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Nuclear Warhead Blueprints On Smugglers' Computers
imrehg links to a story at the Guardian which begins "Blueprints for a sophisticated and compact nuclear warhead have been found in the computers of the world's most notorious nuclear-smuggling racket, according to a leading US researcher. The digital designs, found in heavily encrypted computer files in Switzerland, are believed to be in the possession of the US authorities and of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, but investigators fear they could have been extensively copied and sold to 'rogue' states via the nuclear black market." Reader this great guy links to the New York Times article on the discovery, and asks "Given that
Khan's revelations were made in early 2004, does that mean it took the IAEA
1-2 years to brute-force the encryption?"
Let's face it, the Nuclear Cat is slowly crawling out of the bag and will no longer be containable soon. We need to develop better nuke-detection and interception technology or we will be doomed by rogue garage nukes and missiles.
Table-ized A.I.
welcome our post-apocalyptic... wait, no I don't. Giant scorpions and mutant commando's are so '90s.
the server's been nuked.
Table-ized A.I.
They've been on Usenet for ages. That's why Verizon is cutting off access to the binaries.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
Honestly, I think complete designs are probably available out there from U.S., Soviet, and Chinese sources. The main problem with building nuclear devices is getting weapons grade materials.
But you gotta know that the guys in black are sitting around saying, "THAT is why we wanted to control encryption."
TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
KHAAAAAAAAAAAANNNN!
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
The notable part was the mention of the heavy encryption. Obviously they were able to undo that relatively quickly. I guess the NSA got the quantum computers going at full speed on time.
The second notable part is that President Bush is trying to justify bombing Iran over its civilian nuclear program. Once he is out of office, because of Iraq, Israel will find it harder to use their vehicle AIPAC to corrupt our politicians launch into offensive undeclared wars.
that no version of this story seems to try to point the source of these plans to the US? They probably should be. I can think of no better reason to understand why they found out about it than knowing the source of the material. Color me cynical.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Who cares? As a New Yorker, who's HS (Stuyvesant) was in the drop zone of 9/11, and who's dad along with several others decided to continue thesis defenses as the towers burned because if you change you life, the terrorists win... I say let them come. Even with nukes. I'll take the chance. My parents will take the chance. I don't really care who gets Nucs these days because MAD works, to such an extent that NK and Iran etc, will think twice before exporting working nukes. Because if a nuke built in Iran goes off in the US, Iran will cease to exist, and they know it.
I have no solution, but to think that this is a major issue is not to understand politics.
Nope. It probably means it took them 1-2 years of torture to get the keys. If the encryption was any good, they would have had to be _extremely_ lucky.
...found in heavily encrypted computer files...What does this mean anyways? Clearly is must have been weak encryption if they got access to the data. Or did they get access to the keys? I'm tired of seeing terms like military-grade or heavy when it come to encryption.
The media is very bad about making encryption out to be some evil technology only used by terrorist and child pornographers. A few wording changes would fix this. "Encryption" is the new "hacker".
Is it really that hard to build a nuke? Seriously, plutonium, compression shell (beryllium or something), high explosives, kaboom.
I don't really care who gets Nucs these days because MAD works, ... if a nuke built in Iran goes off in the US, Iran will cease to exist, and they know it.
We can't say this anymore because now it involves religious fanaticism. As evil as the Soviet Union was, at least they valued life more than their dogma. We cannot say the same about the Iran Red Button. They may see it as the Instant-71-Virgin Button.
Table-ized A.I.
Hey! Where is the link to the plans? Maybe someone can post it on Freenet.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
At least they get to leverage this to force mandatory border checks of our laptops for "intellectual" property.
Why is it that whenever Nukes and black market is mentioned, Iran gets a mentioned but some dodgy US allies don't?
The powers that be in the US seem hell bent on describing Iran as a rogue state or worse and "evil" state. They continuously ignore the fact that it was a US ally who started all this Nuclear Weapons Export business. After all, it was the Pakistanis who sold the tech to other countries.
From my experience, Iran is less of a threat than Pakistan. You see, Iran is big on hype and words and gesturing. Pakistan on the other hand is fueling the growth of radical Islam all over the place. Check with the British about their bombers.
Any bomb that fits easily into a standard freight container is already a horrible nightmare:
These containers travel worldwide, are rarely inspected if the paperwork seems to be OK, and they can easily stay in a harbor area of a major city for many months.
The only trigger you need is a cell phone, so you can preplace them wherever you like and blow up any coastal city in the world, whenever you want to.
Stopping this scenario is probably (or should be) the real nightmare for most of the three-letter agencies in the world.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
Forty years ago a couple of physics students designed a working A bomb.
I thought that designing nuclear weapons was relatively easy -- gun type, at least. I thought the hard part was gathering and enriching the uranium in large enough quantities. It's not so much a knowledge limitation as a means limitation? How important are "plans" when you can pull a Hiroshima level explosion with relatively basic tech? It doesn't need to be the most efficient weapon. I'd be more worried about theft of weapons grade radioactive materials.
