Source: www.kremlin.ru

The venerated first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) will expire on December 5, 2009. The importance of this treaty lies not merely in the fact that it reduced the numbers of nuclear warheads and the platforms on which they reside in both the Soviet and US arsenals (later the five weapon holding successor states of the Soviet Union and the US.) Perhaps more important were the unprecedented levels of verification and information exchange incorporated into the Treaty- a codification of President Reagan’s often quoted “trust, but verify” line.

Currently, negotiations are underway to replace the expiring START. Reports indicate that there are two major outstanding bones of contention. The first involves the issue of ground-based mobile launchers, which the Russians have but the US does not. The US would apparently like to see more control over them, but the Russians object to what they see as a unilateral concession. This may be a gambit in search of a concession on the US side. The second issue deals with the details of the allowable numbers of various weapon platforms.

There has been talk in the US Senate of extending START I six months because, even if a new treaty is concluded in the next three weeks, it won’t be ratified and enter into force until much later.

Two news stories this morning highlight the bold independent-mindedness of a couple of South Asian scientists, and how they might yet manage to get tens of millions of people killed.

The first story involves the complete unshackling of Abdul Qadeer Khan from the last “official” vestiges of restriction on his movement. [I say "official" because he probably can't leave the country without being abducted for interrogation - there remains a great deal that is unknown about the extent of his proliferation network and who it gave what.] Better known in the West as A.Q. Khan, this Pakistani national hero is responsible for spreading the technology and knowledge necessary to build nuclear bombs to anyone willing and able to pay. Among most well-known customers are / were Iran, North Korea, and Libya. While Libya has since verifiably disarmed of Weapons of Mass Destruction and the technologies used to produce them and is in such good stead that they are now being handed back their brutal terrorists from decades past, Iran and North Korea are probably both much closer to a working nuclear weapon than they would have been without the “Johnny Appleseed of Nuclear Weapons”, Khan. While Islamists love to portray Khan as a great equilizer who has helped spread nuclear weapons technology in the Islamic world, they forget that North Korea, whose position on religion is that it is the opiate of the masses and should either be brutally crushed or usurped by the party, was also a customer. This makes Khan more of a greedy bastard who is willing to put the whole world in peril to make some cash than any kind of hero to Islam.

The other story involves Indian scientist, K Santhanam, who claims that his country’s 1998 test of a thermonuclear device was actually a dud. Santhanam goes on to state that because of this unexpectedly low yeild, that India needs to conduct further testing in order to have a reliable nuclear deterrent. The Indian government and high-ranking military officers have dismissed this suggestion. Why might a citizen of India shout from the roof-tops that his country’s strategic forces are defective? [If you were worried that a criminal had entered your house, would you shout out that you didn't have a gun?] A prevailing theory is that not only do Santhanam and a few others want more tests to be conducted, they want to put the kibosh on any momentum toward India’s signing and ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The CTBT will have a profound impact on nonproliferation because members that don’t have nuclear weapons won’t be able to develop any sophisticated weapons while complying with the treaty, and states that do have nuclear weapons will not be able to build new models.

Love it, hate it, or satire it hilariously (ala. Dr. Strangelove), it is hard to argue that there isn’t a satisfying elegance to the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). By satisfying, I mean that there is a clearly defined logic that results in unambiguous policy prescriptions. If two countries each have the “absolute weapon” [i.e. weaponized thermonuclear warheads], and can retain the ability to blow the hell out of each other, they won’t go to war. It is as simple as that. It is true that the policy prescriptions often sound completely daft at worst or faintly fortune-cookie-esque at best, as in: “defending yourself increases your danger”, or “targeting cities is less belligerent than targeting missile silos.” 

