Our Friends in the Ukraine

There are now indications that the Ukraine is a major contributor to the recent rapid advancement in the North Korean ICBM program.

The only question is whether the technology transfer id the result of corruption or espionage.

My money is on the latter:

Pyongyang’s rogue missile-firing has evoked a commotion among its neighbours. But the anger has turned into threats after Kim Jong-un’s regime astounded the world on July 4 – Independence Day in the United States – with its first intercontinental ballistic missile, which flew almost 1,000 kilometers after being launched.

The Hwasong-14, which means ‘fire star’ in Korean, reached an altitude of 2,802 km and traveled 933 kilometers east into the Sea of Japan after a 39-minute flight.

………

The international community had previously been told that it could take more than 10 years before Pyongyang could come up with an ICBM prototype that might pose a substantial threat – until Hwasong-14 skirted across the airspace of northern Japan.

………

The Russian Defence Ministry initially believed the missile was merely one of the many makeshift “toys” that the Kim regime liked to parade, but the Pentagon confirmed shortly after that it was the real deal.

Russian missile experts who examined photos of Hwasong-14 were quoted as saying the North Korean ICBMs may be copycat versions of long-range missiles made by the Soviet Union, such as the SS-18 Satan, capable of carrying multiple warheads with independently targetable reentry vehicles, Kanwa Defense Review has said.

The Hwasong missiles bear all the hallmarks of the SS-18, and one telling indicator is its strikingly similar fairings.

An initial analysis of the known trajectory and payload of the Hwasong family has lent fresh evidence to conjecture that Pyongyang may have obtained key ICBM technology from the Ukraine-based Yuzhnoye Design Office, which was once a Soviet Union bastion for rockets and advanced weaponry research and development, but is now allegedly laden with debt.

………

North Korea’s ability to “skip grades” in missile technology, notably in regard to composite materials, solid fuels, and warhead thermo-protection, has spooked analysts, who now suspect the regime may have taken lessons from outside, given that Pyongyang is hard pressed to even feed its own population.

“Since 2000, Pyongyang has been sending spies to Ukraine, sometimes via Moscow, forcing the latter of tip-off Kiev to intercept [them]. But it appears that the strained ties between Moscow and Kiev are now playing into Pyongyang’s hand,” an observer said.

Or they are just paying money.

Even if Pyongyang got the plans for the rocket, getting the necessary manufacturing and systems expertise to make sense of those plans a non trivial endeavor.  (It's probably more difficult for spies to get the latter)

That's why my guess is that someone at the Yuzhnoye Design Office got paid for the information.

Common Sense That I Did Not Expect out of State

But reports that there are direct contacts between the US and the DPRK is an indication of at least a small modicum of sanity in Foggy Bottom:

The Trump administration acknowledged on Saturday for the first time that it was in direct communication with the government of North Korea over its missile and nuclear tests, seeking a possible way forward beyond the escalating threats of a military confrontation from both sides.

“We are probing, so stay tuned,” Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson said, when pressed about how he might begin a conversation with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, that could avert what many government officials fear is a significant chance of open conflict between the two countries.

“We ask, ‘Would you like to talk?’ We have lines of communications to Pyongyang — we’re not in a dark situation, a blackout,” he added. “We have a couple, three channels open to Pyongyang,” a reference to North Korea’s capital.

Considering the fact that the US and the DPRK are the principals in their dispute, direct contacts are a good thing, even if it runs against the standard US regime change consensus among the DC cognoscenti.

North Korea is Desperate

No, I don't mean that the sanctions are causing real problems. Nor do I mean that military posturing by the US has them terrified. What I mean is that Donald Trump is simply too weird for them to understand, so they are trying to hire Republican political consultants to explain what the f%$# is going on.

“Their number-one concern is Trump. They can’t figure him out,” said one person with direct knowledge of North Korea’s approach of experts on Asia with Republican connections.

You and me both can't figure Trump out.

