[HN Gopher] Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a produc...
___________________________________________________________________
Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?
Author : terryf
Score : 633 points
Date : 2024-09-06 07:27 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.nuclearsecrecy.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.nuclearsecrecy.com)
| virgulino wrote:
| For anyone interested in the basics of nuclear weapons, I highly
| recommend the "Nuclear 101: How Nuclear Bombs Work" lectures by
| Matthew Bunn, a man heavily involved in nuclear arms control.
|
| His lectures are always highly entertaining, a real pleasure to
| watch.
|
| This is a clip from his lecture explaining the basics of
| thermonuclear warheads:
|
| https://youtu.be/YMuRpx4T2Rw
|
| And the full "Nuclear 101" lecture, in two parts:
|
| https://youtu.be/zVhQOhxb1Mc
|
| https://youtu.be/MnW7DxsJth0
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Given the nature of nuclear weapons work, isn't anything
| presented by someone basically speculation? If he actually had
| the information he wouldn't be able to talk about it. He seems
| to have been involved at the government level in the storage
| and handling of weapons, not production of them.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Fun idea, there basically are no nuclear secrets. If you look
| long enough you can pretty much learn everything except some
| in the weeds details of the most modern nuclear warheads. My
| basic premise is all our "enemies" have this info by now and
| the complexity is actually in building them, not how they
| work or how to build them.
| xattt wrote:
| You might have the theory, you might have an understanding
| of the materials involved, but you're missing the way they
| fit together.
|
| Assembly of the actual warhead could be aided by the OP
| diagram.
| Ginden wrote:
| This is merely an engineering problem.
|
| The hardest part of building nukes is acquiring weapon-
| grade enriched uranium, because it's controlled as hell
| and you will get bombed if you try to make your own.
|
| If you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on enriched
| uranium, paying salaries for team of engineers is the
| easy part.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| North Korea, Pakistan, India, South Africa & likely
| Israel didn't get bombed due to their enrichment
| programs.
|
| There is a rumor that the USSR flirted with the idea of a
| pre-emptive strike on Mainland China to decapitate their
| nuclear program after the Sino-Soviet split. This did not
| happen obviously.
|
| Iran didn't get bombed, although that may just be because
| other forms of sabotage were available.
|
| Syria & Iraq on the other hand, yeah those got bombed.
| But it's not 100% a guarantee.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Stuxnet is still one of the wildest and best computer
| security stories out there.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| Which is probably why the U.S. looks out for uranium
| enrichment.
| chasil wrote:
| I remember rumors of the theft of the W88 (mentioned in the
| parent article) during the Clinton presidency.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox_Report
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| There was once an article in a pop sci magazine 25 odd
| years ago about how to build a nuke in a house; basically a
| pipe / barrel from the attic to the basement, a concave bit
| of plutonium or the right kind of uranium in the basement
| encased in a good carrier like concrete, and a convex
| matching part at the top of the barrel. Explosives behind
| the top one, launch the one towards the other, ????, nuke.
| In theory.
|
| That said, if it was that easy, I'm sure we would've had
| terrorist attacks with nukes already. Or if terrorism was
| that big an issue. I don't know if it hasn't happened yet
| because technology and three-lettered agencies are doing
| their job right though.
| cannonpr wrote:
| Casting, machining or welding plutonium into the right
| shapes and purities without killing your self, or some of
| the other exotic metals, without killing your self or
| making your neighbours sick in a sub 1-3 week horizon is
| incredibly challenging. The exact geometries you need to
| achieve aren't easily available either neither is
| measuring is you achieved them without again killing your
| self. Getting a dirty fizzle is a lot easier which is why
| people are afraid of dirty weapons by terrorists.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| _Getting_ the plutonium, in sufficient quantities, is
| also non-trivial.
| lumost wrote:
| Making the entire thing efficient enough to actually be
| delivered to a target is also another matter. This
| requires precise calculation of the geometries and very
| precise grades of plutonium, barrel pipe, and explosives.
| How do you even keep the gun type shapes from deforming
| in the barrel?
| lazide wrote:
| Getting the right type of plutonium in sufficient
| quantity is an order of magnitude harder than either of
| them - there is essentially no naturally occurring
| plutonium, it only comes as a side effect of neutron
| bombardment of specific isotopes of Uranium, which are
| already hard to seperate, and only under specific
| conditions are the right types of plutonium isotopes to
| be useful produced. And even then, it's non trivial to
| seperate them.
|
| The whole thing is a giant, high profile, and dirty mess.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Plutonium won't work in a gun-type device like described
| in that magazine, the Pu-240 contamination makes it far
| too sensitive.
| dboreham wrote:
| Quick note that gun type devices don't work with
| Plutonium.
| taneq wrote:
| [Cut to me in 1999 driving my old station wagon down to
| the local hardware store to pick up a few kilos of highly
| purified enriched uranium and some C4]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| >> ,I'm sure we would've had terrorist attacks with nukes
| already. Or if terrorism was that big an issue
|
| There are two problems with that statement. Let's examine
| them
|
| Firstly, does majority of terrorists want to nuke
| NewYork? If you gave 9/11 bombers a 5 megaton warhead,
| would they use it? You have to remember that many of them
| imagine they have a just cause.
|
| Second, imagine you are could make a nuke at home and
| were completely immoral, who would you sell it to?
|
| There are many evil governments and organisations that
| could pay more and be better clients than terrorists.
| nikcub wrote:
| This is the same method published in the BBS/FTP
| distributed Jolly Rodger's Cookbook in the early 90s.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I'm sure in 1985 plutonium was available in every corner
| drugstore, but in 2024 it's a little hard to come by.
| oneshtein wrote:
| Chemical attacks, like one sarin attack in Tokyo by Aum
| Shinrikyo, are few orders of magnitude cheaper than any
| nuclear attack.
| RA2lover wrote:
| That's not to say they didn't try.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banjawarn_Station
| jerf wrote:
| The hard part has never been the design:
|
| 1964, Physics PhD who knew nothing about nuclear physics
| designs a bomb:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science
|
| Physics junior in the mid-1970s designs a device good
| enough to impress Freeman Dyson: https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/John_Aristotle_Phillips#%22A-B...
|
| As search engines continue their trend of considering your
| search term just a suggestion, I can't pull it up, but
| there's also a case where a high school physics class
| decided to try to design one and also came adequately
| close.
|
| The hard thing that is actually the stopper is the
| enrichment of the relevant materials. The other hard part
| is getting the best possible yield; there's huge variances
| in what you get from the same amount of fuel depending on
| how well you can put it together before it blows itself
| apart, but that's not a stopper for a terrorist group.
| Getting to Hiroshima levels is apparently not that
| difficult, as evidence by the fact it was done so many
| decades ago.
|
| Delivery is another major challenge, but I'll consider that
| separate from the task of creating one at all.
| qchris wrote:
| This is concept is a neat one that I think differentiates
| the real world from many fantasy worlds. In the latter,
| many of the core problems are built around somebody having
| "forbidden" or "dark" knowledge, or the heroes needing to
| find just the right rare answer to some kind of fundamental
| problem that somebody wrote down but that was suppressed.
| Think Horcruxes in Harry Potter sort of a deal.
|
| In the real world, we have classification, but by-and-large
| those are about very specific elements of very specific
| things (i.e. the exact shape/location of that secondary,
| not that the secondary exists or that Sandia does modeling
| of that sort of thing). No one's really the gatekeeper of
| knowledge of things like nuclear engineering or biological
| gain-of-function. There's not really a litmus test for
| someone to attend to a microbiology graduate program or
| take a chemistry class that would enable them to develop
| synthetic drugs.
|
| Same thing with martial arts; no one's hiding some secret
| martial technique. A BJJ purple belt will, in a fistfight,
| toy with just about anyone else on the planet not trained
| in jiujitsu like they're a toddler. And you can just, like,
| walk into many strip malls across the North America, pay
| your $200/mo, and a few years later of consistently showing
| up, you're there. No secret death touch or spiritual
| clarity needed.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Funny example. I am a BJJ purple belt. I love BJJ
| analogies. It is analogous to the mental work in tech.
| There is just hard, physical work, repetition, analysis,
| and more work. It's very rewarding. Just like tech
| problem solving. That's the secret to most things. Hard,
| sometimes wearying, sometimes joyful, work.