If you take a positive view of MAD, and turn the words around to “increases your danger, defending yourself does”, it sounds sage – like something Yoda might say. However, for those opposed to MAD,  it sounds like the kind of thing you might hear a crazy homeless person mumble to themselves as they push their shopping cart down the street, just like “I get drunk to think clearly”, “I built this city from pudding and matchsticks”, or “buying up mortgage-back securities,…how could I lose?” However, the Zen koan-like quality of the policy prescriptions aside, it is a pleasant rarity to not have counter-veiling forces pulling policy in multiple directions. ”Cash for clunkers” results in a lot of energy and material being expended on vehicles that might not otherwise be built, and may result in people going through more vehicles than they otherwise would (i.e. the environmental laudableness of the program is not as patently clear as it first seems.)  Increasing minimum wages will, under most conditions, increase unemployment. Subsidizing farmers results in more grain production and depressed grain prices (exacerbating the condition that led to the policy in the first place.) In short, the realm of policy-making is rife with catch-22s, but MAD seems, ironically, straight forward.

 The challenge before us is to find an equally compelling logic of strategic stability in a world disarmed of nuclear weapons. It may require taking the most brilliant people in the country and shipping them off to someplace like Santa Monica for a few years (just like the formation of RAND after Word War II, whose eminent scholars were largely responsible for MAD), but I’m confident there is a way.

In the past I have always found the Central News Agency of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) (see: http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm) to be less than compelling and rarely worthy of examination. The stories are generally about how such-and-such Sub-Saharan African dictator sent congratulations to Kim Jong Il, or how the North Korean People wished to pay their respects to such-and-such nation. In essence, it was not only propaganda, but propaganda of the dullest and most mundane sort imaginable.

However, in recent weeks it is becoming increasingly worthwhile to visit the Agency’s site. Oh, it is still wild propaganda, but it is entertaining propaganda. Consider some of the current headlines:

“US Wild Ambition to Dominate Whole of Korea Can Never Come True”

“US Termed Chief Culprit of Nuclear Proliferation”

“Japanese Reactionaries Urged to Stop Their Rash Acts”

This last one is particularly amusing. It essentially rebukes elements inside Japan who would like that country to develop nuclear weapons. The irony is, of course, that the only way the Japanese will be sufficiently motivated to make major changes in their law as required to build a nuclear arsenal is in response to the continued provocations of their nutty newly nuclear neighbor who is constantly shooting missile tests across their bow lately.

Today the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed sanctions against North Korea consisting primarily of a complete arms export embargo and a partial arms import embargo. The big news seems to be China’s support for these efforts. While Chinese diplomats were careful to state that inspections must be carried out in accordance with international law, and, therefore, the sanctions did not equate to open season on DPRK shipping, they did go along with the provisions as stipulated. The Chinese don’t want a nuclear armed Japan any more than the North Koreans do. The difference is that the Chinese recognize that the way to avoid a Japan with nuclear weapons is a sane and stable North Korea.

Besides the long-range missile test that was earlier estimated would take place early next week, it will be interesting to see of what the North Korean response consists. As I have mentioned before, when you go as provocative as nuclear weapons tests, it is hard to up the ante without risking war. While the North Korean rhetoric is harsh, it is difficult to imagine what North Korea can do besides the same old bag of tricks it has been playing.

The 32nd Session of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) is going on June 8-9, 2009. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) would prohibit all nuclear tests. A 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) outlawed testing of nuclear explosive devices in space, underwater, or in the atmosphere, but left open the option of subterranean tests.

The CTBT is being talked about more these days with a US administration that supports its implementation and a Congress more likely to ratify. However, the US is only one of nine Annex 2 states that must ratify the CTBT for it to enter into force. Of course, among the nine is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK.) Should it come down to North Korea holding things up, there would probably be adequate support for amending the Treaty requirements to eliminate the need for their cooperation. The Kim government has demonstrated a desire be an outlier from the non-proliferation and disarmament regime by withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) as well as by being the only state to conduct tests in recent years.

However, that still leaves seven Annex 2 countries that have not ratified the Treaty including: China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, and Pakistan. All of these states are within the regime, and their participation will be critical. Of these, Iran provides an interesting case. Its ratification of the CTBT might be made part of a negotiated agreement that would end opposition to their fuel cycle facility development provided they enact Additional Protocols to ease concerns about diversion. Iran can convincingly argue that they have a right under the NPT’s Article IV to develop a fuel cycle infrastructure to support the nuclear power plant they have under construction at Bushehr, and in the realm of isotopic separation medical technology as well as fuel cycle arguments apply. However, there is no reasonable explanation for opposition to nuclear explosive testing unless you desire to retain the capacity to build  nuclear weapons. That is, if their intent is truly the peaceful use of nuclear energy and medical isotope development as they have said, they should have no objection to prohibitions on testing. The myth of a utility to be gained from Peaceful Nuclear Explosions (PNE) seems to have long since been put to bed.