 I think that the DPRK should consider hiring Paul Manafort, seeing as how he's a Republican political consultant, and he's not got a lot of clients right now.

The Fruit of Almost 25 Years of Dishonest, Cowardly, and Incompetent Diplomacy

This might be comical if it weren't an H-bomb

The DPRK just tested what they claim to be a full up thermonuclear warhead, what's more they claim that it is deliverable by an ICBM:

North Korea says it has tested a powerful hydrogen bomb that can be loaded on to an intercontinental ballistic missile, in a move that is expected to increase pressure on Donald Trump to defuse the growing nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula.

In an announcement carried on state TV, North Korea said the test, its sixth since 2006, had been a “complete success” and involved a “two-stage thermonuclear weapon” with “unprecedented” strength.

There has been no independent verification of the North’s claims that it has achieved a key goal in its nuclear programme - the ability to miniaturise a warhead so that it can fit on a long-distance missile.

Hours earlier, the regime released footage of what it claimed was a hydrogen bomb that would be loaded on to a new ICBM.

The TV announcement – accompanied by patriotic music and images of North Korean scenery and military hardware – said the test had been ordered by the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un.

The explosion was heralded by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake about six miles (10km) from North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site in the north-east of the country. It was felt over the Chinese border in Yanji.

South Korea’s meteorological administration estimated the blast yield at between 50 to 60 kilotons, or five to six times stronger than North Korea’s fifth test in September last year.

Kim Young-woo, the head of South Korea’s parliamentary defence committee said later that the yield was as high as 100 kilotons. One kiloton is equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT.

The previous nuclear blast in North Korea is estimated by experts to have been about 10 kilotons.

There was a earlier claim of an H-bomb, but that was almost certainly a boosted fission device, which is an important step to miniaturizing warheads for use on missiles, but it isn't the whole megillah.

The most recent blast appears to be a significant improvement in yield.

What's more, if it is a true two stage thermonuclear device, it is no doubt a sophisticated one, because of the relatively low yield of the device.

The first US Teller-Ulam device, Ivy Mike, was 10 megatons, and the first Soviet device, the RDS-37, was about 1.5 MT.

As the warheads became more sophisticated, they became smaller and less powerful, so a 100 KT device could either be an improvement of a boosted device, or a true thermonuclear weapon.

In either case, it does imply that their understanding of the fabrication of nuclear weapons is advancing rapidly.

This is further bolstered by their claim that the warhead has an an adjustable yield.

The response of SecDef James "Mad Dog" Mattis was to threaten a massive military response to "Any threat to the United States or its territory, including Guam or our allies."

Because, I guess that our policy of threats and edmands for capitulation have worked so f%$#ing well.

Adults in the room, my ass.

Seriously, start by ending the f%$#ing Korean war, which is still technically going on, and then open a f%$ing embassy in Pyonyang.

It's not like we never bombed places where we've had formal diplomatic relations with.

This Ain't Rocket Science ……… It's Just Nuclear Warheads

In January 2016, the DPRK claimed to detonate a hydrogen bomb. At the time, I said that it was likely boosted fission device, which would be a step toward a miniaturized warhead.

Yesterday, anonymous intelligence sources claimed that North Korea had a miniaturized warhead suitable for use on its recently fired missile:

North Korea has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles, crossing a key threshold on the path to becoming a full-fledged nuclear power, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded in a confidential assessment.

The analysis, completed last month by the Defense Intelligence Agency, comes on the heels of another intelligence assessment that sharply raises the official estimate for the total number of bombs in the communist country’s atomic arsenal. The United States calculated last month that up to 60 nuclear weapons are now controlled by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Some independent experts think the number is much smaller.

The findings are likely to deepen concerns about an evolving North Korean military threat that appears to be advancing far more rapidly than many experts had predicted. U.S. officials concluded last month that Pyongyang is also outpacing expectations in its effort to build an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the American mainland.

You know, maybe it's the time to engage in direct talks, exchange ambassadors, and END THE F%$#ING KOREAN WAR, which is still technically ongoing.