|
| I think secrets are largely against the ideals of the
| enlightenment. There are certain temporal operational
| concerns. Democracy dies the death of a thousand cuts
| when unelected bureaucrats classify the most mundane
| things by default "just in case". 9/11 happened because
| of these silos. Our foreign adversaries often know more
| about what we are up to than US citizens, etc.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Using publicly available knowledge won't get you a working
| nuke, even if you have the necessary fissile material. A
| lot of finicky details have to be just right in order to
| get a nuclear explosion instead of a fizzle. C.f.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank
|
| More often than not, comparatively simple chemical
| reactions are hard to reproduce reliably just by reading
| the research papers.
| bitexploder wrote:
| I have watched a lot of Nile Red and agree with this. The
| actual things that happen that kick off the nuclear
| reaction are kind of crazy and I can see how it would be
| very difficult. However, you know it is possible and the
| shape and structure of it. Any nation state has the
| resources to do it and it would not take them very long
| because the physics are all sorted. I actually kind of
| doubt America could even just produce another nuclear
| weapon on demand because we have lost a lot of the how-to
| institutional knowledge.
|
| I think enough is known now to really narrow down the
| problem to something a nation state can do.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| The fact nukes are hard to make aren't because of lack of
| knowledge, everyone knows how to make nuclear weapons - the
| issue is materials. Control of them is closely guarded and
| you tend to get disappeared or bombed if you make them
| yourself.
| nirav72 wrote:
| Another one - fascinating video on how nuclear weapons locking
| systems work - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1LPmAF2eNA
| mjevans wrote:
| That thing is supposed to be a logo?
|
| I'm reminded of CGP Gray's videos about flags.
| https://www.youtube.com/user/cgpgrey/videos Like this one
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4w6808wJcU About US state flags
| permo-w wrote:
| a product logo, according to the title, although that may be a
| hint of editorialising from the author.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It really is, it's just much more graphically detailed than
| the usual product logo, probably because it was designed by
| nuclear weapon designers and not by professional graphic
| designers.
| chefandy wrote:
| I've done branding and identity design in the past, and got
| university training to do it. I've also worked as a developer
| and contributed a ton to FOSS projects. That an engineering
| organization thinks this is a product logo is entirely
| unsurprising. I'll bet their interfaces are _really something._
|
| The most frustrating thing about being a designer in those
| environments is the dunning-krueger cockiness many technical
| people have in their understanding of design, which they
| usually believe is purely an aesthetic consideration.*
|
| It's not even like a junior developer trying to 'correct' a
| senior developer about coding practices in a dev meeting-- the
| better analog is a designer that watched a half hour Coding for
| Designers talk at a conference trying to correct a senior
| developer about coding practices in a stand-up, because they'd
| never have been invited to the dev meeting to begin with. If
| there were only designers in that meeting-- and they likely
| find the other designer more credible because they jibe with
| their perspective, don't realize how important the developers
| input is, and might have watched that same conference talk--
| that could damage a project. In my experience, designers are
| way more likely to be solo in meetings with developers and the
| echo chamber of developer 'expertise' on design drowns out
| actual professional design expertise. In most FOSS projects, is
| bleaker than that because designers don't even bother trying.
|
| * though completely out-of-context _" rules"_ born from Tufte
| quotes aren't uncommon. In art school, we were told that we
| need to _understand_ the rules in order to know when to break
| them. Imagine someone who 'd never driven before that memorized
| a few pages of the driving manual calling you an unqualified
| driver because your actions didn't comply with the letter of
| one page they memorized even if it was qualified by another, or
| required for safety.
| ajkjk wrote:
| I've never understood this use of the phrase 'senior
| developer' like it's evidence of being masterful at coding.
| In my experience half the juniors and half the seniors were
| good and the other half were bad. Tenure gets you a bit of
| perspective but it didn't turn bad programmers into good
| ones...
| lukas099 wrote:
| It probably goes against everything they teach in design
| school, but I find it charming.
| pantulis wrote:
| And why wouldn't they? As wikipedia states, SNL's mission
| includes "roughly 70 areas of activity, including nuclear
| deterrence, arms control, nonproliferation, hazardous waste
| disposal, and climate change."
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Because such details are usually classified.
| mxfh wrote:
| Why someone is calling a chart/diagram a logo is the bigger
| mystery here. Mockups of things exist.
| ibeff wrote:
| It's not a diagram or mock-up, it's a direct representation of
| the real thing for computer simulations, similar to CAD. The
| dimensions and shape of the components are accurate. And the
| author is calling it a logo because the picture is used to
| represent and advertise the software.
| mxfh wrote:
| It's a product diagram on a presentation slide. Hopefully
| meant to be read on handouts or proceedings.
|
| A logo is the Sierra stylized text in the lower center.
|
| And the two others in the slide's footer.
|
| That Sandia might use, what was obviously intended as a
| diagram as a logo is a whole other thing but doesn't make it
| one.
|
| As long as all representation of that thing are that big and
| readable one can assume they were not used as logos.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| The author of the post claims that the warhead-like design
| "is literally the logo for this particular software
| framework." I can't verify this claim, but other Sandia
| frameworks (e.g. Sierra) use similar, equally overdesigned
| logos, so it's plausible.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41464358>
| ggm wrote:
| The entire half round with an inner core is surely half an
| explosively compressed primary. And, it's not a "logo" it's an
| infographic.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41464358>
| sandos wrote:
| Most likely is that it was deemed simplified enough not be an
| issue?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The article addresses this by giving past examples of what
| "simplified enough" usually means. They're much simpler.
| kingkongjaffa wrote:
| Basically 0 CAD models you see with color coding and a mesh are
| actually accurate.
|
| In order to mesh the geometry for finite element analysis, the
| geometry virtually always needs to be defeatured.
|
| So the cross sectional CAD model here is a nice curiosity but
| basically useless for any reverse engineering purposes which is
| the key reason this stuff is kept secret.
| weinzierl wrote:
| In Germany we say "The DIN knows non color". DIN is our
| standardization organization and informally also how their
| documents are called.
|
| I did finite element model preparation for a living many year
| ago and it did not only involve heavy defeaturing but
| interestingly also remeshing with quads.
|
| Renderers love triangles, FE solvers love boring quads.
| kingkongjaffa wrote:
| yeah there are several adaptive meshing techniques that use a
| mixture nowadays, imagine a bar with a hole bored through it,
| you might use quad meshes for the majority of the bar and
| then switch to tetrahedral meshes close to the bore hole to
| better model the curved geometry of the hole, and increase
| the node density in high stress concentration regions for a
| more accurate simulation.
| cherryteastain wrote:
| Most 3D meshes will have a combination of hexahedral and
| tetrahedral elements anyway so the surface will be a
| combination of trangular and quadrilateral elements. Accuracy
| and convergence wise, it doesn't matter as much as polynomial
| order/time step size/element size.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Renderers love triangles, FE solvers love boring quads.
|
| Btw even in Blender (which is pure visual rendering) people
| prefer quads. The common wisdom is that you should keep your
| topology quads with nice rectangle-ish aspect ratios if you
| can at all. It is not that triangles don't work, but they
| have a tendency to do visually unpleasant silly things when
| animated or sculpted or subdivided.
| USiBqidmOOkAqRb wrote:
| The "quads only" rationalizations come off as quite cargo-
| culty.
|
| Sure, edge rings won't have dead ends, and that's useful
| when adding edge loops to increase detail, but doesn't
| necessarily mean the topology is of high quality. Using
| only quads some cursed helix type topology can be
| constructed.
|
| First thing subdivision will do on non-quads is ortho(1)
| operator, so a nice averaged vertex in the middle will be
| added. High side count cylinders will have weird saddles
| around caps, but that's due to subdivision being wrong tool
| for the task.
|
| Quads can be abused to look bad too. If a mesh looks bad,
| it's a bad mesh. If animated mesh looks bad, it's bad
| rigging and skinning. Knowing "this one industry secret"
| won't fix those.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_polyhedron_notation
| #Ori...
| albrewer wrote:
| > FE solvers love boring quads
|
| That's because, in a mathematical sense, triangular and
| tetrahedral meshes aren't able to be as accurate as quickly.
| thrwooshfem wrote:
| Sandia FEM is using the different blocks (colors) to represent
| different materials. This is pretty common in a multi physics
| finite element program.
|
| This story is probably nothing interesting because this went
| through all the public use approvals needed for public
| presentations and being available on osti.gov.
|
| It is probably just a toy test problem used on a capabilities
| logo for Sierra. Maybe it comes from some sort of integration
| test that is easier to run than the actual problem.