:)
But what do I know... I just read Wikipedia a lot
I can only hope the NSA's computing power should be capable of breaking such a thing's encryption within a time scale a tad shorter than 1-2 years :-(
Once you cut through all the emotional stuff, used to build up a story and instill FUD into the readership (phrases like "heavily" encrypted - I should hope so; "sophisticated" - well yes, they're nukes, "rogue states" etc.) you're not left with much.
After the actual story, the author merely pulls out all the old files to remind us of all the old scare stories they've run in the past.
The real clincher is that this isn't actually news at all. These documents were found in 2006. Forget the 1% news, it's actually no news at all!
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Encryption: Bad
Laptop searches at the border: good
reason: TERRERISTS!!!
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!!!
THE AXIS OF EVIL!!!
let me guess once, what laws will soon be proposed (which will by the way legalize some more of the unconstitutional actions of the bush-regime...)
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
GNUke is an sophisticated and compact nuclear warhead - and more. At its core is are two pieces of piece of sub-critical material that can be combined into a supercritical mass for civil and military use alike.
GNUke is a GNU project which is similar to the Little Boy Bomb which was developed at Manhattan Project Laboratories by J. Robert Oppenheimer and colleagues. It can be considered as a different implementation of Litte Boy. There are some important differences, but much destruction wreaked through Little Boy can be achieved unaltered with GNUke.
One of GNUke's strengths is the ease with which well-produced fission-quality material can be included. Great care has been taken over the defaults for the minor design choices in the nuclear fission process, but the user retains full control.
GNUke blueprints are available as Free Documentation under the terms of the Free Software Foundation's GNU Free Documentation License in source code form. It can easily be set up and functions on a wide variety of launch vehicles and similar systems (including B-29 Superfortresses and ICBMs).
If you had a ship full of vehicles being imported from, say, China or India, and one of them contained a simple U235 nuke, how would you know?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
How soon before wikileaks posts those nuke blueprints?
They already posted the "secret" status JDAM service manual and the F-15C engine start manual (so you can defect with a south korean or japanese Eagle to China/Russia/DPRK after a bit of training in M$ Flight Simulator 2002). There is also an F/A-18 pocket guide for scouts up there and a document about the acoustic sniper-locating "xmas tree", which yankee Hummers use in Iraq to protect servicemen.
A DIY nuke would be a nice rounding off to the collection, dear stupid anarchists thank you very much for aiding in the destruction of free world and democracy, under the pretense of defending free speech!
"Given that Khan's revelations were made in early 2004, does that mean it took the IAEA 1-2 years to brute-force the encryption?"
No, it probably means that there was enough information in clear on the machines, and it took two years for the investigators to pick through several terrabytes of data and come up with their report.
If you think about it, you wouldn't want to put lots of people onto a sensitive thing like this to speed it up, would you?
Amyway, I'm happy to see that information wants to be free. Perhaps this could be the first 'open source' warhead design....?
killer bees!
While it might be hard for the average person to get their hands on fusible material, how hard is it for underground organizations with huge budgets? Consider all the unaccountable nuclear material from the former USSR. At least some of it is in the wrong hands. Considering design, it can be low tech. If three suicide bombers can tolerate huge doses of radiation for a few moments, it is not a problem to make. If I, without an engineering degree, could figure out how to design a low tech 'pipe nuke', I shutter to think of what someone with training could come up with. The worst part of all this? If a nuke goes off in NY NY before the end of Bush's term, he can become President in perpetuity (read the White House website if you don't believe it). NOW THAT'S SCARY.
Given that Khan's revelations were made in early 2004, does that mean it took the IAEA 1-2 years to brute-force the encryption?
The IAEA were pretty pissed when they found out that the key was 0xDEADBEEF
War is not an order that will help us live. Humans listen up. B.T.W. can I get a copy?
Instead of trying to crush the Iranian nuclear weapons program, maybe the world [and the fatboys at the UN] should focus on the country that has used Nukes on civilian populations.
Too bad it's impossible to cut a couple of square-metre-ish holes in the metal and patch them with plastic. There goes my plan of world destruction. Back to the drawing board! I dunno, maybe glue a small plastic box to the outside of the container and put the cell phone there?
Heavily encrypted? How did they break them then? The guy left his key sitting in his home directory or something?
I could swear my geiger counter spikes whenever these damn things slink through my yard and sneak into my garage.
I think their chests are a bit too lumpy, can you feds please check for me?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Does the headline "Gates Fires Air Force Chiefs Over Nuclear Blunders" have anything to do with the headline "Nuclear Warhead Blueprints On Smugglers' Computers" or, on the other hand, is it paranoid for one to read all headlines together?
post-it note.