The US position, complete capitulation as a prelude to negotiations, is not a winning strategy.

Earlier posts are here,.

A Foreseeable Consequence of 23 Years of Bad Foreign Policy

For the past 23 years, the US has:

• Refused to talk directly with the DPRK (North Korea).
• Overthrew a despot who terminated his WMD Program (Gadaffi).
• Not followed the Agreed Framework of 1994 with the DPRK.  (They did for a few years)
• Refused recognition of the government of the DPRK.
• Overthrew another despot on false pretenses (Saddam Hussein).  
• Started a proxy war to overthrow another despot (Assad). 
• Refused to end the Korean war (Really, it's still going on).

Are we surprised then, that they develop nuclear weapons and have now developed an ICBM that can likely strike the west coast of the mainland United States?

They are neither crazy nor stupid, and every move we have made since Bill Clinton lacked the guts to follow his 1992 1994 agreement with the DPRK.

It really is the most logical course of action for them to take, because nuclear weapons work as a deterrent from us:

North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile on Friday that, for the first time, appeared capable of reaching the West Coast of the United States, according to experts — a milestone that American presidents have long declared the United States could not tolerate.

The launch, the second of an intercontinental missile in 24 days, did not answer the question of whether the North has mastered all the technologies necessary to deliver a nuclear weapon to targets in the lower 48 states. But just a few days ago, the Defense Intelligence Agency warned the Trump administration that the North would probably be able to do so within a year, and Friday’s test left little doubt that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, is speeding toward that goal.

The missile launched on Friday remained aloft for roughly 47 minutes, according to American, South Korean and Japanese officials, following a steep trajectory that took it roughly 2,300 miles into space. It then turned and arced sharply down into the sea near the northernmost Japanese island, Hokkaido.

If that trajectory had been flattened out — a step the North may have avoided for fear of provoking an American military response — the missile could have put a number of major American cities at risk, experts say. The Pentagon was quick to declare that the “North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) determined the missile launch from North Korea did not pose a threat to North America.” That statement, while true, ignored the potential long-term implications of the launch.

“Depending on how heavy a warhead it carries, this latest North Korean missile would easily reach the West Coast of the United States with a range of 9,000 to 10,000 kilometers,” or 5,600 to 6,200 miles, said Kim Dong-yub, a defense analyst at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University in Seoul. “With this missile, North Korea leaves no doubt that its missile has a range that covers most of the United States.”

Accept reality and deal directly with Pyongyang before they have a missile that can strike Washington, DC.

We already know that the DPRK is working on a boosted fission warhead, which is an essential part of the warhead miniaturization process, and we know that they will literally starve their people to death to develop this capability, because they believe that they are facing an existential threat from the United States.

Just talk to them, and while you are at it, end the f%$#ing Korean war.  It's absurd that we are still under a temporary truce after 75 years.

Another Stopped Clock Moment

The White House has announced that they will be talking face-to-face with the DPRK.

The standard line in foreign policy is that talking with Pyongyang is somehow a victory for North Korea, so we should only talk to them after they have capitulated.

Given the rather xenophobic and paranoid proclivities of that regime, the result, active nuclear weapons, ICBM, and SLBM programs, should come as no surprise.

This is a welcome change:

Preparations are under way to bring senior North Korean officials to the United States for talks with former U.S. officials, the first such meeting in more than five years, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.

The talks would be the clearest indication yet that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wants to communicate with the new Trump administration.

Planning for the "Track 1.5 talks" is still in a preparatory stage, the Post reported, citing multiple people with knowledge of the arrangements.

That name, reflecting planned contact between former U.S. officials and current North Korean ones, is a reference to what are known as "Track 2" talks involving former officials on both sides.

I don't expect this to end well, after all, it is an initiative by the Trump administration, but to the degree that this constitutes a reversal from a truly bone-headed foreign policy consensus, it is a good thing.