Other opponents, such as Egypt and India, object primarily on the basis that the CTBT might help to institutionalize a “have – have-not” division with respect to nuclear weapons. If such countries are true to their word, their perception of the US and Russia’s good-faith efforts to disarm will be critically important to obtaining their ratification. I remain skeptically that the CTBT can enter into force, but am interested in the views of others.

It is interesting to note that, despite the fact that the CTBT has not entered into force, the verification system consisting of four types of monitoring stations (Seismic, Infrasonic, Hydro-acoustic, and Radionuclide stations that measure the force and direction of an explosion through the ground, air, and water respectively, plus determining the nuclear nature of the test [i.e. radionuclide stations]) is up and running with partial capacity. While the system is not yet completely on-line, it has been useful in providing information about the two North Korean nuclear device tests.  

On April 5th, President Obama gave a masterful speech in Prague, the later half of which was devoted to the topic of nuclear disarmament. The speech began with an homage to people who acted on a belief that change could be achieved against an overwhelming sentiment that it could not (referring, of course, to the Cold War), and then implied that people of the same ilk were needed to advance disarmament in a similar manner.

Those wishing to see any momentum that may have been created by this speech derailed could hardly ask for better intervening world events. North Korea conducted its second test of a nuclear device, and, in the process, displayed an improved capability had been achieved. Following the nuclear test, they proceeded to set off short-range missiles like  some sort of Independence Day display, and it appears that they are preparing for a long-range missile test in up-coming weeks. Meanwhile, the Iran front remains unchanged. In other words, the Iranians are getting progressively closer to having an infrastructure that would support making weapons-grade fissile material in sufficient quantities within a reasonable time period, and this is making many countries (re: Israel) really unnerved.

It might be argued that such events are a potential boon to disarmament because they underscore the nature of the threat and give impetus for positive action. After all, nonproliferation is unlikely to go anywhere without the major nuclear weapon states showing progress toward disarmament. If the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference turns out to be a carryover from 2005, then we can expect backward and not forward momentum on nonproliferation. 

Unfortunately, I suspect that current events do not bode well for advancing the agenda President Obama laid out in his Prague Speech. Nuclear weapon states will only ease their grasp if they feel relatively safe from the threat of attack by states. I emphasize “by states” because I don’t think world leaders give much sway to deterrence as a strategy against nuclear terrorism, but they are pretty confident about the value of deterrence against states. While the threat of nuclear terrorism may (or may not) be on the rise, I don’t think that is a non-starter for disarmament. However, the same cannot be said of risk from states.

As the President stated, nuclear disarmament is not likely to be achieve quickly. There were a number of steps that were laid out that are considered intermediary steps including: reduction of the relevance of nuclear weapons to overall security, bilateral reductions between US and Russia, enactment the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), verifiable implementation of the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT), strengthening of inspection authority, development of a fuel bank, and progress with North Korea and Iran.

The question is whether all of these are necessary, and, if so, whether any of them are intractable. Take, for example, the question of verifiability of the FMCT. The Bush Administration dropped this treaty supposedly because it was “impossible” to verify. The present administration seems to take as a forgone conclusion that it can be verified. This tells us one of two things. The best case scenario is that the two camps are working under different assumptions about what constitutes a minimally acceptable level of verification. I say this is the “best case” because there would ostensibly be underlying facts that could be agreed upon, and, therefore, there would be a map to understand what would be necessary to move towards a negotiated agreement (e.g. what technological developments.) The worst case is that politics is leading the facts and science- in which case there may be no room for agreement. By “politics leading” I mean that either the Bush Administration started from from the position that they did not want to support the FMCT and found arguing the unprovable case of non-verifiability a good means to quash it, or the Obama Administration started from the position that they wanted the FMCT and knew it required arguing that it was, in fact, verifiable, or, given the possibility that no one knows the answer yet, both of the above. If this is the case, then there is no incentive for either side to reduce ambiguity, and little prospect for moving forward.