| buran77 wrote:
| I see a few commenters think the big chart/diagram in the first
| picture is the one being discussed. It is not, it's the rightmost
| slice ("Salinas") of that infographic which shows something like
| a warhead. It's shown blown up (pun intended) in the second
| picture of the article.
| closewith wrote:
| For everyone complaining that it's an infographic, not a logo,
| that's addressed in the article:
|
| > It's literally the logo they use for this particular software
| package.
|
| Which seems to refer to the image of the re-entry vehicle in
| isolation from the infographic where the author originally found
| it.
| lupire wrote:
| I don't see that claim supported in the article.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| This thing could be a test object that doesn't work as an actual
| nuclear warhead but is similar enough to validate the discussed
| software: real-world crash tests match software simulations, and
| being accurate at simulating the dummy is a guarantee of being
| accurate at simulating classified weapon designs.
| eesmith wrote:
| Except as the author commented:
|
| > Someone reminded me of something I had seen years ago: the
| British nuclear program at Aldermaston, when it has published
| on its own computer modeling in the past, used a sort of "bomb
| mockup" that looks far more deliberately "fake" than this
| Sandia one. I offer this up as what I would think is a more
| "safe" approach than something that looks, even superficially,
| like a "real" secondary design:
|
| > This is called the MACE (Modal Analysis Correlation Exercise)
| assembly, and was created by the UK Atomic Weapons Research
| Establishment in the 1990s to serve as a sort of a Utah Teapot
| of weapons structural modeling: a benign shape that could be
| used to test aspects of the code that would nonetheless tell
| you if the code would work for real weapons assemblies.
| lupusreal wrote:
| The author doesn't convincingly rule out the possibility that
| this is what it is. The other possible answers seem less
| plausible than it being a fake shape for software testing
| that happens to look fancier than past test shapes.
| eesmith wrote:
| The author wasn't trying to be convincing. "I'm just
| surprised the DOE would release any image that gave really
| any implied graphical structure of a thermonuclear
| secondary, even if it is clearly schematic and meant to be
| only somewhat representative. It's more than they usually
| allow!"
|
| My reply was to point out that the author discussed issues
| related to HelloNurse's suggestion.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| The tone of this kind of article has to be nice and
| diplomatic, and mistakes need to remain hypothetical and
| attributed to the largest possible organizational unit
| (DARPA having surprising policies, not the mechanical
| finite element simulation software team spreading data
| they consider harmless).
|
| The second object that appears near the end of the
| article looks like a simplified version of the first with
| more basic shapes, as if someone was asked by someone
| else to draw a less suggestive replacement of the
| original (possibly with the sole purpose of appearing in
| slides); in a natural design process the cruder design
| would have appeared first.
| cm2187 wrote:
| No this is an espresso machine!
| aeonik wrote:
| A snow cone maker!
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| That radiation case couldn't focus water through coffee beans
| let alone X-rays onto a pusher.
| mindcrime wrote:
| > No this is an espresso machine!
|
| I don't know... hit it with an HTCPCP request and see if you
| get back 418 - I'm a Teapot, or not.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| What is it that the author thinks is particularly unusual about
| this image? Pretty much every schematic of a Teller-Ulam type
| weapon -- a schematic which you will find in every introductory
| Nuclear Physics textbook -- shows a large cylinder with a
| spherical fission device at the top and a cylindrical fusion
| device at the bottom, plus some FOGBANK-type material of
| unconfirmed purpose. This image looks exactly like those
| schematics except that someone has imagined some little channels
| which look like they're intended to move energy from the primary
| to the secondary. Without detailed simulation and testing, a
| prospective weapons designer has no way of knowing whether those
| channels are representative of a real weapon, or just a
| superficially plausible hallucination.
|
| Overall this looks like someone asked a physics undergraduate to
| spend an hour imagining roughly how the well-known schematic
| might be fitted inside a real warhead case. It probably is
| exactly that. I can't imagine that showing it to the North
| Koreans advanced their nuclear programme by any more than fifteen
| minutes.
| defrost wrote:
| > What is it that the author thinks is particularly unusual
| about this image?
|
| In two decades of crawling through _most_ of the declassified
| public nuclear material from the US nuclear weapons program,
| some exposure to classified material, and numerous hours of
| interviews with working and retired nuclear scientists he
| believes it 's the single most detailed schematic of an actual
| specific type of warhead he's seen so far.
|
| https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/about-me/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Wellerstein
|
| As he's blogging about this it's almost certain he has had real
| current working nuclear weapons experts from his contact list
| read the advances and not disagree.
|
| Correct or not, it's not a casual random thought from someone
| with no exposure to such diagrams.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| OK, but my question remains: _what_ is it that the author
| thinks is particularly unusual about this image?
|
| I'm not a nuclear scientist, but I did study nuclear physics
| to master's level. To my eye, there's nothing at all
| interesting about this image. It looks like informed
| speculation. Without any confirmation that this is a real
| weapons design (and I see no reason at all to believe it is)
| then it tells us absolutely nothing which hasn't been in the
| public domains for decades.
|
| _> As he 's blogging about this it's almost certain he has
| had real current working nuclear weapons experts from his
| contact list read the advances and not disagree._
|
| That seems extremely unlikely to me. People who have held the
| appropriate clearance to verify whether this is or is not
| representative of a real weapon, do not tend to casually
| liaise with someone who has spent their career attempting to
| prise open that veil of secrecy. In fact, their own careers
| and liberty depend on _not_ making such personal connections.
| nmadden wrote:
| The article goes into a lot of detail about why the author
| thinks its unusual.
| defrost wrote:
| As nmadden noted there's a lot of detail in the article .
|
| > That seems extremely unlikely to me.
|
| None the less his nuclearsecrecy blog has been about for
| many many years and he's had a great deal of contact with
| people who have walked up to the line. It's not that
| uncommon for historians to have neither confirm nor deny
| but we can understand various silences relations with
| experts - even the OG Manhatten Project had embedded
| historians and archivists who toed the line on handling and
| preserving materials and held long meetings on what to
| release | not release and when.
|
| There are even a few DoE employed HN users here who know
| their areas of expertise and comment right up to the point
| where they shut up (an often shut down | change accounts) -
| they don't say what they shouldn't but they have chatted
| until they don't anymore .. which is interesting in itself.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| There's a lot of detail about why the author thinks it is
| notable that Sandia released this image. There's very
| little about what it is in this image itself that the
| author finds interesting, save for some comment about a
| dip which could be intended to focus neutron flux from
| the primary to the secondary. I feel that's the kind of
| thing an appropriate undergraduate would imagine in a
| short amount of time.
| rsfern wrote:
| I think you're just looking for the surprise factor in
| the wrong place. The notability is all about Sandia's
| public release criteria, which are pretty much orthogonal
| to whether or not the information is publicly known. I
| don't think the author finds any particular detail
| interesting or new in and of itself, they even compare to
| other public illustrations that have the kind of detail
| you are talking about.
| renhanxue wrote:
| The author is a historian whose main published work is
| the book _Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy
| in the United States_. He _isn 't_ very interested in the
| information itself; he's interested in where it comes
| from and in the process that led to its release. It's
| notable not because it contains interesting information,
| it's notable because it seems like it might represent a
| radical break with established patterns in US government
| procedures with regards to restricted data (which is a
| special and very weird kind of classification that only
| applies to nuclear secrets).
|
| In other words: the author is interested in the
| institutions and policies that manage nuclear secrets,
| not so much in the secrets themselves.
|
| In a different post[0] regarding a fumbled redaction that
| released similar information about what a warhead looks
| like, he had this to say:
|
| > _It's also just not clear that these kinds of
| [declassification] mistakes "matter," in the sense of
| actually increasing the danger in the world, or to the
| United States. I've never come across a case where some
| kind of slip-up like this actually helped an aspiring
| nuclear weapons state, or helped our already-advanced
| adversaries. That's just not how it works: there's a lot
| more work that has to be done to make a working nuke than
| you can get out of a slip-up like this, and when it comes
| to getting secret information, the Russians and Chinese
| have already shown that even the "best" systems can be
| penetrated by various kinds of espionage. It's not that
| secrets aren't important -- they can be -- but they
| aren't usually what makes the real-world differences, in
| the end. And these kinds of slip-ups are, perhaps
| fortunately, not releasing "secrets" that seem to matter
| that much._
|
| > _If anything, that's the real critique of it: not that
| these mistakes happen. Mistakes will always happen in any
| sufficiently large system like this. It's that there
| isn't any evidence these mistakes have caused real harm.
| And if that's the case... what's the point of all of this
| secrecy, then?_
|
| > _The most likely danger from this kind of screw up is
| not that enemy powers will learn new ways to make
| H-bombs. Rather, it's that Congressmen looking to score
| political points can point to this sort of thing as an
| evidence of lax security. The consequences of such
| accusations can be much more damaging and long-lasting,
| creating a conservatism towards secrecy that restricts
| access to knowledge that might actually be important or
| useful to know._
|
| [0]: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2021/05/17/how-not-
| to-redact...