Yet Another Artifact of Failed US Policy

Pyongyang has detonated another nuclear warhead, and it appears to be the largest yet tested, and it also appears that it was a test of further warhead miniaturization:

North Korea said it conducted a "higher level" nuclear test explosion on Friday that will allow it to finally build "at will" an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons. It was the North's fifth atomic test and the second in eight months.

South Korea's president called the detonation, which Seoul estimated was the North's biggest-ever in explosive yield, an act of "fanatic recklessness." Japan called North Korea an "outlaw nation."

North Korea's boast of a technologically game-changing nuclear test defied both tough international sanctions and long-standing diplomatic pressure to curb its nuclear ambitions. It will raise serious worries in many world capitals that North Korea has moved another step closer to its goal of a nuclear-armed missile that could one day strike the U.S. mainland.

………

Hours after South Korea noted unusual seismic activity near North Korea's northeastern nuclear test site, the North said in its state-run media that a test had "finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of (a) nuclear warhead that has been standardized to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets."

………

South Korea's weather agency said the explosive yield of the North Korean blast would have been 10 to 12 kilotons, or 70 to 80 percent of the force of the 15-kiloton atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. The North's fourth test was an estimated six kilotons.

………

North Korean leader Kim has overseen a robust increase in the number and kinds of missiles tested this year. Not only has the range of the weapons jumped significantly, but the country is working to perfect new platforms for launching them — submarines and mobile launchers — giving the North greater ability to threaten the tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed throughout Asia.

Here is what I think is the most critical bit of the story:

Diplomacy has so far failed. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009.

The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

Technically, the US and the ROK are still at war with the DPRK.

What's more the diplomatic conflict is primarily between the DPRK and the US, and the US refuses one-on-one negotiations, because our foreign policy establishment sees any negotiations as a reward.

This is really pretty simple.

Pyongyang is convinced that the US intends to launch a surprise decapitation strike on them, and this is what drives their military and diplomatic activities.

The refusal of the US to engage them directly, or to exchange ambassadors, which was agreed to^* in 1994, reinforces their belief, and provides much of the impetus for their bellicose behavior.

^*Also the supply of a proliferation resistant light reactor, food aid, and a dropping of sanctions.

Trump is Right on This

For more the 20 years, we have had a problem with out negotiations with the DPRK (North Korea).

We haven't even been able to end the Korean War.^*

The problem is that one of the parties is not negotiations is not acting in good faith, and engages in meaningless posturing, threats of dire consequences, and a general lack of seriousness.

The other, of course, is the DPRK.

Since the Clinton administration stiffed the DPRK on formal diplomatic relations in 2004, the US has refused face to face negotiations, because ……… Hell, I don't know why, but it appears that Donald Trump finds this similarly absurd:

Presumptive US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump says he is willing to meet North Korea's leader to discuss its nuclear programme.

"I would speak to him, I would have no problem speaking to him," the businessman said of Kim Jong-un.

Such a meeting would mark a significant change of US policy towards the politically isolated regime.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton decried Mr Trump's "bizarre fascination with foreign strongmen".

The statement, delivered by one of her aides, added that Mr Trump's foreign policy "made no sense".

Because talking with people instead of threatening them works so well?

The DPRK has tested nukes, probably including a boosted fission device, and they have conducted launches of SLBMs in the 22 years since we promised to exchange ambassadors.

Talking to someone is not a reward. Rewarding someone is a reward.

In fact, talking to Donald Trump is one of my definitions of cruel and unusual punishment.

The Washington, DC consensus on the DPRK is nuts, and stupid, and nuts.

Trump is right here, a generation of US diplomats are wrong.

BTW, f%$# the Donald for being right, and f%$# the idiots at Foggy Bottom for making him right.

^*Seriously. This is not a joke. Technically hostilities are still active, we are just in a temporary truce.

I Called it on the North Korean H-Bomb

An alleged picture of their new warhead

11 Weeks ago, the DPRK claimed to have set off a hydrogen bomb.

Most of the experts said that this was not the case, as the seismic data did not show a significantly larger blast than its previous tests, and normally a first time full Thermonuclear (3-stage) device will be big.

