Nuclear Weapons For Dummies

Classified information suddenly has nowhere to hide. It's out on the web, unchaperoned by any net nanny. Now the nation-state has become just one more player in the marketplace of ideas.

The unimpeded flow of information, and its evil twin disinformation, comes with unforeseeable consequences. Imperfect security, indigestible lumps of data in the form of large electronic documents, compounded with the inherent perfect nature of the digital copy mean that there will be a continuing trickle of sensitive and accurate information bleeding out of all but the most well-bandaged regimes. Will those seeking perfect protection only serve to insure their own mummification?

Here is an example of a waveform representation of an audio file that has been sanitized by the US government:



In this case the excision of information was well done. I put it to test and there is no intelligible sound to be recovered from the official silence. But what about the image below? Does this tell us nothing about that old stand-by of the US nuclear arsenal, the B-61?


Don't ask me. I don't want one.

The examples of the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs show that there remain prominent barriers to the creation of nuclear weapons. Metallurgy, precision machining, and acquisition of fissile materials all involve complex processes that take time and lots of money to master, even when the textbooks are at hand, even if you have blueprints from A.Q. Khan.


Nuclear weapons for dummies? Buy a suitcase nuke and don't waste your time on a nuclear program. After all, even if you are an army of one, you can still capitalize on all of the hard work done by big-budget governments.

Whether you're looking to hasten end-times, or simply to annihilate an enemy, this little baby will make the perfect traveling companion.

Making (Up) History

There are many ways to make up truth. The most effective technique requires multiple sources that reference and reinforce each other. For this to work, disparate authorities make seemingly small contortions of fact, and then others refer to these aggregated authorities to make the case that a falsehood is true.

This is what a Committee of the US House of Rep's was doing when the UN's Atomic Energy Agency (IAEC) busted their work. The House committee wrote a report exaggerating the nuclear threat posed by Iran, but the IAEC called that report, "incorrect and misleading," as well as "outrageous and dishonest."

The intended purpose of the report was to give the White House and other war mongers an illusion of evidence to support an attack on Iran. Once the lies had the imprimatur of a "government study," they could then be used as a tool of persuasion. The task of anyone disagreeing with the report would then be to disprove the multiple inaccuracies. In this way the debate becomes a level removed from the question at hand. This technique puts layers of questions into the discussion, making it more difficult for facts to separate themselves from the fiction.

The full effect can be seen by reviewing the work of the White House Iraq Group, and Judith Miller, former "journalist" for the New York Times. In this scam, White House officials led Miller to sources for stories that made their case for the invasion of Iraq, and then those same officials would refer to the New York Times to support their arguments. Much of that reporting was later discredited by the NYT editors, but long after the war had started, and with little public notice.

This technique is tried and true. We've seen it used effectively to cast doubt on the existence of global climate change, the probability of evolution, and the hazards of smoking.

It can also be employed locally as well. To dismiss an employee, for example, supervisors might place small and questionable concerns into an employee's file. When these one-sided anecdotes are taken together, they seem to add up to a larger issue. The employee, to defend herself, must then pick apart and dispute all the smaller complaints. These layers of fallacy are usually too much to overcome.

No Nukes is Good Nukes

It's hard to get as excited about nuclear power as Jon Gertner gets in his New York Times Magazine cover story. Gertner makes the point many times over that the industry has a lot of new gizmos that make it worth investing in, and it's now completely safe (but wait, didn't they say that before T.M.I. and before Chernobyl too?).

In the past 30 years, there hasn't been a single nuclear power plant built in this country, but the industry hasn't had a single new idea in all that time about what to do with the nuclear waste. The Times refers to this issue only in passing as if it were some minor detail. Our grandchildren will not be impressed that we made a bunch of energy to cool our malls, then left them with all this dangerous crap to deal with.

And every new plant built is a new target for terrorist attack, as well. Gertner describes this possibility as "increasingly worrisome." Phew! I was thinking terrorist threat was something really important.

I shouldn't worry, the article says, because there's all sorts of concrete and barbed wire. There's even employees with guns, and I suppose the industry should be responsible for its own security, just like the airlines used to be. That was awesome.

The article has photos by Mitch Epstein who's been making really nice images of "America's cultural investment in energy."

But my favorite images of nuclear power are in Paul Fusco's photo essay on the surviving orphans of Chernobyl.

I am not convinced that there is, or should be, a "nuclear renaissance" but if you're interested in more, Leonard Lopate did a segment on the same question, but without the nukes-now! cheerleading.