Author: Cheryl Rofer

Republicans and Russians

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

Russia’s attempts at interference in American politics aren’t going away. We see only bits and pieces of them, though. most recently, Marjorie Taylor Green was explicitly quoting from Russian and Hungarian propaganda, but she’s not alone.

The effort seems to be distributed across Russian agencies as well, with the FSB (civilian intelligence agency), GRU (military intelligence agency), and probably individual oligarchs and other government agencies reaching for some of their own advantage.

The interference varies over time, as well. The NRA was a focus, now not so much as the organization self-immolates.

Donald Trump and Paul Manafort, however, have been connected to Russia for a long time. Trump has been fascinated by Russia since the 1980s, and the Mueller Report makes clear his more recent ties. There is also Kevin McCarthy’s famous quote about Dana Rohrabacher and Trump being two who are likely paid by Russia.

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A Neutron Bomb Is Not A Death Ray

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

In fact, death rays do not exist. Not neutron bombs, not whatever is causing Havana Syndrome (Anomalous Health Incidents). I am sad to be the bearer of these tidings, but whatever role a death ray pistol plays in your fantasies, it will have to stay fantastic.

The big problem is the amount of power required for your typical death ray, if you assume that there are physical and biological principles that allow killing people without leaving a mark. I’m not saying it’s impossible, just that nobody has shown how it works, the energy interaction with the human body.

Yes, neutrons can fry living organisms. But what does it take to produce those neutrons?

Stephen Schwartz posts on the history of nuclear weapons. He’s on Bluesky, not Twitter, and worth following if that’s one of your interests. Today he posted a thread on the neutron bomb.

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Getting Feminist Foreign Policy Wrong

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

I have been involved recently in some activities labeled “feminist foreign policy.” A podcast on “the intricate world of feminist foreign policy” caught my eye, not least for the strange adjective.

The page for the podcast, along with the promotion above, which came in an email, are not promising. The two featured speakers are men: William Alberque, the Director of Strategy, Technology, and Arms Control for the International Institute of Strategic Studies, and Louis Reitmann, a Research Associate from the Vienna Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation since 2022. Both are given short bios. And oh yes, also included are Mara Zarka and Federica Dall’Arche, identified as Reitmann’s colleagues at the Vienna Centre. That’s all that is said about them. No titles, no bios.

I checked the Vienna Centre’s website. Mara Zarka is a Research Associate and Project Manager and has been at the Centre since 2013. Federica Dall’Arche is a Senior Research Associate and an advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Italy. Looks like both are senior to Reitmann.

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Status Report on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

The Russians have stolen the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.

Nataliya Gumenyuk, with the help of Angelina Kariakina, Inna Zolotukhina, and Hanna Sylayeva, prepared a report for the Reckoning Project, which documents Russian warcrimes in Ukraine. [CW: The report contains descriptions of torture by the Russians of plant operators. I do not include any of that description in this post.]

The Russians have occupied the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant since early in the war. They have militarized the plant, storing equipment there and having mined its perimeter. The six reactors are shut down, which lessens the potential for a meltdown, but the reactors and spent fuel pools must continue to be cooled with water. The destruction of the Kakhovka Dam destroyed the reservoir behind the dam, which was the plant’s main source of cooling water. Water is now being drawn from wells, but those wells are not sustainable.

The plant is being run with many fewer workers than in peacetime. Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy organization, is on site. The plant was built during Soviet times, but it has been modified since then. Workers have been tortured by the Russian occupiers, and they are working under forced conditions.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, has been visiting the plant and recently met with Vladimir Putin and the head of Rosatom to try to achieve stability at the plant and transparency about what is happening there. He has been partially successful, but he will have to continue to pressure the Russians as long as they are occupying the plant.

The plant is relatively stable, but the continuing occupation and war in the area make that stability precarious. It’s one more of the atrocities Russia is inflicting on Ukraine.

Photo: The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in better days.

Cross-posted to Lawyers, Guns & Money

We Need A Narrative On The Russian Connection

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

The Republican attempt at impeaching President Joe Biden on the basis of his son’s actions has collapsed with the revelation that their star witness, Alexander Smirnov, was working with Russian intelligence. They’re trying to put up another, even weaker, attempt at impeachment to distract from this embarrassment.