When there is a point of intractability, one needs to determine whether there is a new approach to the subject that can be taken, and what it might be. Too often there is a failure to recognize points of intractability, and then to be creative about how to change the underlying conditions to one where progress is possible.

For all of the recent talk about nuclear disarmament, there remains a great deal that must be worked out in order to make it a reality in a way that maintains global stability. There is a need to build verification regimes that leave all parties confident that cheating will not make disarmament untenable, to reduce the relevance of nuclear weapons in a credible manner, and to determine how belligerence will be averted in the absence of a nuclear deterrent. This will likely require a revolutionary approach to the problem. In other words, it may not be possible to make incremental adjustments from our Cold War model to get to the state of existence required. Instead, an entirely new way of considering the problem may need to be developed, and, no less important, that approach will need to become widely disseminated and accepted. The problem is that the existing way of thinking about the subject is firmly entrenched, and will not be easily supplanted.

A new paradigm of knowledge distribution and transmission has been developing for quite some time, and may be influential with respect to any breakthroughs in thinking on disarmament. The old system of knowledge distribution / transmission is dominated by gate-keepers. These gatekeepers cull the vast number of submissions for various information outlets (journals, magazines, books, etc), and select those that they consider to have the greatest merit. What constitutes merit varies with the nature of the publication. In academic circles, “contribution” is of great importance (i.e. the paper expands the state of knowledge in the discipline in some way), but other factors such as consistency with the existing literature and / or employment of well-established methods are also valued. With regards to popular presses, the gatekeepers (i.e. editors) are basing decisions primarily upon what  they believe will have mass appeal.  In the realm of journalism, gatekeepers also seek mass appeal (sensationalism) with the additional criteria of brevity and timeliness.

It should be noted that the new paradigm is not a better system in all regards, but its strengths are quite different from the existing paradigm. Perhaps, in fact, they may best be thought of as a complements rather than predecessor and successor. The new system, exemplified by blogs and wikis, exists without gatekeepers, and relies on a public audience to recognize virtue and punish vice.

The strength of the old system is that not just any crap makes the cut. (For example, I will be making claims in this post based on anecdotal evidence because as an essayist I can, and because I don’t have the time or energy to systematically investigate and provide evidence on such claims. Within this system, overseers exist to ensure  that there seems to be some merit to everything published, and, very importantly, these overseers have an incentive to take their jobs seriously. This incentive is importantly because, arguably, the new paradigm has an even broader and more relevant set of overseers ( post-hoc) in the general public – but members of the public aren’t always driven to spend time calling out those whose reasoning is unsound or whose intentions are fraudulent. 

The  disadvantage of the traditional paradigm is that it doesn’t lend itself well to revolutionary expansions of our understanding. Whether it is an academic journal or a popular press, there is a deferrence given to precedence that is not consistant with massive changes in approach. While it may be safe to assume that the gate-keepers, be they editors or peer-reviewers, know their jobs and are capable of separating out the chaff quite well in many cases, it is not clear that they are exceptional at recognizing novel ideas of great merit. They, like everyone, are subject to their own biases, filters, and worlview, and are not likely to jump out on a limb for an idea that seems to be out in left field.

Consider, the Alfred Knopf archives which contained rejections letters to authors the likes of: George Orwell, H.L. Mencken, Langston Hughes, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Sylvia Plath, some of the letters being for works that later became classics. In the realm of academia, consider the persistent support for methods that facilitate the proliferation of Type I error, or, as Nassim Taleb has made a career of pointing out, the application of an assumption of normal distribution in numerous cases in which it is fundamentally erroneous to do so. These are prime examples of:  a.) how the scholarly community is by no means exempt from being trapped by improper paradigms (just as Cold War deterrence models are used to make decisions about today’s arsenal); b.) there is not always a recognition of better ways of thinking about problems.