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| > There are even a few DoE employed HN users here who
| know their areas of expertise and comment right up to the
| point where they shut up (an often shut down | change
| accounts)
|
| It seems like one could pretty easily build a database
| and track online commenters that are government
| affiliated. I've seen several on reddit from various
| three letter agencies (see r/TSA, r/1811,
| r/securityclearance, r/cbpoapplicant/). They usually try
| to self-limit what they share, but inevitably say things
| that aren't approved to be public.
|
| If you gathered a database of posts across these forums,
| it would be easier to reconstruct info across different
| sources. Regularly scraping the site and flagging
| whatever gets deleted by the mods to read is also a good
| strategy, as they do often remove posts for being too
| sensitive.
|
| You could also identify patterns of content they engaged
| with that resulted in information disclosure. For
| example, there used to be a CBP officer on Reddit that
| had offered on at least one occasion to look up someone's
| PASSID in their internal systems because their GE
| application had gotten stuck in processing. Someone could
| make a similar post to solicit them to "help" them with a
| similar situation as a means of info gathering.
|
| As you said, what they don't share is often informative
| as well. For example, someone asked that account what it
| meant when the officer said they "had three BTPs" and
| sent them to secondary; his response was that it was too
| sensitive to disclose. I can't find the term in any
| public docs, so the existence of this procedure itself is
| info that could be valuable to a threat actor. They could
| also just try posting about the same thing until someone
| different reveals slightly more info.
|
| These internal acronyms can also be used as a shibboleth
| when posting to subconsciously make people more
| comfortable sharing info in response. If the term is
| internal, and you ask a question to a "fellow employee"
| online, they may disclose things that they think you
| already know. You can find a lot of info about the
| systems they use in public PIA/SORN notices. Unclassified
| codenames can also be used as a Google search tactic to
| uncover content posted by insiders and filtering out news
| articles and other public results.
|
| For example, this Quizlet user is easily searchable given
| the plethora of military acronyms, and contains
| information about the location of wiring inside a naval
| facility and the structure of classified satellite
| networks: https://quizlet.com/578117055/tcf-specific-
| flash-cards/ , https://quizlet.com/414907821/eiws-study-
| guide-here-it-is-bo...,
| https://quizlet.com/463959814/scif-flash-cards/.
|
| Now Google some of those terms and find more Quizlets:
| https://quizlet.com/593984066/osi-308-odin-sphere-
| enclaves-f..., https://quizlet.com/595864454/transport-
| layers-flash-cards/.
|
| This one has info about hidden security features on a
| USAF ID badge authorizing access to parked aircraft (logo
| mistakes and base name spelled with 1 for L):
| https://quizlet.com/763351519/response-force-member-
| knowledg....
|
| Even detailed descriptions of agency procedures by the
| public is valuable, if summarized and put into a
| database. Inevitably, things are overheard or observed
| each time one interacts with security forces. Everything
| from their facial expression, how much they are typing,
| etc. can reveal how you are perceived. On Chinese social
| media, for example, there is a lot of discussion of US
| immigration procedures and which ports/offices are
| perceived as most strict. One could run statistics based
| on others posts about visa and entry denials to identify
| weaknesses and reconstruct non-public procedures.
|
| For example, this thread discusses a TSA procedure I saw
| myself: https://old.reddit.com/r/tsa/comments/14l1ca1/wha
| t_is_the_bo.... One respondent says it is sensitive, and
| another tries to deflect the question by saying it is to
| "weight down light things" while also admitting it
| "distinguishes the bag for the X-ray operator."
|
| It's pretty obvious that the "paper weight" (the code
| name which someone helpfully shared) contains the image
| of a prohibited item (or a known pattern) to test that
| the X-ray operator is paying attention; the tray was sent
| to secondary but not actually searched beyond removing
| the object.
|
| This comment (https://www.reddit.com/r/tsa/comments/1clxf
| n8/comment/l2wox2...) indirectly confirms that TSA does
| collaborate with law enforcement to help forfeit cash
| which was the subject of a recent lawsuit by the
| Institute for Justice, by saying "there was no need to
| notify anyone because they traveling domestically,"
| implying that they do notify LE if international.
| qb1 wrote:
| Does the TSA officially work with local law enforcement?
| I am not sure about their policy, but many TSA staff want
| local law enforcement jobs. As such, TSA staff will do
| whatever they preceive as favor to local law enforcement
| to gain "preceived" advantage from local law enforcement
| in future hiring "you scratch my back, I will get yours"
| type situation and mentality. Problematically, the favor
| depends on the customs and courtesies of the location.
| Overall, this leads to what a previous poster described
| as a "win" for point counting congresspeople while
| leaving society less safe and vulnerable to self interest
| of a TSA staffer for personal gain.
| scubbo wrote:
| > walked up to the line
|
| I'm not familiar with that idiom, and searching for it
| only gives me "Walk the line" - what does it mean?
| Merad wrote:
| To "cross the line" means that you went too far, in this
| context meaning that someone revealed secrets or
| otherwise talked about things that they shouldn't reveal.
| So to walk up to the line means that the person was
| willing to talk about the topic or share their knowledge,
| but did so without "crossing the line."
| MereInterest wrote:
| I read it as being related to the "line in the sand"
| idiom. There exists some set of rules, the "line".
| Exactly what is and isn't allowed under those rules is a
| bit arbitrary, like the exact location where you would
| draw a line in the sand with your finger. What matters is
| that the line has been drawn, and everybody knows that
| the line may not be crossed.
|
| Under that metaphor, a person may stay very far from the
| line, to avoid accidentally stepping over it, or they may
| walk right up to the line. Metaphorically, the former
| would be a person who refuses to answer any questions
| about nuclear secrets, regardless of whether the question
| can be legally answered. The latter would be a person who
| knows exactly what can be legally answered, and will give
| as full of an answer as is allowed. They know where the
| line in the sand is, and have walked up to the line.
| scubbo wrote:
| That's helpful, thank you!
| fragmede wrote:
| ChatGPT's really good for that kind of a thing, but in
| this case it's a saying popularized by a Johnny Cash song
| about staying loyal and committed to his wife while being
| on the road and facing temptation.
| scubbo wrote:
| Ironic that you mention ChatGPT in the same comment as
| answering a question about a phrase that I was explicitly
| _not_ asking about.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| It means going to the limit of what is allowed, the line
| represents some limit/law/threshold that cannot be
| crossed. In this case the veil of secrecy that separates
| what is/is not public about nuclear weapons.
|
| Normally you would stay well away from said "line".
| Occasionally though someone may "walk" right up to the
| "line" but no further.
|
| You can take it to mean that someone knows something
| secret but is carefully only talking about what isn't
| secret. The risk is that they might inadvertently reveal
| some information of what is beyond the line.
| scubbo wrote:
| That makes sense, thank you!
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| It's related to the term crossed the line, which I
| believe originated with Cesar crossing the rubicon.
| Crossing the line means breaking some rule or taboo in a
| way that has significant or permanent consequences.
| Walking up to the line is getting close without crossing.
| jonstewart wrote:
| Read the article?
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| I'm sorry but all I can think of reading your comment is
| "but why male models?".
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > OK, but my question remains: what is it that the author
| thinks is particularly unusual about this image?
|
| This is explained in the blog post: Publications generally
| avoid going anywhere near that level of detail, _even if
| not representing actual /accurate data_ (to avoid the
| appearance of leaking anything sensitive even if it
| actually isn't - as the post explains).