A gun-assembly bomb is extremely reliable*. The manhattan project designers only included a neutron source as a detonator in Little Boy to make sure it went off at just the right altitude; Based on the rate of neutron release due to spontaneous fissions, the bomb was absolutely gauranteed to have gone off within 1 or 2 seconds anyway. They didn't even build a test bomb they were so sure it would work.
The problem is that gun bombs are an obscene waste of an extremely rare material; Little Boy had about five times as much uranium as Fat Man did plutonium (~100 vs ~20Kg) but a significantly inferior yield (~15 vs ~20KT). It's estimated that maybe 1/10 of Little Boy's uranium had fissioned when it disassembled.
* YMMV depending on isotopic impurities, but terrorists aren't going to be the ones refining the metal.
Not the most rational or careful bunch of people. Best thing you could do is give them an A-bomb to play with.
Deleted
array of fpga's
http://www.copacobana.org/
MP3 Search Engine
Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!!
'sig' deleted due to the stupidity of it's 'nature'
An Ivy League grad student designed plans for a nuke in the 70's.
The plans for nuke aren't the real barrier to building a nuke. Getting enough uranium process into U-235 to make a nuke is the primary barrier.
The Army built the reactor at Oak Ridge to process the Uranium for those first A-bombs. It didn't process U-235 anywhere near fast enough so they had to build the whole Hanford reactor facility too.
Surely you mean, Atomic Kitten? *ducks*
We could just nuke everybody and they'd stop burning all of our precious oil.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Wow, a first post that was actually first!
The obvious solution is easy: Just outlaw nuclear fission and nuclear preparation world wide. There never was a reason to have fission reactors than to be have bombs or show everyone and yourself that you could have bombs if you wanted.
Alls this "safe energy" or "clean energy" or all
the other refuted claims are just excuses to have money pumped into weapon preparation. And all this lies just cause all those stupid things like the US having promised to help every country using "peacefull nuclear energy", except suddenly iran, which is not allowed to even use it for "peacefull purposes"...
P.S: This is slashdot, so let's see how long it takes for a anti-nuclear post to be modded below the carpet...
The real question is: Whose agenda does it fit to reveal this, and now.
See, nukes aren't that complicated. Most of us learn the basics at school. Assuming the blueprint is genuine, and of a tested design, that's a piece of valuable work, but not groundbreaking. There is no threat of any living-in-caves terrorists coming up with a nuke due to some blueprints. Funny how all this fearmongering always forgets the amount and quality of equipment you need to actually turn a blueprint into a working bomb.
It's roughly comparable to having a blueprint of a machine gun (available in most libraries, and Google will probably give you a hundred of them at least), and an actual working machine gun. You just can't build one in your garage, there's a little bit more specialised precision equipment required. And then you'd still need the ammo.
So who is trying to get a bigger budget for what? That's the question we should be asking.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Simply look back on the case of Eric Rudolph.
He was hiding in the woods with some help of strangers in the United States for FIVE years.
Its not hard to hide when most people would not recognize you. It is not hard to hide with only a few willing helpers. What exposes you is being careless. I am quite sure Osama didn't get where he was by being careless. Careless terrorists make headlines only once.
As for the nuclear plans, the problem is that too many people will ignore this issue simply because it doesn't affect them or worse because it bolsters one side versus another in the realm of politics. The fact is that some unreasonable people may now have access to weapons of mass destruction. You cannot negotiate with them. Unlike the Soviets these people actually think that they will get rewarded in death, granted they will willingly pass on that reward to followers.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
when you criticize all of its faults in a vacuum of anything else happening in the world at the time
but this sort of analysis is essentially useless, if your aim is to actually better the world
if you're just kicking around the usa, well then fine, that's an international pasttime at this point. but aren't you interested in actually making the world a better place? (one would assume you would be, with your critical eye towards international events)
so now, for you to graduate to high school level analytical thinking, your next homework project is: analyze the usa's actions in context, rather than a vacuum
maybe, just maybe, you'll find yourself criticizing the actions of some other players in the world. and then, beleive it or not, you might actually be using your critical eye for the betterment of the world, for progress, for a neutral unbiased view of human failures
or... you could just stick with looking at american failures, which again, that's fine. but that's getting to be a tired empty game at this point, doncha think?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
because he started the pakistani nuclear program. and then on his own he decided to sell nuclear plans to north korea, libya, iran, etc.
he started the progream by stealing plans from... drum roll please... the netherlands, when he worked there as a professor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan
it's historical record
so lets all hail the cutting genius paranoid schizophrenic conspiracy strategists on slashdot and those who mod them up insightful
(rolls eyes)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's really not that hard. There's a reason why the reaction mass in a nuclear reactor is called a "pile". If you assemble enough of the right material in a certain volume, stuff gets hot and if you overdo it the boomyness happens (praise be to Allah). Believe it or not the Earth itself has created a number of fission reactors without even the benefit of motive.
Now making that happen in the minimum quantity of special materials was a closely guarded secret... until 2003 apparently.