The Russians have interfered in the last several US elections. They have used bots to distribute misinformation on social media along with much more complex operations. The release of Hillary Clinton’s emails had Russian involvement. And now we learn that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian operation.

All Russian involvement is dangerous. Spreading divisive conspiracy theories undermines voter choices. Co-opting legislators, and those legislators’ willingness to be co-opted is of another order. Republican House members who have pushed for impeachment have been duped by Russia, in the kindest interpretation. An intermediate interpretation is that their eagerness to undermine a Democratic administration made them vulnerable to Russian influence. And it is fully possible that they find Russia a more amenable partner than their own Democratic fellow citizens and are therefore happy to push its narratives.

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The Nuclear Materials In The Ebisawa Indictment

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

The US Department of Justice issued a superseding indictment against Takeshi Ebisawa, a leader in the Yakuza international organized crime syndicate. Ebisawa was already charged with narcotics and weapons trafficing. Now nuclear materials trafficking has been added to the charges.

Ebisawa offered an undercover agent representing himself as an intermediary for an Iranian general samples of what he said was a large amount of thorium, uranium, and plutonium in exchange for weapons including surface-to-air missiles. The fissile material was said to come from Burma, the destination of the weapons.

All the nuclear material trafficking cases I’m aware of involve small amounts of the material, presented as a sample of more that is stored somewhere. Except that “more” is nonexistent. This case seems to follow that pattern.

My questions are

  • Did the trafficker seem knowledgeable about the material?
  • Do the LE people seem knowledgeable about the material?
  • How much material was in the sample, and in what state was it?
  • Where did it come from?

The first two are mainly a credibility check on the rest of the story. My answers to those two questions are not really and yes, although I think the SDNY presentation of the information verges on the sensational.

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Wargames

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

I’ve always been dubious about the value of wargames. They may uncover weaknesses and provide some idea of how a strategy might work out, but they are played by real human beings with their own sets of unstated assumptions. Those humans are playing against other humans toward which they harbor feelings – good or bad. All that goes into the play.

Trying to fully automate them is no better. The automation is done by humans with all those mixed motives.

Then there is the fundamental problem that we don’t know the enemy’s mind. Other variables will be lacking.

There may be some analytical usefulness to wargames, but they do not predict winners and losers.

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Yet Another Alleged Russian Superweapon

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

I guess I’m going to have to write something about this. It’s a tempest in a samovar.

I wrote that post just after Mike Turner (R-OH) came out as Chicken Little. It has stood up well.

It appears that

  1. Turner’s primary purpose seems to be to show a need to continue Section 702 surveillance. His secondary purpose may be to imply that the Biden administration is unprepared.
  2. Russia may be thinking of putting nuclear weapons into orbit.
  3. Most of the articles in response to Turner need not have been written.
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The Weirdest Science Story Of The Year

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

It’s not about aliens or Bigfoot. But it is about something showing up where scientists hardly expected.

Hydrogen is often touted as a clean fuel. Its product is water, no carbon dioxide to heat the earth! But hydrogen must be split from water, so it’s not a fuel in the same way hydrocarbons are, but rather a way to store energy from solar, wind, or nuclear.

Hydrogen is the simplest atom and likes to live as a diatomic molecule, H2. But it’s reactive and forms things like water, giving up its energy in the process. In nature, microbes like diatomic hydrogen as an energy source. Further, its small size lets it escape from geological traps that might be good enough to hold methane.

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An American Plan For The Middle East

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

Both Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan spoke at Davos. Blinken was interviewed by Thomas Friedman. Sullivan gave a short talk and then did a Q&A with Børge Brende, president of the World Economic Forum.

The two said very similar things; this administration controls its messages carefully. Further, their messages are consistent with a report on what they called foreign policy for the middle class. It was written in 2020, before the election, and Sullivan was a co-author. I haven’t read the report for a year or more, but its themes continue through what Blinken and Sullivan say and do. They were not emphasized in these two presentations, which were consistent with the precepts in the report. This is an administration that has a plan and executes it.

At Davos, both talked about the world situation broadly, but where I think they had something new to say was about Israel and Gaza.

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