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Aka most of Congress doesn't have a background in nuclear
| physics but does want airtime. And everyone reacts when
| someone yells "Nuclear secrets!"
| next_xibalba wrote:
| > what is it that the author thinks is particularly unusual
| about this image?
|
| The level of detail, particularly the articulation of
| components/subsystems (primary, secondary, radiation case,
| interstage medium, tamper, fusion fuel, and a "sparkplug").
| All according to the article. Per author, DoE has very
| strict guidelines on the depiction of nukes, and this image
| appears to violate those guidelines. The official
| depictions are often just simple shapes, like "two circles
| in a box," that do not convey any meaningful information
| about weapon design.
|
| I am speculating here, but it seems like DoE must believe
| that anything beyond simple shapes may provide bad actors
| (i.e. anyone but US Govt and allies) clues as to how to
| build a thermo-nuke.
| forgot-im-old wrote:
| The author should look into https://www.castelion.com/ a
| company started by SpaceX employees and with deep
| connections to Elon's Starlink and Strategic Defense
| Initiative.
|
| They have some interesting images.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| Link? I can't find any images that articulate a nuclear
| warhead like the one in OP's link.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Conclusion: that's a diagram of the obvious approach to
| building a thermonuclear device, which happens to be
| completely wrong for classified reasons, and if you
| pursue this design you're going to waste a decade before
| you figure out why.
| Titan2189 wrote:
| I would ask you to elaborate, but I guess that'd be
| pointless
| kstrauser wrote:
| I don't work in or around this field and never have. You
| have as much knowledge about it as I do. That was just my
| interpretation of the situation, based on watching too
| many movies.
| tsss wrote:
| More likely is that the obvious approach is also totally
| the right approach and anyone with the relevant education
| could easily come up with it themselves, but the US
| government still censors it out of security theatre.
| pests wrote:
| The blog goes into detail about how releasing any wrong
| information or misinformation about a secret, still
| defines the bounds and brackets the real information, and
| allows eliminating possible options (as no agency would
| reveal the truth.)
|
| If that was the case, an actor could go "this is
| obviously not the way to build this, lets move on" so in
| a way, you have sped up the development.
|
| Just like saying, "We have 100,000 nukes" (a lie),
| everyone knows its a lie, which means we DO NOT have
| 100,000 nukes, as we wouldn't reveal the truth.
|
| Enough of these little "misinformations" get released,
| the closer to the truth someone can get.
| echelon wrote:
| > which happens to be completely wrong
|
| Or simply suboptimal.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Or, there are 5 people doing this type of research across
| the world, 3 of them barely taking calls on iOS and the
| rest just finally managed to migrate from IRIX to Cygwin
| last year, and they are to take all necessary actions for
| operational security and talent acquisition.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| _> I am speculating here, but it seems like DoE must
| believe that anything beyond simple shapes may provide
| bad actors (i.e. anyone but US Govt and allies) clues as
| to how to build a thermo-nuke._
|
| And with good reason:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science
|
| It's a bit like the Egg of Columbus. Doing it the first
| time needs a team of visionary geniuses, but once the
| trick is known to work then even us pedestrians could
| manage it given enough time and resources.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| the problem is usually getting the fissile material.
|
| as far as non-state actors go though, other types of WMD
| are probably more attainable. Aum Shinrikyo is probably
| the most infamous example where a cult manufactured
| multiple chemical weapons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| Aum_Shinrikyo#Tokyo_subway_sar...
| Earw0rm wrote:
| Yes and no. For terrorism purposes, the primary (more or
| less the same as a "Hiroshima"-level "A"-bomb) would
| surely more than suffice.
|
| I'm sort of struggling to think why anyone other than a
| nation state (looking to prove itself worthy of a seat at
| various tables) would want to possess more bang than
| that.
|
| Granted there are a few nations at or close to A-bomb
| tech whom we would definitely not want having its bigger
| brother. Iran and NK especially.
| 1attice wrote:
| "640 kilotons ought to be enough for anyone"
| xattt wrote:
| And now if you want to run a nuclear program, the
| _minimum_ amount is at least 16 gigatons.
| cthalupa wrote:
| I feel like the Nth Country Experiment kind of
| invalidates the idea that it makes sense to worry so much
| about hiding all of this, though? That 3 fresh physics
| PhDs were able to design a working bomb in as many years
| without having subject matter expertise to me shows that
| shows that the sort of adversary that has the resources
| to build such a project will have access to the resources
| to design it, too.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| The unusual thing, as stated repeatedly throughout the article,
| is that this is published by people who are under one of the
| strictest censorship systems in the world, a system that
| explicitly exist to prevent the publication exactly this sort
| of thing.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| Yes. And as you'll know, since we both read the article, the
| author mentions what I believe to be the correct conclusion:
|
| _> The "obvious" answer, if my above assertions are true, is
| that it must not actually represent a thermonuclear
| secondary. [...] It could be some kind of pre-approved
| "unclassified shape" which is used for diagnostics and model
| verification, for example. There are other examples of this
| kind of thing that the labs have used over time. That is
| entirely a possibility._
|
| However, he then goes on to immediately reject this "obvious"
| answer, because he thinks the well-known schematics of
| fission-fusion bombs give the appearance of a classified
| shape, and because he feels it is "provocative" for a
| government weapons lab to show a mock up of a well-known
| schematic in one of their publications. Those positions seem
| very weak to me.
| proto-n wrote:
| He later finds basically the same object with the caption
| "The multiple components of a nuclear weapon body are
| highlighted in this intentionally simplified mesh" from
| another publication of Sandia, making that theory kind of
| unlikely
| krisoft wrote:
| I don't understand that conclusion. That sentence, in my
| mind, makes that conclusion more likely. They say it is
| an intentionally simplified mesh. Which to me means it is
| not the real deal. So why does this sentence makes you
| think the theory is unlikely? (Or what is the specific
| part of the theory you think it makes it unlikely?)
| Genuinely curious.
| proto-n wrote:
| I took the quote [1] to basically mean "we might think
| this is a nuclear warhead, but in fact it is not, rather
| it is some kind of random test object used to demonstrate
| the software". Obscure part of a washing mashine, random
| geometric shape, etc.
|
| [1] "The "obvious" answer, if my above assertions are
| true, is that it must not actually represent a
| thermonuclear secondary. [...] It could be some kind of
| pre-approved "unclassified shape" which is used for
| diagnostics and model verification, for example."
| krisoft wrote:
| > Obscure part of a washing mashine, random geometric
| shape, etc.
|
| Oh i see what you mean. I took the theory to be that it
| is looking like a nuclear warhead but it doesn't have the
| right dimensions, or even the right arrangement of the
| components. Kind of like the difference between the real
| blueprints of a submarine (very much classified) or the
| drawing evoking the same feel but drawn by someone who
| has never seen the inside of a submarine nor does really
| know any details (not classified).
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| The key issue making the publication remarkable is that
| the shown geometry is _quite plausible_ as an internal
| structure of a two stage weapon, but is being disclosed
| through a censorship regime that typically thinks the
| precise _length_ of the enclosing cone is classified.
|
| So a even a diagram that is abstracted and slightly
| fudged would be a huge departure from what the censors
| usually think is ok, which is weird!
| mhh__ wrote:
| Photos of even a hint of the inside are rare enough that he has
| another article show (in effect) a hint of an imprint from an
| old photocopying mistake.
|
| I also doubt it's useful, but Ted Taylor could supposedly walk
| around a room full of nukes and guess based on the shape of the
| casing what was unique about a design
| taneliv wrote:
| Even so, it would be very unusual if I understand the author
| correctly:
|
| > ... at least historically, the Atomic Energy Commission and
| its successor organizations have frowned on disinformation and
| misinformation for other very practical reasons. If you release
| a lie, you run the risk of someone noticing it is a lie, which
| can draw more attention to the reality. And even
| misinformation/inaccuracy can put "brackets" around the
| possibilities of truth. The goal of these organizations is to
| leave a total blank in the areas that they don't want people to
| know about, and misinformation/disinformation/inaccuracy is
| something other than a total blank.
|
| In other words, the author expected to see a previously
| familiar schematic or nothing. This is clearly not nothing, and
| also not a familiar schematic, hence the surprise.
| matthewmcg wrote:
| He says it a few paragraphs in: "To give a sense of how strange
| this is, here is the only "officially sanctioned" way to
| represent a multistage thermonuclear weapon, according to US
| Department of Energy guidance since the 1990s:
|
| Figure 13.9, "Unclassified Illustration of a Staged Weapon
| (Source: TCG-NAS-2, March 1997)," from the Nuclear Matters
| Handbook 2020 (Revised), published by Deputy Assistant
| Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters.
|
| Two circles in a box, maybe inside of a reentry vehicle. That's
| it. Nothing that gives any actual sense of size, location,
| materials, physicality."
