of the risk equation is, suppose you get rid of nuclear weapons. Does that increase the probability of war? Pretending there aren't any nukes, how many wars would we have had?"
And the signers http://nuclearrisk.org/statement.php The above statement has been endorsed by the following Charter Signers:*
Prof. Kenneth Arrow, Stanford University, 1972 Nobel Laureate in Economics; see also Nobel Announcement
Mr. D. James Bidzos, Chairman of the Board, Verisign Inc.
Dr. Richard Garwin, IBM Fellow Emeritus, former member President's Science Advisory Committee and Defense Science Board; see also NY Times article
Adm. Bobby R. Inman, USN (Ret.), University of Texas at Austin, former Director NSA and Deputy Director CIA
Prof. William Kays, former Dean of Engineering, Stanford University
Prof. Donald Kennedy, President Emeritus of Stanford University, former head of FDA
Prof. Martin Perl, Stanford University, 1995 Nobel Laureate in Physics; see also Nobel Announcement
(BTW, here's a tip for any student. You used to be able to get a student membership in the IEEE, which includes a subscription to Spectrum and another (expensive) IEEE magazine of your choice, for some ridiculously low amount like $12 a year. It's a great deal for the magazines alone, although IEEE membership has even better benefits that most students don't even know about.)
Well, nuclear power plants in Western Europe and North America have shown themselves to be pretty safe.
A dozen automobiles are far more dangerous than "thousands" of nuclear power plants. How about one meth lab? Or even one anthracite-powered power plant?
The word is 'cryptanalyst', not 'crypto-analyst'. And Hellman is a cryptographer (or cryptologist), not a cryptanalyst. Cryptographers create encryption schemes; cryptanalysts break them.
I'm an old timer who can remember duck and cover drills (don't look at the bright light, etc.) in school, and used to have a copy of the Army's old 1956 manual on The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, did lots of reading - used to subscribe to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, etc. - and tend to follow that stuff even today, only more casually. When we lived in Southern California in the 1950's, I can remember the AEC announcing A-tests and putting directions to the public parking area in the papers, and if the wind shifted they blasted away anyway!
Among my eclectic readings, I recall in the 1960's there was a John Birch Society reading room not far from our home, and I liked to keep track of all the elements out there. I recall a book there written by the former head of AEC security who stated the Soviets had not made a bomb of their own prior to 1954 except that they had stolen material and or bombs from the US. Given that we used to have prototypes of the latest Soviet tanks and airplanes undergoing testing at various government proving grounds at the time that seems pretty credible (they used to fly the brand new MIG-21, not yet operational in the Soviet Air Force, out of an air base in San Antonio, where we lived, and the newspapers and TV stations were "discreet"). I used to read a lot of heavy literature on MAD, etc., and one of my favorite remembrances of the literature of that era was a parody of the captain of the Titanic which began: "If struck by an iceberg - we would never strike first -....."
I recall in the '73 (?) Middle East War, there were comments in the paper and on TV that the US had detected Soviet nuclear weapons on a ship moving through the Dardanelles (out of the Black Sea into the Med), and this from a plane flying at 20,000 feet. Supposedly they were heading to Egypt to give the Egyptians some real firepower to use on Israel. The supposed response of the Israelis was to line up their nukes next to attack aircraft for the next overflight of a Russian satellite. The shit you used to see in the papers if you were on the lookout for this sort of thing!
Those of you old enough to remember the demise of the Soviet Union may not have noted the obscure note on the wire services (quickly removed) during the time that the Soviets had moved something like 500,000 troops to a base near the capitol of Estonia. The reports were of a commando raid on a Soviet weapons storage facility elsewhere in Estonia, and "unconfirmed reports" were that 25+ weapons went out through the wire that night. For the next week, all the papers and TV news reports, and I mean all of them, showed pictures of groups of unhappy bored Soviet soldiers still on their bases. In fact, they never left their bases until they returned to the former Soviet Union. Stories were that the Soviets had been given a message about what would happen if the soldiers ever left their barracks. The bizarre staged photos of the troops "still on their bases" seems to support this.