In short, of all the stuff I've read on slashdot this is the one that trumps. If this could be undone I would if I could give Microsoft the entire OS and applications market. I would praise Vista. I would learn .NET. All my documents would be OOXML. Alas, Schroedinger's cat is out of the bag. I hope whatever form of life survives this learns well how foolish we were.
Perhaps there was something meaningful in the Drake equation that we missed in haste.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
IANCS (I am not a computer specialist) - but this has just occurred to me: would it be possible to distribute a task (such as a brute force attack) via BOINC without the user knowing it?
The example being: IAEA/NSA wants to crack a file, doesn't have the time to do it on its own and distributes the task via BOINC, so you can crack it for them? This would mean that the BOINC people are in it too but that should not be SO hard to imagine. Would this be possible?
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
There's many different approaches. Bruteforcing even a 128-bit AES key will still take more time than life on Earth has, even given Moore's observation on semiconductor density.
However, bruteforcing a passphrase usually takes considerably less time.
Bruteforcing an interrogation subject can be very quick indeed.
"Heavily encrypted?" What does that mean? Couldn't be all that heavy if the encryption was broken, right?
Oh, perhaps they mean Hollywood-style encryption! In nearly every Hollywood movie you ever see that contains anything about encryption, the encryption is always "heavy" and yet broken long before the movie ends. Since this is probably the only exposure to "encryption" most of the public sees, the public must have a very warped idea of what encryption is all about!
It always amazes me that encryption that should take longer than the Age of the Universe to break is "broken" in just a few minutes by some "super" kid that can barely even spell the word!
Maybe I should do a website on "Hollywood Mathematics" along with the one I want to do on "Hollywood Physics"...
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Get a street washer. Fill tank with clean water and a growth medium like soup cubes. Add bacteria culture and an infected tomato and keep warm with imersion heaters. When ready drive down Main Street of a large city core just before the morning commute 'washing the roads'.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
The blueprints for nukes aren't that hard to get; fortunately, the weapons-grade plutonium purchase attempt will raise a few real big flags.
stuff |
And did anyone miss the "Dr. Strangelove" scenario (well, possible; who knows for sure?) in the US with the plane loaded with nukes being flown without authorization over US's own soil? They all try to sell us on "incompetence", but what is really going on here? If the US is that incompetent with its own nukes, why the hell worry over some stupid plans when all the would-be terrorists have to do is walk up to an army depot in the US and just take them? Or maybe some of the generals in the US have truly gone a little "funny in the head."
Yes, my friends. Weapons of Planetary Destruction is what we should worry about, not these silly distractions about silly poor terrorists who can do more effective terror blowing themselves up with a cheap homemade chemical bomb in a public place than ever worry about going through the acrimony and difficulty of building a nuke! The whole "nuclear terrorism" scare is just that -- a scare. Something used to scare all of us into giving up even more of our rights than they've already taken, and to justify yet another unwarranted war in the Middle East where even more poor innocent lives will be killed and blown up by the terrorism of rich nations.
And maybe they'll come a knocking at my door and whisk me off to Guantanamo Bay where they'll extract the "truth" out me using their latest and finest "interrogation techniques" (torture, for the mentally-challenged).
Gotta love the Sweet ole' US of A. Land of the "Free", Home of the "Brave".
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
I train in a gym and I can carry 70 kgs on my back. It would be strenuous but I could do it. Dont assume everyone is a pasty faced 110 pound wimp.
Not.
Any average size reasonably fit man could carry 33 kgs for long enough to plant the bomb.
Hanford produced Pu-239. Oak Ridge produced U-235. The industrial processes are completely different.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
There are far to many people on this planet. Check out the enviromental destruction in places such as africa, brazil , east asia to plant food crops and on a lesser scale housing. Look at how little natural enviroment is left in places such as western europe and the USA not to mention the amount of energy 6 billion people consume - and hence the amount of CO2 produced.
You pig ignorant jackass.
They should use DRM to protect the files :|
How about a nuclear-powered cell phone charger? That's the ticket!
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
Doctor Who sounds ...and now for the benefit of our audience who wish to learn about how Democracy was killed in the early 21st Century.
Today Democracy is being decried as a mindless experiment that lasted for just 300 years, and has been supplanted by Corporate-Ethics-Rule which provides far greater benefits to people who can afford to pay for the best and brightest.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
What did they expect to find on the computers of the world's most notorious nuclear smuggling racket? The formula for coke classic?
Now if nuke blueprints were found on the computers of the world's most notorious baby-sitting racket, that would be news.
Despite the damage that humans cause to the planet, agreeing with the suggestion that HALF OF THE POPULATION be exterminated is genuine lunacy. Face it. The world would be a marginally better place without humans, but we are here to stay. All 6.5 billion of us and counting. The world isn't boiling to death nor are the seas poison. Global warming is essentially a human problem, mainly focussed on droughts and floods. Nature will carry on with or without it.