Getting to zero nuclear weapons, if it turns out to be a good idea, is going to require rethinking how we think about the problem, and will take some serious redrawing of our models. I suspect it will require ideas propogated through both the old and new knowledge paradigms.

No doubt many will dismiss this discussion as pie-in-the-sky talk.  After all, given both the right of sovereignty enjoyed by nations and the fact that places like Russia, China, and the United States are big and nuclear weapons are relatively small, one will never be able to be completely certain that no nation is cheating on the requisite agreement. Consider how long it took to determine that there weren’t stocks of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, which was a physically smaller country than most of the existing nuclear powers and which was under the complete control of US forces.Without certainty of compliance with the disarmament agreement by others, nuclear weapon states may not have the confidence necessary to eliminate their weapons.

As they teach in International Relations Theory courses, states exist in an anarchic self-help environment. In other words, all they can count on to keep them safe is their own capabilities. If a cheater is allowed to gain the advantage of unilateral possession of nuclear arms, other states’ survival is put at risk.

Furthermore, a single cheater would be particularly disconcerting because of what the experience of history teaches us about stability under varying  numbers of weapons states. This experience suggests that a world of multiple nuclear weapon states tends to be stable against their use, but a world in which a single state has nuclear weapons is not. When the US exclusively held nuclear weapons it used two, but during the sixty year period in which at least two states had them none were used.

Assuming that it is correct that there will never be  complete confidence that cheating impossible, can disarmament occur under an imperfect verification regime?   In other words, is perfect verification a necessary condition for elimination of nuclear weapons? There are, of course, two answers to this question. One is the empirical answer, and only time will tell what the answer to that question is. The other is a more hypothetical answer based upon whether the threat posed by a unilateral cheater in an otherwise disarmed world seems to be greater or lesser than the threat of continued possession and proliferation of nuclear weapons. The empirical question, however, may be influenced by the results of the counter-factual analysis and so the assumptions that guide us in this analysis must be well thought out.

If it is possible that there will be cheaters, and at least some states believe they have an incentive to cheat, we must assume that there will be a cheater or cheaters. What exactly is the perceived advantage that would incentivize states to cheat, and how could they capitalize upon it? That depends on how they view the utility of nuclear weapons and for what purpose they would intend to press their advantage. For some purposes, (e.g. deterrence and coercion), the cheater has to be transparent about his illicit arsenal in order to make the strategy work, and the act of taking a transparent stance creates some vulnerabilities. If the cheater assumes that others are also cheating, and that it cannot know who is cheating, then its possible strategies are quite limited, because attempts to coerce may be met with deterrence by another cheater and attacks, whatever their purpose, may be met with massive retaliation.

People often point to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) as the exemplar of arms control agreements. However, the prohibition of Chemical Weapons maybe seen as relatively simple because the usefulness of such weapons had come into doubt. The employment of chemical weapons in World War I showed that the user could become the victim with an unanticipated wind change, and it was difficult to take advantage of weapons to gain ground because one had to operate in the same protective equipment that the enemy did when moving into the territory or wait until the agent cleared.

The question at issue is wherein the advantage of nuclear weapons lies, and to what degree a cheater could capitalize on said advantages. Historically, the greatest utility of nuclear weapons was derived from the ability to deter others from attacking. For this objective nuclear weapons seem well-suited. However, deterrence neither requires nor particularly benefits from cheating, and a cheater will not be able to both maintain its unilateral advantage and pursue a deterrent strategy simultaneously anyway. In the long-run, the cheater’s security declines. Why? Nuclear states will have the capacity to reconstitute their programs. The cheater must be transparent about having nuclear weapons in order to deter the opposition from (a presumably conventional) attack. However, as soon as the cheater admits to having nuclear weapons, other states (both friend and foe) have an incentive not only to reconstitute, but to ally against the rogue proliferator. Furthermore, it is not certain how well a nuclear deterrent works against conventional threats. An opponent may not believe that the cheater state will engage in such a severely over-the-top response to a conventional attack, particularly if it is of limited objectives, as nuclear warfare.