At the time, I suggested that it was not a full 3 stage device, but that it was a boosted device, where there is not a whole bunch of fusion, perhaps 5% of the blast.

I suggested that this was important because what a boosted fission device does allow for is a miniaturized warhead, because the additional neutrons from the small amount of fusion allow for a smaller amount of fissile material.

And now North Korea has announced that it has a miniaturized warhead that it has integrated with one of its missiles:

North Korea claims it has the know how and capability to develop a nuclear warhead to equip ballistic missiles. This claim has been substantiated today, by the leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Kim Jong-Un, presenting a complex spherical object claimed to be the country’s miniaturized thermonuclear warhead.“The nuclear warheads have been standardised to be fit for ballistic missiles by miniaturising them,” Kim noted during a visit with nuclear technicians that was reported by the DPRK state media today.

It is possible that the new warhead is designed for the Korean KN08 intermediate range ballistic missile that has yet to be tested in flight. Once proven, the missile is expected to boast the range and payload capacity to deliver attacks on US targets in the Pacific and west coast. Kim also stressed that the miniaturised warheads were “thermo-nuclear” devices, echoing the North’s claim that the nuclear test it conducted in January was of a more powerful hydrogen bomb.

………

North Korea’s claim to have successfully tested an H-bomb in January was greeted with scepticism at the time as the estimated yield was seen as far too low for a full-fledged thermo-nuclear device.

However, weapons experts have suggested it may have been a “boosted” fission device, which makes more efficient use of nuclear material and can be made smaller without sacrificing yield.

I wasn't the only one out there suggesting this scenario, but I was in the minority, and it appears that I nailed it.

I am Calling a Boosted Fission Device

The DPRK has claimed to detonate a Hydrogen Bomb, but the seismic evidence would indicate otherwise:

The bold claim by North Korea on Wednesday that it had detonated a hydrogen bomb appeared to fizzle under the intense scrutiny of U.S. physicists and nuclear weapons experts.

The explosive power detected by earthquake sensors around the world was much weaker than would be expected from a hydrogen bomb, experts said.

“It was not very big,” said Philip Coyle, the former director of nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site and a longtime U.S. national security official.

An exhaustive investigation into the test, including sampling air for telltale radioactive particles and studying seismic shock waves, will take weeks. The analysis is likely to confirm the size of the detonation, the type of radioactive fuel it used, how the fuel was produced and the sophistication of its design.

U.S. experts initially estimated the power of the underground explosion was as small as 6 kilotons, less than the atomic bomb that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in World War II.

Some basic technical information: There are 3 types of nuclear weapons:

• Pure Fission
• Boosted Fission
• Thermonuclear

Fission bombs use Uranium or Plutonium to create a bomb.

Boosted fission weapons use small quantities of the isotopes of Hydrogen deuterium and tritium and achieve a minimal amount of fission, but allows for a greater percentage of fusion fission for a given amount of material because the small amount of fusion emits a large number of neutrons, increasing the reaction.

Among other things, a boosted fission weapon can be a lot smaller than a pure fission device.

Thermonuclear (Teller-Ulam) weapons typically have three stages:

• A boosted fission primary which has a mirror to focus its energy on
• A mixture of deuterium and tritium which fuses on a large scale, and releases neutrons which
• Initiate fission in a depleted (U-238) jacket

A pure fission weapon is typically in the 20 kiloton range.

A boosted fission weapon weapon could go up to an upper limit 1 megaton.

The first thermonuclear weapon, "Mike" was 10 megatons, and the largest one ever detonated was the Soviet Tsar Bomba, which was designed to achieve 100 MT, but only achieved 50 MT because the depleted uranium jacket was omitted to reduce fallout.

Theoretically, there is no limit on the size of a Teller Ulam device.

So, on to the analysis.

The first thing to note is that, much like making watches, it is tougher to make a small bomb than it is a large one, so it is highly unlikely that any true thermonuclear weapon would be under a megaton.