| gnfargbl wrote:
| If the story here is that the US DoE is now implicitly
| confirming common public-domain knowledge that can be found
| immediately on Wikipedia then sure, that's a story of minor
| interest. That story is nothing like the title of the blog,
| though!
| lazide wrote:
| _speculation_ can be found on Wikipedia, perhaps accurate
| speculation, perhaps not.
|
| DoE contractors leaking details that _confirm_ that
| speculation would indeed be a big deal, and might well save
| adversaries some real time and mistakes they'd otherwise
| make.
| fragmede wrote:
| Or it's a psyop designed to make adversaries waste their
| time on a design that couldn't work.
| lazide wrote:
| Spooks man, goddamn spooks!
| why_only_15 wrote:
| In the post he mentions why he thinks this is unlikely
| and is not a thing the US has done previously.
| fragmede wrote:
| that's exactly what a CIA plant trying to get adversaries
| to buy into this drawing as being feasible to waste their
| time would say
| bathtub365 wrote:
| One thing to keep in mind is that the author's interest
| lies in the nature of nuclear secrecy, and not necessarily
| the secrets themselves. It's a subtle distinction but I
| think explains why the author finds the fact that this type
| of diagram was officially released by a national lab
| interesting, even if the information has previously made
| its way to the public domain in other unofficial ways.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Unless he is actually employed in the classification process
| inside these agencies, he does not know everything that is
| officially sanctioned. It's all guesswork, from the outside.
| why_only_15 wrote:
| To some degree this is true, but he's also FOIA'd documents
| that describe what's officially sanctioned.
| bryant wrote:
| Find the paragraph that says "so this is awfully strange" and
| start there. It's a detailed analysis of the graphic in
| question, and what's "unusual" about it is that this graphic,
| with the detail identified by the author, has been published at
| all.
|
| The next paragraph details what the author would have expected
| to be published by comparison.
|
| And then figure 13.9 is what the DoD expects to see published
| at all.
| thadt wrote:
| Not that the image itself is particularly useful or descriptive
| (it's not), but because the review office is rather quite
| conservative when deciding what to release, and anything
| suggestive of a real device is usually right out. In this case,
| the initial approval was probably an anomaly. I suspect that
| the reviewers looked at it that day and thought "eh, this is so
| far from reality that it's just not a big deal", and let it go.
| Any other day or set of reviewers and it probably would have
| been kicked back. It would be interesting to know the story
| around that approval, and what the fallout was, if any.
|
| Any further use isn't very surprising. Once it is approved and
| in the wild, re-using it is not really a problem (especially if
| being run through the same office for approval again).
| tivert wrote:
| > What is it that the author thinks is particularly unusual
| about this image?
|
| Read the article and look at the "officially sanctioned"
| diagram. This looks like the tl;dr of what he things about
| this:
|
| > Anyway, I'm just surprised the DOE would release any image
| that gave really any implied graphical structure of a
| thermonuclear secondary, even if it is clearly schematic and
| meant to be only somewhat representative. It's more than they
| usually allow!
|
| This linked post of his about an earlier redaction mistake also
| makes it clear (https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2021/05/17/how-
| not-to-redact...):
|
| > ...but we're given a rare glimpse inside of modern
| thermonuclear warheads. Now, there isn't a whole lot of
| information that one can make out from these images. The main
| bit of "data" are the roughly "peanut-shaped" warheads, which
| goes along with what has been discussed in the open literature
| for decades about how these sorts of highly-efficient warheads
| are designed. But the Department of Energy doesn't like to
| confirm such accounts, and certainly has never before let us
| glimpse anything quite as provocative about these warheads. The
| traditional bomb silhouettes for these warheads are just the
| dunce-cap re-entry vehicles, not the warheads inside of them.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Low radiation steel is less needed because new steel is lower
| radiation. The atmospheric radiation level has dropped and
| steel making uses oxygen instead of air.
|
| Presumably there are uses that need old steel but they are
| probably smaller amounts.
| scottlamb wrote:
| > Low radiation steel is less needed because new steel is
| lower radiation. The atmospheric radiation level has dropped
| and steel making uses oxygen instead of air.
|
| > Presumably there are uses that need old steel but they are
| probably smaller amounts.
|
| This comment seems out of place? It would have made sense as
| a reply to a different comment thread in a different article
| a couple weeks ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41323780 but I don't get
| how/why it ended up here. No one was talking about steel at
| all, as far as I can see?
|
| edit: oh, there's another article today where folks are
| talking about low-background steel. I assume this comment was
| just supposed to go there.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41436009
| ianburrell wrote:
| I meant the other post about wrecks.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The article is not about warhead technology, it is actually
| about the internal culture of how the military and nuclear-
| adjacent agencies classify and communicate about nuclear
| technology.
|
| But here's the thing: that internal culture is just as opaque
| to outsiders as the technology itself! No outsider actually
| knows how the internal folks think, feel, and decide about
| little graphics or schematics or whatever. They've just
| inferred some heuristics from incomplete data.
|
| And this is basically just saying "this little graphic seems to
| violate my heuristics." Which makes for interesting reading,
| but there is no real actual objectively verifiable content in
| this article.
|
| Betteridge's Law tells us the answer to the headline question
| is always "no." And in this case I think common sense agrees:
| Sandia Lab probably did not give the entire thermonuclear
| ballgame away with a logo graphic.
| evo wrote:
| I feel like the most novel aspect of this image is an
| implication of the shape of the reflective casing at the far
| rear of the device--it seems to suggest a parabolic "shaped
| charge" sort of focusing element that likely helps to boost the
| neutron flux and initiate the "spark plug" from the rear at the
| same time as from the front.
| dboreham wrote:
| Hmm. I've read every book on the subject and I have a feeling
| I've heard this arrangement already somewhere (shape of the
| mirrors used to direct the radiation pressure, not neutron
| flux).
| mannyv wrote:
| The best guess about fogbank is that it's plutonium suspended
| in aerogel.
| freestyle24147 wrote:
| Please provide even one link to an image or book or anything
| that proves what you're saying is true. The fact that this is
| the top comment is troubling, since your question is answered
| throughout the article. The thing you're claiming (basically
| that imagery like this can be found all over the place) is so
| easy to prove, one wonders why you haven't done it here or in
| any of your other comments.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| My question isn't answered in the article, as I repeatedly
| explain elsewhere in this thread.
|
| As you only require one reference, I will present K.S. Krane,
| Introductory Nuclear Physics, section 14.5 "Thermonuclear
| Weapons." The relevant schematic is numbered 14.19. I chose
| this because it's a textbook that I remember using myself;
| I'm not sure what is usually used these days.
| rpdillon wrote:
| I think the interesting thing about this release was mostly
| that it was released, not necessarily that the information
| is not obtainable elsewhere.
|
| But I dug up the diagram you mentioned just because I was
| curious.
|
| https://archive.org/details/introductory-nuclear-
| physics/pag...
|
| Seems pretty different from the image in the linked post.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| Yes, that's the schematic. To me the two look essentially
| identical save for topology and some imagined details.
|
| I don't believe either of them are actually
| representative of a function warhead; see for instance
| https://images.app.goo.gl/aEBGKmAb8NsoAWe87, which
| suggests that in a real design the primary and secondary
| are inverted compared to the image shown in the blog
| post.
| ein0p wrote:
| Yeah, the people you'd want to hide this from already know all
| this, and in some cases have superior designs.
| beezle wrote:
| I remember when Jeff Lewis had a woody over FOGBANK. Wonder
| what they eventually replaced it with? Assume named CLOUDBANK
| or SNOWBANK ;)
| joegibbs wrote:
| Say if an adversary with a small nuclear program that hasn't yet
| achieved a weapon got a hold of this, what kind of impact would
| that make?
| krisoft wrote:
| They would be in possession of an image. It is hard to
| understand what the author is hand-wringing about. It is not
| that nobody knows how these weapons are supposed to work. The
| real barrier is that to obtain the materials necessary you need
| a big-ish industrial base and if you do that that leaves
| signatures the relevant agencies can detect.
|
| It is not even clear if when he speaks about "safe" is he
| talking about being safe from nuclear proliferation, or safe
| from clueless bureaucrats causing you legal trouble.
| avar wrote:
| The "large industrial base" is required primarily to highly
| enrich uranium (or plutonium).
|
| A modern fusion bomb requires much less of that than the
| initial fission bombs.