The whole "nuclear terrorism" scare is just that -- a scare.
Maybe what the islamic terrorists are really after is prestige. They don't have the prestige they want by normal means. They didn't attack new yorkers by poisoning the water supply, they used two symbols of western progress (jets, skyscrapers) as extremely visible weapons. Big prestige, big news coverage, it was their orgasm. And perhaps that's the allure of the nuke.
.Maybe if we could talk luxury manufacturers to send free watches, cars, clothes, etc to run down areas in the middle east, would that take the wind out of their sails?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Nothing is here to stay - that's life. Ecologists obsess about maintaining the status quo, when all evidence points to our world being a very changing and unpredictable place. I don't think people are really interested in the world, rather in themselves having a cushy life. Everything dies, from bugs to stars and all in between. Let's enjoy it while it's here. There's always famine somewhere. There's always war somewhere.
I was following you until you got to bacteria cultures and an infected tomato, and I'm just wondering what's the tomato's purpose?
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
A first-year physics student called John Aristotle Philips did all this as a summer project his first year at Princeton, way back in the early 19790s. Read the book - it's quite enlightening (as well as amusing).
http://www.amazon.com/Mushroom-True-Story-Bomb-Kid/dp/0671827316/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213618717&sr=1-2
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Warning : effective range might be slightly limited. After that you have to pump additional steroids into Hulkie and Arnie.
----
Humour aside : I see your point and agree with you.
Baggage nuke exist. Terrorist *could maybe* use them potentially. But given past statistic, there have been far less deaths caused by baggage nukes (strictly 0.00) compared to cardiovascular disease or car crashes.
USA would be much more efficient in guaranteeing a better and longer for life for its citizen by fighting obesity than fighting in Irak.
Instead of a goddamn "WAR ON TERRORISM!", USA government should put a "WAR ON CHOLESTEROL!".
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
All this geekness and you don't notice the part about heavily encrypted files? What kind of computer was used to unveil the secret?
That will learn the terrorists and any of you paranoids relying on long passphrases to use disposable OTPs the next time.
The die was cast in the 1950's. Back when Ike and company offered up the bargain - sign this treaty and you can have all the civilian power ya want. Don't sign and then you get funding cuts.
Now, if one wants to have a world where 'if you are building a reactor, you are up to no good' - you'll have to dump civilian power. Few of the shrill voices on fission/fusion have also called for getting rid of the civilian power option.
For all *I* know, this report about plans is bull. Or they may be as common as binaries on UseNet.
Oh, and "nuke bomb plans"? I remember seeing basic drawings (that were alledged to be from the original draft) back in grade school in the 1970's. Yes, accessible to 3rd or 4th graders.
p r o p a g a n d a !
NYTimes usually requires registration:
http://www.bugmenot.com/view/nytimes.com
user: bugbugbug7
password: bugbugbug
Unfortunately, he'd encrypted it on a Debian/Ubuntu box.
It took the republicans selling these secrets to Turkey and Pakistan. Had the reagan republicans NOT sold these, Pakistan would likely not have built one and spread the news.
That would be an extremely heavy backpack to cause any significant damage. And highly unlikely. All those commenting on this topic at the least should read Levi's On Nuclear Terrorism published late last year. You will have a much greater understanding of the issues involed and the extreme difficulty of getting even a crude explosive device in position to do damage and exactly how extensive those damages might be. FYI - the book is not overly technical and should be understanable by most anyone, you don't need a physics Phd.
I know you meant that "tongue in cheek", but really that's the annoying thing about idealists. They are NOT going to be bought off by materialism. They want their "70 virgins in heaven", and by jove they are willing to blow themselves sky high to get it. :-)
But the US bears the heavier side of the guilt, because for decades the US has been fiddling around in the affairs of other countries and governments -- a covert op here, an assassination there, creating instability in key places with the hopes of maintaining the reigns of hegemony.
People hate being bullied and manipulated, and will fight back eventually. Alas, it's an innocent for an innocent. Since the US made their innocents suffer, they now want to make our innocents suffer in like-kind. A war on the innocent will never be "won" until there are no innocent people left to kill.
But the governments of the world will never ever "get it." And so, we need a better solution in place.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
I think I have seen these blueprints before, I think they were named something like
Pakistani.Nuke.Blueprints.2004.REPACK.READNFO.KHaNDOX.torrent
I reported nuclear warhead schematics on multiple websites including peta.org back into 2002 to the FBI, DoD, and DoE... no one cared. They cited freedom of information act. We also reported the unregulated sales of uranium on ebay to no response that year.
Maybe is a good time to start strengthening the NNPT . Sure not AS effective against asymmetrical threats - but definitely a good first step.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The 'threat hype du jour' salmonella on tomatoes although E. coli O157:H7 would probably be a much better choice.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
H-Bomb Tee Shirt - check it out:
http://www.unitednuclear.com/tees.htm
I own this shirt and while the graphic is cool the shirt is low quality. It's basically a bad scan of an image printed onto an iron-on transfer.