Second, it is likely that the DPRK is looking at miniaturizing their weapons, and a boosted fission device would achieve this.

Third, for one to have a practical thermonuclear weapon, you need to have a boosted fission first stage, otherwise, you end up with something like "Mike" which weighed over 80 tons. (Mike used a boosted fission trigger, it was just f%$#ing huge as a result of being the first such device, the fact that it used liquid deuterium, and the associated support and measurement equipment).

So, my not so expert opinion:

• It's a big deal, but applies to any nuclear test.
• It was probably a test of a boosted fission device.
• It was likely a fizzle, as the seismology shows a relatively low yield.

So, yes, this is a big f%$#ing deal, and I would suggest that a formal exchange of ambassadors and diplomatic recognition, which was agreed to in 1994, might be a good counter move.

In the mean time, I am sure that China, Russia, the US, Japan, and South Korea are analyzing the information, and sampling the air in the region to get more specifics.

Oh, Sh%$………

Down in Korea, they are playing a game called stupid human tricks with artillery:

South and North Korea traded artillery fire across their heavily militariZed border on Thursday, in a rare exchange that left no casualties but pushed already elevated cross-border tensions to dangerously high levels.

North Korea followed up with an ultimatum sent via military hotline that gave the South 48 hours to dismantle loudspeakers blasting propaganda messages across the border or face further military action.

The South's defense ministry dismissed the threat and said the broadcasts would continue.

Direct exchanges of fire across the inter-Korean land border are extremely rare, mainly, analysts say, because both sides recognize the risk for a sudden and potentially disastrous escalation between two countries that technically remain at war.

………

In a detailed press briefing later in the day, the South's defense ministry said the nuclear-armed North initially fired a single artillery round over the border shortly before 4:00pm (0700 GMT).

Minutes later it fired several more in the rough direction of one of the South's loudspeaker units, but the shells fell short on the South's side of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) — a four kilometer-wide buffer area straddling the actual frontier line.

The South Korean military retaliated by firing "dozens of rounds of 155mm shells" which the ministry said were also aimed to land in the North's section of the DMZ.

Seriously? You broadcasting propaganda across the border?

Everyone in that peninsula is f%$#ing nuts!

Why the Germans Shouldn't Run the EU

It turns out that the economy of North Korea grew faster than the EU's economy last year:

North Korea’s economy expanded by 1.0% to $29.85 billion (£19 billion) in 2014, according to Reuters citing analysis from South Korea’s central bank.

That's just better than the 0.9% growth recorded in the Eurozone last year.

The Bank of Korea (BoK) report that “the increase in economic activity was attributed mainly to growth in services and building while farming, mining and manufacturing saw slower growth.”

Growth in services, making up around 31.3% of total economic output, accelerated to 1.3%, up from 0.3% in 2013, with retail sales, food, and accommodation, logistics and communications all expanding from a year earlier.

………

North Korea does not release official economic data, hence the reliance on the BoK analysis to estimate economic output.

EU growth is pathetic.

What's more the EU's hegemon and chief predatory exporter, Germany, experienced a GDP growth roughly double that of the EU as a whole.

German policies with regard to the EU, and particularly with regard to the Euro zone, are about benefiting the nation at the expense of its neighbors.

German domination was a bad idea in 1935, and it's a bad idea in 2015.

Shorter FBI: It was da Norks, Trust Us

Yeah.

I haven't bought that since J. Edgar Hoover bought his first slip:

The director of the FBI has defended his bureau's claim that the hacking attack against Sony Pictures was the work of the North Korean government – saying skeptics "don't have the facts that I have."

Speaking at a cybersecurity conference at Fordham University in New York City on Wednesday, FBI boss James Comey said he has "very high confidence" that Pyongyang was responsible for the comprehensive ransacking of the movie studio's servers.

When asked why security experts favor a different explanation – that the attack was probably the work of disgruntled insiders or former employees – Comey said, "They don't have the facts that I have, don't see what I see."

