Arms Control Wonk

The legendary Fred Kaplan joins Jeffrey to talk about his brand new novel, A Capital Calamity. 

Fred and Jeffrey talk through the Fred's experiences in nuclear strategy and the influences on his new novel, A Capital Calamity, from JFK's EXCOMM tapes, the MX basing debate, and the Jane Austen meets Dr. Strangelove comedy of DC manners and etiquette. 

Catch one of Fred's upcoming book readings for A Capital Calamity in DC and NYC, at the Union Market Politics & Prose on Saturday, October 26th and at Community Bookstore, Park Slope, Brooklyn, on Tuesday, October 29th.  

Fred Kaplan is a national security columnist for Slate. Former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for Boston Globe. Author of 7 books, including The Bomb, The Wizards of Armageddon, The Insurgents (Pulitzer Prize finalist), and now, his first novel, A Capital Calamity.

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An absolutely massive mobile ballistic missile was paraded in North....

...wait sorry....

South Korea. Force of habit. 

Decker joins Jeffrey to talk about the absolute unit that the ROK just showed off. But don't worry, it's just an "SRBM with an eight ton warhead," nothing to see here. The team talks about messaging, move/countermoves on the Korean Peninsula, and who actually started this dang missile race to begin with. 

Audio Originally Recorded October 2nd.

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China tested an ICBM deep into the Pacific Ocean, instead of short-shooting it into PRC deserts. 

Decker Eveleth joins Jeffrey to talk about why this is a fascinating change in behavior for the PLA Rocket Force and PRC in general. China has only ever done this twice before, both over 40 years ago, back in 1980. Decker and Jeffrey talk about the internally signalling mechanisms, the issues with corruption in the PLARF, China's potential move to US and Russian style ICBM test notifications, strategic stability, and our favorite: absolutely gorgeous high-resolution photos of solid-fuel ICBMs.

Audio Originally Recorded September 27th

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Iran just launched what may be the largest single missile raid in history, and Israel claims no Israeli deaths.

While we're still very early in the news cycle, Jeffrey and Aaron start picking apart the information available to look at what we can learn about the state of the Iranian offensive missile arsenal, weight what Iran's options for next steps are, and dive into the internal nuclear politics of both Israel and Iran.

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Friend of the Pod Decker Eveleth found the Burevestnik deployment site, it seems!

Decker, of the CNA Corporation, has tracked down what appears to be the deployment site of the 9M730 Burevestnik, aka the SSC-X-9 Skyfall, using Planet Labs satellite imagery. It appears to be about 300 miles north of Mosco, near a national-level nuclear storage facility. 

Decker and Jeffrey talk through Decker's methodology for identifying the storage facility, why Russia may deploy such a dangerous system so close to major cities, and the bureaucratic politics that could be driving the development of this bizarre weapon. 

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Jeffrey and his team have been OSINT'ing the heck out of the deployment of the Typhon Strategic Mid-Range Fires (SMRF) ((Typhon Smurf?)) to the Philippines, and tracked down the airport and deployment zone.

Recently the U.S. Army deployed the new Typhon SMRF system to the Philippines as part of an exercise, raising the ire of both the Russian and Chinese governments. The Army seemed to try and keep it relatively low profile initially but the Philippines just....tweeted it out basically. 

As the Pacific continues to bristle with missiles, Jeffrey and Aaron talk about regional escalation dynamics, who is buying what missiles, and who they are (or aren't?) actually pointed at...

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Tom Schelling described escalation as a "curved slope" where you won't be able to predict when the final drop occurs, and Ukraine targeting an early warning radar in Russia certainly is at least a few steps down that slop.

Jeffrey and Aaron sit down at the intersection of "legitimate conventional military target" and "direct cause of nuclear escalation" to talk about the risks and justifications for bringing EW systems into a conflict, and discuss James Acton's idea of modern entanglement, and the connection between modern conventional and nuclear operations.

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We have data! Jeffrey and Aaron walk through the new primary source data to figure out if either Iran's missile raid or Israeli's missile defense efforts were effective. This appears to be the first time that successful wartime ballistic missile defense intercepts can be validated via open source means, which is a major step forward for open source missile and BMD analysis. 

Jeffrey and Aaron also talk about the relative impact of conventional ballistic missiles, and what secondary effects must be considered when assessing the value of interceptors vs. offensive missiles. 

This one gets wonky. 

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And you may find yourself not complying with the IAEA

And you may find yourself in a war in another part of the world

And you may find yourself making a metaphor about an automobile

And you may find yourself enriching your uranium stocks, and building reactors

And you may ask yourself "Well, how did I get here?" 

Letting the days go by, politics will hold you down 

Letting the days go by, heavy water underground 

Into Fordow again, maybe to Isfahan

Once in a lifetime, realignment all around

Same as it ever was, Same as it ever was

Jeffrey and Aaron go through the current state of play in Iranian politics (just prior to its massive missile strike on Israel), particularly around the nuclear program and what the bomb genuinely means for security and Iranian internal politics, and review how we got here over the past 20 years of Arms Control Wonkery.

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William Alberque joins Jeffrey for a friendly and deep debate about the Russian Navy nuclear documents leaked to FT, covered in our previous episode.

This is a fascinating discussion not only on the documents themselves, but what they imply for Russia's view of its own territorial integrity, what it needs to convince its soldiers to go to bat for, and the eternal issues of "self-deterrence".  

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