Still pretty cool.
So the wonderfully secure US border will confiscate laptops for mp3 files and images that violate copyrights but not for nuclear weapon blueprints.
The US is more concerned about profit or monopolists than terror.
Regardless, now there's a clear cut example why border folks, TSA, and the like should be seizing and searching our computers.
How convenient...
PM
First of all, anybody with half a brain can at least make a crude nuclear weapon.... given the materials necessary to construct the beast (aka plutonium or at least U-235). We're talking physics here people, not something that is dependent upon a specific country's ability.
Rather detailed plans for nuclear bombs, including in published form that even included instructions for refining even ordinary yellow cake Uranium ore have been around for decades. I remember an issue of Analog magazine back in the 1970's that even openly proclaimed the full instructions, and even gave a pretty good design in terms of geometry necessary for a better than average bomb... with instructions to all of the magazine's readers to "give this magazine to your local terrorist". I kid you not on this either!
One really cute piece of information in the article was that the lifespan of a typical terrorist trying to follow the instructions without a huge amount of money would likely be dead in a month or two just from radiation poisoning. Perhaps even sooner. Trying to safeguard against radiation contamination simply is expensive and takes quite a bit of effort, not to mention that the construction of a radiation containment bay is likely to get the interest of the local government long before you actually get any processing of the materials to happen.
Simply put, you have to be a sovereign nation just to even consider the possibility of creating a nuke in the first place. That means you have territory that can be conquered and citizens to protect. No country in the world, even Tuvalu, is going to risk pissing off somebody else with the potential of getting wiped off the map in return unless the ruler of that country doesn't give a damn.
Nukes are also incredibly expensive... not just in terms of building them but also maintaining them for any "reasonable" length of time. They just aren't something that any remotely sane government is going to allow a private or even a non-commissioned officer to screw up and accidentally detonate one of these things. In the USA, they are put under the direct charge of a senior officer... usually a colonel or (naval) captain or higher rank. It is usually a career ending move if those nukes get mis-handled or treated trivially.
The expense comes from having to maintain a security zone, personnel who are not only elite guards (you don't trust this to just anybody) to secure the area, but also extensively trained. And the bunkers where the bombs are stored aren't exactly something cheap to construct either if you want to maintain the high security. Again, all of this is something you want to build even if you are the most brutal totalitarian dictatorship ever seen since Hitler, as the leaders of such a country only want the bombs detonating on targets they want to have destroyed, not something a junior officer thinks would make a cool fireworks display.
In other words, I'm not really worried even about Iran. If Iran uses a nuke, they know that Farsi will become an extinct language due to a lack of speakers, and Tehran will be uninhabitable for the next couple centuries. I just don't see them being that stupid, even if they use the nukes against Israel instead of the USA.
If a "terrorist" does get ahold of nukes + nuclear material, they are acting explicitly as agents of a nuclear power and are under orders of that country. This is not going to be something that will happen by a casual terrorist even of the financial support and large personnel base that was used to carry out the 9/11 attacks. The real trick will be to find out who "ordered" the nuclear attack to be made, but somehow I don't think that will ever be all that difficult. No self-finance terrorist group will ever be able to successfully use a nuke. Period.
So where is the torrent to the documents, they would be an interesting read.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The task of this piece on the front page of today's Washington Post is to establish the believe that Iran has a nuclear weapon design.
The Swiss 'businessmen', Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, are alleged to have sold several nuke related stuff to Lybia and other countries.
There is more to the Tinner story, but for now let me concentrate on the date. The WaPo says the laptop has been discovered in 2006. But Tinner was under CIA control at least since the 2003 bust of nuclear related stuff on board of the 'BBC China'.
The German magazine Der Spiegel had a big story about this in March 2006:
Tinner was flipped by the CIA at least since the 'BBC China' event but likely even earlier. Another man taking part in the alleged smuggling was also turned by the CIA or has worked for the CIA all along.
Indeed it somehow seems like everybody involved in the issue was somehow related to the CIA.
The usual story is that the Pakistani scientist A.Q. Kahn was the one who ran a smuggling network. That may not be true at all. Khan denies having been involved in such. A new book asserts that it was then Prime Minister of Pakistan Bhutto who personally gave Pakistani nuclear secrets to North Korea in exchange for North Korean No Dong missiles for the Pakistani army.
A Dutch court somehow 'lost' legal files about the Khan case and the CIA likely had a hand in this too. The CIA also successfully pressed (link in German) the Swiss government to destroy information it had about the Tinner case. Tinner will thereby never be convicted.
Now please explain to me how people arrested in 2003 and flipped by the CIA at least since then managed to keep nuclear plans on a laptop that were somehow found only in 2006?