That's true, because the FBI has remained tight-lipped as to the exact evidence that it believes links the Sony incident to North Korea. But on Wednesday, Comey offered the most detailed explanation yet of the government's reasoning.

When the group calling itself Guardians of Peace sent threatening emails and made other online statements, Comey said, it mostly used proxy servers to disguise the messages' origins. "But several times, they got sloppy," he claimed.

On those occasions, he said, the group sent messages from servers with IP addresses "that were exclusively used by the North Koreans," giving law enforcement a "very clear indication of who was doing this."

This makes no sense at all.

It's a pain in the ass to set up this kind of stuff, but once you do, you would have to actively decide to screw this up.

As the article notes:

Public IP network addresses, by themselves, are a poor indicator of the true origin of internet attacks, due to the ease with which traffic can be spoofed or routed through multiple networks. For this reason, infosec professionals remain skeptical the Kim government is responsible for the Sony Pictures hack.

How much do you want to guess that the hackers "got sloppy" only after the DPRK got fingered?

I ain't buying it.

Given the history of stove-piping by the US state security apparatus, I need something beyond, "If you knew what I do."

Tweet of the Day

NK did it 100% OK, NK did it w/ help OK, NK outsourced it OK, NK was told later and bought them drinks God dammit, NK is guilty of something
— Jeffrey Carr (@jeffreycarr) December 30, 2014

As an FYI, Mr. Carr is a noted security professional.

It appears that Barack Obana's 11 year old opposition to "stupid wars" is now inoperative.

Don't Jump to Conclusions on the Sony Hack

Bruce Schneier, perhaps the most prominent security pundit in the world, is dubious about the FBI's claim that the DPRK is behind the Sony Hack, while Kurt Stammberger, the senior VP Norse, a cybersecurity firm, insists that all evidence points to an internal hack:

Cybersecurity experts are questioning the FBI's claim that North Korea is responsible for the hack that crippled Sony Pictures. Kurt Stammberger, a senior vice president with cybersecurity firm Norse, told CBS News his company has data that doubts some of the FBI's findings.

"Sony was not just hacked, this is a company that was essentially nuked from the inside," said Stammberger.

While Norse is not involved in the Sony case, it has done its own investigation.

"We are very confident that this was not an attack master-minded by North Korea and that insiders were key to the implementation of one of the most devastating attacks in history," said Stammberger.

He says Norse data is pointing towards a woman who calls herself "Lena" and claims to be connected with the so-called "Guardians of Peace" hacking group. Norse believes it's identified this woman as someone who worked at Sony in Los Angeles for ten years until leaving the company this past May.

I'm inclined not to believe the official story from the FBI.

The sketchy accounts currently given by the FBI seem to indicate that they worked backward, starting with the guilt of North Korea, and then picking and choosing evidence on that basis.

Boom

The DPRK conducts a 3^rd nuclear weapons test:

At the United Nations, the desire to impose ever harsher sanctions on North Korea to try to curb its development of nuclear arms and ballistic missiles has long stalled in the face of Chinese opposition — the standard chain of events playing out here again on Tuesday after North Korea said it had carried out its third nuclear test.

Security Council diplomats and the experts who track sanctions enforcement are quick to tick off the contents of a deeper toolbox that could be used to try to corral Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.

They include banning specific, high-tech items used in the nuclear program like epoxy paste for centrifuges; limiting or outlawing some banking transactions; and a far more stringent inspection of ships bound to and from North Korea.

But the sanctions in place are almost exclusively focused on nuclear and ballistic missile activity.

The problem is that we have way too much posturing on both side.

They need to stop setting off nukes, and we need to make a formal exchange of ambassadors.

DPRK Finally Gets a Launch Half Right

North Korea's satellite is actually in orbit, though it appears to be tumbling out of control:

After 14 years of trying, North Korea has finally joined the countries capable of launching a satellite into orbit. But the success was short-lived. The nation's space program is also experiencing the bitterness of the failure to keep its spacecraft stable.