|
| So I don't know how much a state actor could infer from an
| image like that, if we assume it's a schematic of an actual
| bomb.
|
| But it's just not true that someone in possession of detailed
| plans for how to construct a bomb isn't put into a much
| better position. They'll need a much smaller amount of
| fissionable material than they otherwise would with a cruder
| design.
| implements wrote:
| > It is hard to understand what the author is hand-wringing
| about.
|
| The issue seems to be "Organisations party to classified
| information have to keep it secret regardless of whether it's
| in the public domain".
|
| As an academic historian the author is intrigued by the
| diagram - was it a mistake or was it authorised as a
| declassified representation? Either way, the consequences
| would be of interest.
|
| > It is not that nobody knows how these weapons are supposed
| to work.
|
| Optimally small, lightweight, robust, safe, reliable - all
| sorts of engineering short-cuts or novel techniques ... you
| don't want to give way accidental insights about the "hows"
| an enemy hasn't thought of.
| renhanxue wrote:
| The author is a historian who has published a book that is
| specifically about the history of nuclear secrecy in the
| United States. Not about the history of nuclear tech or
| nuclear weapons, about the history of _restricted data_ , the
| special classification grade for the information. How the
| classification works and what is considered safe to release
| and what isn't is in itself one of his main research
| interests.
|
| My impression from his book is that his position on nuclear
| secrecy is that a lot of it is pointless or outright contra-
| productive, but that isn't really the point of the blog post.
| The point of the blog post is that if something has changed
| about what information is considered safe to release, that is
| interesting to him. He is more interested in the humans and
| institutions than in the technology, I'd say.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There is the fission stage and the fusion stage. The fission
| stage in this image is not well represented. It is generally
| known how to make a fission stage similar to the "Fat Man"
| device but the "Fat Man" device is larger than the whole
| warhead with both a fission and fusion stage that fits on a
| Minuteman 3.
|
| The fission stage in that warhead has numerous refinements that
| help miniaturize it, for instance the implosion is probably not
| spherical so it can fit in the pointy end of the warhead. A
| really refined modern weapon is packed with details like that.
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| The secondary isn't well represented either: that radiation
| case isn't focusing any X-Rays and the stairstep in the
| tamper would tear it in two when ablation started. Plus, as
| you note, the primary is impossibly screwed up as well, with
| what looks like a single point of initiation and zero details
| on the boosting. It doesn't just look simplified, it looks
| like every part has been corrupted with a feature that makes
| it impossible to mistake for real while being slightly less
| crude than the "Mastercard" or British designs.
|
| Besides, real engineering doesn't just need a schematics, it
| needs details, and some of the missing ones are notorious
| (FOGBANK) and inherently difficult to figure out with any
| confidence in the absence of weapons tests (or even more
| expensive giant buildings crammed to the gills with lasers).
|
| So yeah, not very useful to an aspiring designer. I
| understand the author's surprise but I suspect they really
| did just become a few notches less crazy about the redundant
| protection on information that has been public for 30 years.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Also the mental models of proliferation are warped by
| secrecy. For instance, Iraqis got caught building Calutrons
| when the official line was to watch out for plutonium
| reprocessing and centrifuges... Despite the fact that _the
| enriched uranium used for the first nuclear weapon used in
| war was produced with a Calutron!_
|
| Anyone responsible who thinks about this stuff, even if
| they don't have a security clearance, will look into the
| question of what the ethics are and what the legal
| consequences of secrecy laws are if you talk about certain
| things you think about. I had dinner with a nuclear
| scientist at a conference, for instance, who told me that
| he hadn't told anyone else about his concern that Np237 was
| the material that terrorists would most want to steal from
| a commercial reprocessing facility (if they knew what we
| knew) and I told him it was no problem because people from
| Los Alamos had published a paper with specifics on that a
| few years earlier.
|
| I will leave it at that.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Probably the guy who produced that part of the graphic was not
| told what a thermonuclear warhead actually looks like, because he
| didn't need to know, so he just whipped up his own idea of it
| from speculative public images. Knowing that the graphic came
| from somebody who didn't actually know anything, the censors
| didn't see the need to worry about it.
| relaxing wrote:
| > Knowing that the graphic came from somebody who didn't
| actually know anything, the censors didn't see the need to
| worry about it.
|
| That's not really true. If you manage to independently come up
| with classified info and release it to the public, you will get
| a visit from an agency.
|
| Overall I think you're correct.
| renhanxue wrote:
| > Knowing that the graphic came from somebody who didn't
| actually know anything, the censors didn't see the need to
| worry about it.
|
| That is not how nuclear secrets work. The US Department of
| Energy holds that restricted data (a special kind of
| classification that only applies to nuclear secrets) is "born
| secret". That means, even if you come up with a concept for a
| nuclear weapon completely independently without ever talking to
| anyone, it is considered classified information that you are
| not allowed to redistribute. This doctrine is highly
| controversial and the one time it has been tried in court the
| verdict was inconclusive, but to this day it is how the DoE
| interprets the Atomic Energy Act of 1954.
|
| In general this is very precarious to attempt to enforce, of
| course. If the DoE sues someone because they published their
| nuclear weapon designs, that'd be seen as a tacit admission
| that the design could potentially work. Nevertheless they
| actually did do this at one point ( _United States v.
| Progressive, Inc._ , 1979).
| hbossy wrote:
| I bet it's an inside joke, like Lenna.jpeg. Some outdated / test
| / dead-end, or otherwise harmless project put there as a wink to
| everyone involved in the industry. Maybe it's something an intern
| ruined on his first day and made entire lab work on for three
| weeks without realizing?
| taneq wrote:
| That was my first guess, that this picture is in the first page
| of image search results for "nuclear detonator" or whatever.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| Some people are confused why this could be a big deal. An
| analogy: on GitHub, if you echo a GitHub access token in an
| action's log, it will be automatically censored. This post would
| be like noticing that someone's action step is just named
| ghp_1ae27h... and that the name isn't censored, and speculating
| on what that says about the token-censorship algorithm
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Same on hackernews, if you type your password here, it is
| printed like this: **** instead of clear text ("h u n t e r 2"
| spaces added for it to not be censored).
| eszed wrote:
| Key point: if you try it yourself, it will be in clear-text
| _for you_ (you already know your password, so there 's no
| issue), but _everyone else_ will only see "***".
| Reubachi wrote:
| hunter2
|
| mods, please allow this chain to remain as original
| runescape "hacks" are about as hckrnws as any other
| content.
| Izkata wrote:
| It's from IRC, here's the original: https://bash-org-
| archive.com/?244321
| sandworm101 wrote:
| No. That is not a nuke. It is a mass simulator, specifically the
| electronic model of a mass simulator for a warhead. The various
| colors represent density of material. This would be used during
| aerodynamic simulations. That is why it is behind the graph about
| processors. This also explains the simple geometry as keeping
| things simple reduces the number of calculations.
|
| (Note that nuke warheads fall nose-first, the opposite of space
| capsules. So the dense material is packed in the nose, with the
| lighter stuff at the back.)
|
| The nearby disk looks like a represention of airflow around a
| falling warhead. They, like apollo, likely had an offset center
| of gravity that allowed them to stear by rotation, creating the
| asymetrical airflow shown on the disk. Falling in a spiral also
| probably frustrates interception. So that whole corner of the
| image is advertising Sandia's ability to do aerodynamic
| simulations.
| thedrbrian wrote:
| Nice try Sandia guy who forgot to redact this original picture.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Reminds me of another design secret that leaked out because
| someone published a paper titled something like "X-ray
| crystallography of Lithium Deuteride under high pressure."
|
| People very quickly figured out that this was the source of the
| D-T fuel in fusion part of the bomb instead of cryogenic D-T
| liquid. Lithium Deuteride is nasty stuff, but it's a storable
| solid. When bombarded with neutrons from the fission primary, the
| Lithium splits and forms tritium, which then combines with the
| deuterium that was the other half of the crystal.
|
| The reason the usage was obvious (from the title alone!) is that
| very few chemists would care about any property of Lithium
| Hydride, which is dangerous to handle and has few practical uses.
| Lithium Deuteride is unheard of in analytical chemistry, and its
| crystallography _under high pressure_ is totally uninteresting to
| anyone... except physicists working on atomic weapons.
| dwighttk wrote:
| >That's where I've ended up...
|
| Where _did_ he end up? Intentional misinformation? It was
| definitely not clear but that _was_ the last one he listed...