My point of the three previous comments is that there has probably been a long history of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials escaping from proper command and control - probably literally from the days of the Manhattan Project. The remote detection capabilities of 35 years ago means that any re-assurances that there are no nuclear materials unaccounted for should not be in the least reassuring!!! If you are sensitive to the meaning of words, you will note, for instance, that they have never, not once, said that nuclear materials or actual weapons were not stolen from the former Soviet Union. The US and the Russians are unanimous in this subterfuge. "We have accounted for all of them." Even given evidence that a substantial number of weapons were in fact no longer in the Russian arsenal.
Then today there are the Pakistani's, the North Koreans and probably the Chinese peddling nuclear bomb technology and materials. The efforts of Iran to get the bomb (and they never stopped, which is obvious even in the body of the famous recent National Intelli
Yeah, the comparison seems to have more to do with the safety of nuclear power plants than the danger of nuclear weapons. Don't get me wrong, Nuclear power plants create a large potential hazard, but with the systems in place now they're a lot less dangerous than people perceive them to be.
Back in the late seventies, early eighties, when we were locked into a nuclear stalemate, I and much of the world were reasonably quite concerned. Back then, I read literally dozens of text books on the subject of nuclear deterrence and war fighting strategies. I was 'extremely' well informed. I am nowadays, much more concerned about other things. I would be the first to admit that a terrorist use of a nuke is a high probability, but there is virtually zero chance that such an event would lead to a global nuclear war.
... assumes that the experience of the first 50 years of deterrence can be extended into the future."
From the article:
"This simplified analysis
The experience of the first 50 years CANNOT be extended into the future. Those first 50 years were very different animals. We were poised in a 'mexican standoff' with a superpower enemy possessing a vast nuclear arsenal that feared and hated us. We no longer have such a superpower enemy. Even if Russia started to hate us the way the Soviet Union used to, they are no longer a superpower, they are a pale shadow of what the Soviet Union once was. Their existing arsenal is so old and unmaintained, most of their missiles wouldn't launch and the warheads wouldn't detonate. Most of their weapons are no longer in service. They maintain enough to serve as a deterrent against a nuclear attack by an opposing nation, but that is it. They cannot wage nuclear war.
There is only one nuclear war fighting capable nation on earth right now and that is the US. The US is not about to fight a nuclear war with itself. No other nation will use nukes against the US, unless their very existence was at stake and the US knows to not attack nations that could ship a bomb to us in a shipping crate. Global nuclear war requires two opponents both possessing a nuclear war fighting capacity. Deterrent forces alone are not sufficient for anything other than deterring the other guy from attacking. In order to strike first, you need a 'first strike' capacity, the idea that you have sufficient weapons to knock out with your first strike, the other guy's ability to strike back. Only the US has this capacity.
From the article:
"Because this estimate is based on a simplified, time invariant model, it does not apply to the current point in time when relations between the U.S. and Russia are significantly better than they were, on average, during the last 50 years. However that does not invalidate its conclusions."
Er, yes it does invalidate its conclusions. Obviously. The author suggests that the time may come when US/Russian relations deteriorate and asserts that this would then recreate the old situation. However Russia is no longer a superpower and could never again challenge the US in this regard. The Chinese could in theory build up to challenge the US in a new nuclear stalemate however and if China ever starts to build up it's nuclear forces, we would then have cause to worry. However we would likely see evidence of that sort of a buildup long before the threat matured and hopefully could take diplomatic action to change the situation.
Note also that China does not need to challenge the US with nukes. They hold a very effective deterrent against US aggression by the quantity of US dollars they hold in their reserve. If they were to ever dump those dollars into the global finance system, it would create a domino effect on the US dollar that would utterly crash the US economy. Both China and the US authorities know this.
As a total aside; a missile shield in the hands of the US could invalidate the deterrent forces of those nations possessing them. The US in theory could launch a disarming first strike against a nation and then use it's missile shield to shoot down the few missiles the disarming strike missed. This would result in the US being able to initiate a nuclear strike with impunity, even against a nation possessing a nuclear deterrent force. This is why a missile shield is opposed by most nations. In reality of course, such a disarming first strike could not be sure of stopping the shipping crate nukes that likely would be coming in retaliation.
Peter
For another (older but still very relevant) look at this and related issues (such as what to do with the plutonium by-product of power generating reactors), look no further than John McPhee's The Curve of Binding Energy. It's an extraordinarily interesting issue that will only become more pressing as time goes on. Unfortunately, it isn't as widely reported on as it used to be, which I suspect is due to political/embarrassment reasons...