This whole story stinks from A to Z
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Bruteforcing an interrogation subject can be very quick indeed.
There should be a great Princess Bride joke here, but I'm too tired to think one up.
How were the documents found in heavily encrypted files? The paranoid part of my mind is hoping no one has a way to break encryption like AES or RSA.
I know it's been suspected that the NSA may a way of cracking some of the more common encryption methods (they do hire more mathmeticians than anyone else) and if there's one area the government will show it's cards in in this area it'd be with something like this.
Holy shit! what if they have the metal gear prints too?
I singled out Israel because they are believed to have a nuclear force of ~100 to ~200 devices and are also believed to have not conducted any nuclear tests. I would assume they started with viable designs acquired from other countries.
Also, persons working in the US have been known to have spied for Israel, just as there have been those who have spied for the Soviets and every other nuclear nation.
I don't believe that much of this was deliberate on the part of the US (or other) government(s), just that information such as this leaks out. The motives for it leaking out can be varied. Philosophical, political, religious, etc., on down the line to simple greed. These weapons are conceived by groups of people. While information is compartmentalized, pieces here and there leak out. Some hold all the keys and see the entire detailed documentation on a weapon. Others are intimate with the design due to there proximity to the project. Sometimes people are sloppy.
I feel that some people confuse nuclear technology with weapon design. They are related, but weapon design is very different than nuclear fuel production. As for the modern electronics, I presume that those could be updated and tested without involving nuclear detonation. I see two major items to a nuclear weapon: the mechanical and the control (electronics). I would think that the mechanical aspects of a physics package are at least as important as the control. You have to compress two sub-critical masses together. For a compact weapon, this I would think becomes critical. For the first members of the nuclear club, you start with proof of concept designs, then progress to miniaturization, efficiency, boosting, etc. This requires testing. The US and USSR did lots of testing. UK and France have done many tests. Pakistan, what, a handful of critical tests? I would think that the control (electronics) part of a weapon could be updated and modernized, not to mention tested much more easily than the mechanical portion. For one, in wouldn't require nuclear detonations. The Pakistanis could have done a lot of theoretical work and may have tested a few different designs, but I can't imagine that they haven't had viable designs passed to them, deliberately or otherwise.
"The W54 is small enough to be deployed as a SADM (Special Atomic Demolition Munition) or so called "Backpack Nuke". It was the closest thing the U.S. is ..."
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/w54.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/w56.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_bomb
http://www.sftt.org/dw07102002.html
When the US government tried to infer that Taliban and other suicide bombers were cowards, IT was the coward for failing to recall that, like the miserable failure the Japanese Kamikazes were, the US W54 program would have made suicide bombers out of the troops carrying these backpack bombs and who thought they were going to parachute in, covertly plant one on a bridge or some vital infrastructure, and then "run a few hundred yards to safety"... Hell, even the Enola Gay and other nuclear bombers were expected to be non-returns, basically on a one-way suicide mission, considering the blast effects and the attendant radiation...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
We could spend billions (trillions?) on better nuclear detection and deterrent technology, putting a special focus on imaginary "shopping bag" nukes.
Or we could just stop provoking people with military intervention in sovereign states.
Just a thought.
Or maybe the real solution is to drastically increase the resource output of the planet through the spread of technological innovation and free market forces, which is what has actually happened every time consumption begins to match or exceed resource production (macro-economically speaking). Thanks anyway, Malthus.
> "Given that Khan's revelations were made in early 2004, does
> that mean it took the IAEA 1-2 years to brute-force the encryption?"
It took no more than that. Alternatively, it could have taken seconds because the gov't. has a backdore it has secretly figured out, or has the same lists of 256-bit primes everyone else has, and more.
I mean, if 512-bit encryption is based on two roughly 256-bit primes, how many of the latter have been figured out by computer? If I were government, I'd be calculating them nonstop on large networks and generating enormous lists of them.
That's what I'd do anyway. Like a Google type operation, if smaller of scale.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Strains are showing in a variety of areas. And that is at current population levels. We intend to double our population as a species.
... But numerous observations contradict this idea [that stopping fishing after collapse helps]. Only 7% of collapsed populations have recuperated their numbers after one generation. The example of codfish in Newfoundland is renowned. Despite a moratorium on codfishing following the collapse of stocks in 1992, the biomasss level remains still lower than that of 20 years ago, and no recovery has been observed.
Desertification
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-gathering-sandstorm-encroaching-desert-missing-water-399653.html
China is losing a million acres a year to desertification. In Dunhuang, a former Silk Road oasis in the Gobi, the resulting water shortage has become critical. By Clifford Coonan (this in 2007 after reports in 2000 said they had turned the corner and were reducing desertification)
http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/desertific/
Fishing stock collapse
http://www.mpl.ird.fr/suds-en-ligne/ecosys/ang_ecosys/intro2.htm
From years of "miraculous fishing" to stock collapse
Although the oceans were considered inexhaustible in the last century, many fisheries today show signs of senescence.