North Korea succeeded Dec. 11 on its six attempt to orbit what officials there call an Earth-observation satellite. The U.S. led a group of nations , including Russia and China, that warned North Korea not to proceed with the mission. China has since expressed “regret” over it.

The launch technology can also be used to support the country 's ballistic missile program .

A U.S. defense official suggests the satellite is tumbling in its polar orbit. Strategic Command, which tracks orbiting objects, referred questions to the Pentagon. A spokeswoman there said she would not comment on classified intelligence matters.

One observer who tracked the spacecraft with night-vision goggles said it was “flickering” and produced an intermittent trace on a time-exposure photograph, which could suggest tumbling.

What is significant here is not the ballistic missile capability that this shows, because this rocket science isn't exactly ……… rocket science.

Yes, I know, it technically is rocket science, and from an engineering and technical perspective it is significant, but a ballistic missile aimed at the west coast would need to impart less than ½ the kinetic energy to the payload.

It's been clear that this has been well within the Kim's capabilities for years.

What is significant is now that any attempt to prevent testing related to ballistic missiles will now have to clearly show that it is not almost entirely related to weapons.

While there is support in the international community to prevent the development of explicitly military long range rocket capability, the idea that the United States, it's NATO allies, Russia, China, Israel, etc. should be allowed to hold a hegemony on such a technology will be anathema to most other nations in the world.

This is particularly true because the only nation put at threat by this, though South Korea and Japan are clearly at risk from shorter ranged rockets, is the United States.

Kim Jong Il Just Made the World a Better Place

By leaving this mortal coil.

No predictions, because any predictions with regard to the DPRK is like the bite of a dog into a stone, it is a stupidity.

Julian Assange Granted Bail

We are all Julian Assange

But the Swedish prosecutors promptly appealed the decision, meaning that he spends at least another 48 hours in custody, which in his case means rather harsh isolation.

On the other hand, it appears that reports of a grand jury investigating an indictment under the 1917 espionage act may be baseless.

Truth be told, a good prosecutor can find an sitting already sitting grand jury, and Mr. Assange from a legal perspective is certainly a ham sandwich.

Were I a prosecutor, I would not begin any process until Assange were in Sweden, where extraditions appears to be more likely than in the UK.

Of course, while this is going on, the internet is still being roiled by attacks on both sides of the issue, with Anonymous emerging from 4chan to hit the financial and IT companies that cut Wikileaks off, and other hackers going after Wikileaks, in a game of dueling DDOS attacks.

Hanging over all this is Assange's poison pill file, which has been distributed to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people, waiting for the decryption key that will be distributed if anything happens to him or Wikileaks by a dozen or so of his colleagues.

And then there is the absurdity that Amazon, after tossing Wikileaks from their servers, is now selling copies of the cables for the Kindles.

In the mean time, here are the crucial government secrets that we now know as a result of the cables:

• The pharmaceutical company Pfizer, after engaging in illegal human tests on children during a meningitis epidemic in Nigeria, attempted to dig up blackmail material to be used against the attorney general to prevent him from investigation.
• That senior officials in the ZANU-PF, including Robert Mugabe and his family, are heavily involved in the "blood diamonds" mined in Zimbabwe's Marange diamond fields.
• That a US security contractor (mercenaries), DynCorp, paid for with US tax dollars, "threw a party for Afghan security recruits featuring trafficked boys as the entertainment. Bacha bazi is the Afghan tradition of "boy play" where young boys are dressed up in women's clothing, forced to dance for leering men, and then sold for sex to the highest bidder."
• That British security forces were likely involved in the assassination of an Irish civil rights attorney.

Of course there is some truly sensitive and shocking information out there, specifically that, the DPRK (North Korea) was willing to take significant steps to  reassure the US and the ROK (South Korea) in exchange for an Eric Clapton concert in Pyongyang.

Merciful heavens, we can't let the citizenry know about that.

The final word on this is Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg's, "EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time."