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter
... Cooling of more than -20C occurs over large areas of North America and of more than -30C over much of Eurasia, including all agricultural regions.
I didn't put the link there for fun. Here is an interesting part:
2007 study on global nuclear war
A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in July 2007[3], Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences[4], used current climate models to look at the consequences of a global nuclear war involving most or all of the world's current nuclear arsenals (which the authors described as being only about a third the size of the world's arsenals twenty years earlier). The authors used a global circulation model, ModelE from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which they noted "has been tested extensively in global warming experiments and to examine the effects of volcanic eruptions on climate." The model was used to investigate the effects of a war involving the entire current global nuclear arsenal, projected to release about 150 Tg of smoke into the atmosphere (1 Tg is equal to 1012 grams), as well as a war involving about one third of the current nuclear arsenal, projected to release about 50 Tg of smoke. In the 150 Tg case they found that:
A global average surface cooling of -7C to -8C persists for years, and after a decade the cooling is still -4C (Fig. 2). Considering that the global average cooling at the depth of the last ice age 18,000 yr ago was about -5C, this would be a climate change unprecedented in speed and amplitude in the history of the human race. The temperature changes are largest over land
I am quite annoyed at the incredible sloppiness at the IEEE site.
I quote from their site thus:
"Hellman has set up a Web site related to his nuclear deterrence work. From there you can download the Bent article. You can also view a statement signed by Richard L. Garwin, who came up with the design for the first hydrogen bomb;..."
Where IEEE dreamed this
First hydrogen bomb was the Teller-Ulam design, who share the patent, tested Nov 1, 1952, yield 10.4 MT, codename 'Mike'. The history of that design is pretty well known (for example, see Rhodes, 'Dark Sun'). Things were very stuck around 1950. The 'Classical' H-bomb design did not work according to computer simulation. So things sat in 1950.
Then, suddenly, something new: Stan Ulam pointed an new idea out to Teller, and Teller came up with another idea, and it was a *staged* approach, "technically sweet" (as Oppy put it). Mar 9, 1951, a paper with the first half was published (quite classified). Within a month, Teller thought of the second critical part. (Rhodes, pp. 776). Suddenly everyone thought there was a legitimate chance. There was high activity work leading to a full scale test in late 1952. It worked.
Now, where is 'Inventor Garwin'? He is not even in the index of Rhodes' book. (!!)
But from fas.org, looking up Garwin, I see: "He received the B.S. in Physics from Case Institute of Technology, Cleveland, in 1947, and the Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago in 1949." and "After three years on the faculty of the University of Chicago, he joined IBM Corporation in 1952,
Ahh, I see. He got his Ph.D. in Physics, presumably while secretly helping Los Alamos, and joined the U of Chicago, where he sneaked ideas to Stanislav Ulam and Edward Teller across the desk, as it were, you know, down the hall, a mere thousand miles away.
I've usually found that on nearly anything, when they can't get the basics right, there are serious flaws in the rest. And yes -- there are serious flaws, as to be expected.
Quick example: tritium. United States weapons are designed to use tritium as a booster in the primary stage. The trouble is, tritium is radioactive, and has a 12 year half-life. It goes bad quickly, in other words. Try to fire a nuke whose tritium has been sitting around for, oh, 24 years (two half lives), and you may get yourself a fizzle yield. This is called "embarrassing", especially if you didn't get a warranty on that nuke from Nukes 'R 'Us.
At Pantex, in near Amarillo, TX, where we are disassembling nukes to keep up with treaty obligations, the last I read was that we were tearing down 3 warheads to gather enough tritium to refill 1. This means there are, well, boneyards full of nukes that
I generally find that people who are trying to scare a new "We're All Gonna Die In 20 Years" movement up never think of the tedious reality of these things.
I'm an older guy.
I remember the scare tactics.
1970's: Overpopulation.
1980's: Nuclear War (and Nuclear Winter)
1990's: The Ozone Layer
Incredibly, we're all still alive.
I have seen this game before and I think I can tell you what it's all about. Someone's trying to start up another "We're all gonna die in 20 years" movement.
Right now is the time to hammer a wooden stake through its heart.
Frankly:
Bullshit!
The thesis is stupid. "Deterrence is dangerous"? Look around. We're all still alive despite the most psychotic leadership imaginable in charge of tens of thousands of nuclear