| niemandhier wrote:
| Putting a weapon of mass destruction in a logo is tasteless. It's
| like advertising with cans of mustard gas.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You'll love the NRO's mission patches.
| https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/9/11895496/nro-spy-weird-mis...
| krisoft wrote:
| They build/test/design weapons of mass destruction. What would
| you advertise a can of mustard gas if not with a can of mustard
| gas?
| avar wrote:
| Let's assume the schematic depicts a genuine weapon, and that
| this was a massive redaction screw-up.
|
| I think the author is omitting the most likely explanation for
| why it wasn't redacted in future publications.
|
| It took from 2007 to 2024 for someone (him) to publicly notice
| this.
|
| If your job was to censor documents coming out of Sandia National
| Laboratories, and you screwed up this massively, what's your
| incentive to call attention to your screw-up?
|
| Better to just coast along, by the time you retire or move on to
| another job your ass is off the firing line.
|
| Ditto (but less so) if this was your co-worker or team mate,
| after all North Korea, Iran etc. _already_ have access to the
| published document.
|
| What could anyone in your organization possibly gain from the
| ensuing shitstorm of admitting something like that?
|
| Has this person worked, well, pretty much anywhere, where people
| have a stronger incentive to cover their own ass and keep out of
| trouble than not?
|
| Or, that internal report and subsequent shitstorm _did_ happen,
| but what do you do at that point? Make a big public fuss about
| it, and confirm to state actors that you accidentally published a
| genuine weapons design?
|
| No, you just keep cropping that picture a bit more, eventually
| phase it out, and hope it's forgotten. Maybe they'll just think
| it's a detailed mockup of a test article. If it wasn't for that
| meddling blogger...
|
| Edit: Also, I bet there's nobody involved in the day-to-day of
| redacting documents that's aware of what an actual weapons design
| looks like. That probably happens at another level of redaction.
|
| So once something like this slips by it's just glazed over as
| "ah, that's a bit detailed? But I guess it was approved already,
| as it's already published? Moving on.".
|
| Whereas a censor would have to know what an actual thermonuclear
| device looks like to think "Holy crap! Who the hell approved
| this?!". And even then they and the organization still need the
| incentive to raise a fuss about it.
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| My experience working for huge orgs where success and failure
| is many nodes removed from individual actions makes me vote for
| this as the most likely scenario.
| shahzaibmushtaq wrote:
| In the era of CDs/DVDs and according to year 2007 perspective,
| these types of infographic logos were quite common.
|
| Other than that, I'm not so sure about the particular design
| pointed out by the author.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Heh. Ask my mother about the time that Sandia dropped an atomic
| bomb casing in the streets of Albuquerque.
|
| IIRC the story, this was still during WWII. They were testing the
| flight characteristics of the bomb casing. It did _not_ contain a
| core. But it was still extremely classified. They had the test
| casing in the back of a truck, taking it from Sandia to Kirtland
| AFB. The truck got in an accident, the tailgate fell open, and
| the bomb casing fell out and went rolling around in the street.
| smiley1437 wrote:
| Any chance it's a legitimate screw up but they don't want to
| cause any Streisand effect?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| That was my first thought too. If you screw up once, and then
| redact it in the future it's screaming "Hey everybody look
| here, there's classified information"
| bee_rider wrote:
| > This is the kind of thing that I think people assume the
| government labs might do, but in my experience, is pretty unusual
| and pretty unlikely. In general, you have to remember that the
| national laboratories are pretty, well, boring, when it comes to
| classified information. They want to be boring in this respect.
| They are not doing cloak-and-dagger stuff on the regular. They're
| scientists and engineers for the most part. These are not James
| Bond-wannabes.
|
| The Sandia folks may be extra special, it is a pretty famous
| place. But engineers are people first of course, so lots of
| variation. And also, some are super serious of course, but there
| are hacker tendencies, playful tendencies. I bet if some
| intelligence agency folks wanted to, they could find some
| engineers out there who'd be receptive to this sort of thing.
|
| If it is a fake, known-stupid design, including it would be a
| funny prank that wastes the time of people that might want to
| nuke us, right?
| zubiaur wrote:
| Extremely boring, bureaucratic and inefficient. With a few
| exceptions, I guess they are a way to have Phds on retainer.
| writeslowly wrote:
| Somebody (probably a programmer or engineer) took the time to
| create all of that rad 3D word art, multicolored pie-chart, and
| the mountain logo, it's not hard to imagine they'd also throw
| in an eye-catching fake nuclear warhead for fun.
| csours wrote:
| I visited Los Alamos earlier this year and talked to a retired
| materials scientist at the visitor center. He said that we have
| lots of books about the science and scientists that worked on
| the bomb during WWII, but very little mention of the
| engineering or engineers - and that's largely because it's
| extremely classified. The scientists can talk about most of
| their work because it's too broad to give any real aid to the
| enemy, but the engineers can't because they could REALLY speed
| up someone else's weapons program.
| BWStearns wrote:
| Tangentially: I wonder if the checker badge is a visual pun on
| the Arms and Influence cover.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Arms-Influence-Preface-Afterword-Lect...
| _n_b_ wrote:
| I would bet a few dollars that no Facility Security Officer
| (the name for people who manage security programs for defense
| contractor, despite sounding like a Sunday name for 'guards')
| in the entire NNSA complex has ever read Arms and Influence.
| That's not quite their demographic profile.
| BWStearns wrote:
| I'd take the other side of that bet. I've met some with
| pretty surprising backgrounds.
| karaterobot wrote:
| One thing he doesn't consider: Perhaps if they do not call it a
| nuclear warhead, or place it in the context of a larger drawing
| that tells you it's a warhead, having a sort of blobby, colorful
| model shape is considered plausibly nonsensical enough that it
| doesn't matter to the censors.
| simplicio wrote:
| I've worked on (unrelated to nuclear stuff) computer simulation
| projects for the Navy where they had standard, notional models of
| the battleship which had the same sort of general properties
| you'd expect a battleship to have, but wasn't based on the design
| of any real battleship, so they could share them with researchers
| to develop their codes on without having to worry about revealing
| classified details.
|
| Wonder if this isn't something similar, if the DoE has some sort
| of "standardized notional warhead" design they can use to give to
| outside researchers without having to give every post-doc and
| grad-student a security clearance.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Do you actually mean battleship, or frigate, corvette, aircraft
| carrier, etc? Battleships in the sense of the Iowa class and
| similar haven't been a thing in the US Navy for a very long
| time, unless you were working on blast damage/effect
| simulations in the 1980s when Reagan reactivated them for a
| short time.
| Joking_Phantom wrote:
| It seems likely that theoretical work would still be done on
| battleships, after we stopped using them in the real world.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| The author addresses this in the addendum after the article.
| Something like that already exists, and it isn't this.
|
| > MACE (Modal Analysis Correlation Exercise) assembly, and was
| created by the UK Atomic Weapons Research Establishment in the
| 1990s to serve as a sort of a Utah Teapot of weapons structural
| modeling: a benign shape that could be used to test aspects of
| the code that would nonetheless tell you if the code would work
| for real weapons assemblies.
| splonk wrote:
| The author is u/restricteddata on Reddit. This appears to be the
| thread that inspired this post:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/nuclearweapons/comments/1f85zpi/mk4...
| felipelemos wrote:
| > at someone had posted on Reddit late last night (you know, as
| one does, instead of sleeping)
|
| After a couple of decades of internet I was expecting people to
| realize other timezones exists.
| diab0lic wrote:
| The full paragraph is as follows.
|
| > I happened to look at a slide deck from Sandia National
| Laboratories from 2007 that someone had posted on Reddit late
| last night (you know, as one does, instead of sleeping), and
| one particular slide jumped out at me:
|
| The author is making fun of themselves for being up late
| reading this deck instead of sleeping. They're not making fun
| of the person who posted the slide deck.
| tabtab wrote:
| That would have made a good Silicon Valley plot: they discover
| they accidentally put a trade secret in their logo, and have to
| jump through hoops to collect, hide, and delete the bad version
| without making competitors curious about their effort.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Powerpoint slides are such a hilarious opsec risk.
|
| When @Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA spying operation, all
| he did was download everybody's powerpoint presentations and send
| them to @andygreenwald.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Isn't one of best ways to verify this is to computationally
| "detonate" a similar model? If it's real, it should compress
| nuclear part, if it's not, it behaves like a HEAT warhead or
| whatever it is based on, or is that not the case?
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