Population growth in rich societies.
http://rickbutts.com/83/is-england-becoming-a-muslim-nation/
The average birth rate for native Englishwomen is 1.1 children per, while the Muslim women's birth rate [in England] is 3.4, or more than triple. By all measures and accounts England will become Muslim in the not to distant future.
This is in England. I.e., this population is resistant to lower birth rate effect.
http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2008-05/2008-05-01-voa19.cfm?CFID=1180756&CFTOKEN=83044121
Hispanics Fastest Growing Minority Group in US
This is in the U.S. I.e., this population is resistant to lower birth rate effect.
I'm not saying islamic or hispanc are bad people. If it were not them, some other population would be the fastest growing one-- and it would become a larger and larger portion of the population over time.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The progressive November 1979 Issue
The H-Bomb Secret: How we got it and why weâ(TM)re telling it
http://www.progressive.org/?q=node/2252
This will give you a understanding in the difficulties in building a H-bomb and the size of the industries required.
I hate to break it to you, but missile defense has never been about defensive capabilities, that's just something pleasant 'to tell the children'. SDI is, and always will be, a first-strike weapon.
Nobody ever expected SDI to knock out a full-on first strike launch by the USSR. No matter how good it is (if it ever works, which is by no means certain...), out of thousands of incoming missiles, some are going to get in. Even 1% getting through, if the missile you're talking about is a ICBM with MIRV capabilities, that's casualties in the hundreds of millions.
But it might conceivably stop a retaliatory strike. If you could do a surprise attack, and hit the USSR planes on the ground and missiles in the silos, if there were 50 incoming missiles coming in, stopping 1/2 them means your country still exists, where the other guy's doesn't.
This is why a treaty banning anti-ballistic missile tech is a good thing.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
It's fair to point out that this, sure, is a 'backpack nuke', but you notice it's designed to take out a harbor or dam or some other piece of infrastructure, not to hit a city?
Groundburst nukes in the sub-megaton range just aren't gonna do that much. (this being a relative sort of comparison, of course) Probably no EMP, and casualty figures that you could easily match with cruise missiles or other types of aerial bombardment.
If this sorta nuke were fired off in downtown LA, you wouldn't even have the casualty figures seen in Hiroshima, even if somebody was smart enough to put it in a Cessna and climb up to 10,000 feet.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
While I agree with you about our current economic model being a pyramid scheme, I for one wouldn't mind living and working someplace with an extreme labor shortage, eh?
Of course, the devil is in the details about how we get to that point.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
And your name?
"Batman?"
"Are you trying to be funny? What is your surname"
"Suparman."
"Guard! Arrest this man..."
I read that pretty much the above was what transpired until they checked his passport. Why the hell didn't the customs guy simply as for his passport FIRST, and THEN quiz him while pulling up the records for the p/p number/issuance/etc.?
http://gizmodo.com/tag/batman-bin-suparman/
http://www.weirdasianews.com/2008/04/03/singapore-superhero-batman-bin-suparmen/
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Do you know what kiloton stands for? You are way, way off on many of your statements. Kiloton stands for thousand ton. Like a thousand times 2000 pounds. You aren't building that with supplies from your Home Depot and I'm fairly certain 200,000 lbs of TNT beats the Oklahoma City bombing /sarcasm. YOU appear to be the ignorant one, and while a fraction of a kt wouldn't take out the greater New York Metropolitan Area, it would be major, major bad news if it went off in Manhattan.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
Impetuous! Homeric!
I agree, they were not a good ROI, but taking out only 34 ships was a dismally low number. However, the fright factor was enormous, if I understand correct/ly.
As for suicide bombers, the ones who are manipulated or threatened into going out with the bomb probably are victims more than cowards. They are threatened and made to understand they'll have 70 virgins (what gender, who knows...) waiting for them, and that their families will be well cared for if they carry out the mission.
I am willing to concede that some are buying into the missions, but i will assume they found some emotional fervor or rage by which to carry out the attacks. Waste of a life. Most of the time, they could just plant the bomb and remote-detonate it, or just go with timers and run like hell. Nothing glorious about blowing up WITH the bomb unless one feels like someone who has to go down with a sinking ship. Not exactly like shoving an old lady away from a bus and taking the hit for her.
NEWAY, it's late... gotta check for light leaks...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Protip: Check your own breath for the smell of shit before accusing others of talking out their biased arse.
Had you used the scollbar in the 'timeline' box of your BBC link you would have known India's first test was in 1974.
Since your own link disagrees with your insult riddled post, which of the following are true...
A. The BBC is an 'incredibly biased source'.
B. You are just another obnoxious arsehole who is incapable of reasonable debate.
C. You thought a quick scan of the BBC would make up for your poor understanding of the subject.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Touche! And I usually preview so earnestly... 8-)
I meant "early 1970s".
But I miswrote.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.