A second possibility is that the cheater will use the weapons for coercive purposes. In other words, the threat of use of nuclear weapons will be used to pressure a country to do something that they otherwise would not. This objective does potentially lend an advantage to a cheater (provided that the cheater is confident that the one he is attempting to coerce did not cheat as well). However, a country using nuclear weapons to coerce must be transparent that about having weapons and about what they want. In stating this openly, they are likely to become an international pariah, and, in the long-run states will reconstitute arsenals against them.

A third possibility is that the cheater would use nuclear weapons as part of of a war strategy aimed at taking over another country’s sovereign territory. In other words, the cheater employs nuclear weapons against an enemy in an attempt to eliminate their capacity to resist so that their possessions can be overtaken. Depending upon the target, it may be difficult to achieve such an objective with a small arsenal, and it will be quite difficult for the cheater to maintain a large arsenal without a high risk of being caught. Furthermore, one may eliminate quite a bit of the value of the territory that one seeks to control by way of the effects of the nuclear weapons (e.g. the spread of radioactive material, fire damage, blast damage, and electromagnetic damage.)  

The final, and most disconcerting, possible strategy for the cheater would be essentially a terrorist motive. To elaborate, the cheater might try to strike fear into the hearts of its opposition in order to achieve a political or cultural impact beyond its ability to attain by traditional means. Such a strategy would almost certainly succeed in uniting the world against one, but this remains a concern. Such a nation could expect retribution, because such an act could not be allowed to stand without creating a race to the worst possible behavior.

It may be true that it is the non-state actor and not the state actor that is the biggest point of concern in this day and age. However, if anything global disarmament reduces the non-state threat because such nations do not have ready made arms or fissile material to acquire, and their limited capabilities make construction from scratch virtually impossible. Certainly, there is no reason to believe that maintaining a nuclear deterrent force is a useful strategy against non-state actors. Deterrence may not work because such actors, even if they are rational enough to be eager to avoid their own exposure to the risk of nuclear attack, may not believe such a threat is credible. Non-state terrorists may reasonably conclude that a state will not engage in massive retaliation against a population of mostly innocent people to get at a few combatants.

There are a great deal of complex issues that must be faced in carrying out disarmament. Among these are that the regime must be set up in such a manner as to make cheaters believe that they cannot prosper. This means the verification system must be thorough, but, further, that the world will stand against cheaters and take whatever action necessary to ensure that they cannot capitalize on there illicit gains.

Disarmament by the declared nuclear weapon states has historically been conceptually on par with the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. In other words, it is a sweet idea that almost everybody would love to believe in, but only a child or imbecile would place much stock in its feasibility. For the better, this is changing,  and, for the worst, it is  problematic. The idea of a nuclear weapons free world has certainly gained credibility in recent years with the support of popular statesmen like George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn.

Not taking disarmament seriously is problematic because it is central to the bargain of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). If nuclear weapon states do not comply with Article VI, then the question naturally arises as to why the [presently] non-nuclear weapon states should take their commitments seriously. While there may be logical reasons to support the status quo, there are few more visceral negative human reactions than those in response to breaches of fairness. It is clear that some non-weapon states are tiring of what they see as the prolonged uni-lateral commitment by non-weapon states as a group to the treaty’s core provisions.

There is no reason to think that the status quo can persist indefinitely, and, therefore, asking the right question is important. If the question is whether the US is safer if the status quo is maintained (the US retains nuclear arms and most of its adversaries does not have them) or abandoned (the US disarms and others maintain or build a capacity), then the status quo is optimal. However, if the question is whether it is safer for the US (and other nuclear states) to keep its weapons and risk regime collapse with a number of nascent bomb-building countries develop, or to take disarmament seriously, then one can make a good argument that disarmament is the optimal path.   

So need the nuclear weapons related labs and facilities worry that they will be put out of business altogether? Not likely. True. These institutions will need to become smaller and will need to be reconfigured to another set of tasks, but they must not be put out of business altogether. Why not? Because the there will forever remain a risk posed by nuclear and radiological weapons that will require the expertise of nuclear engineers, physicists, radio-chemists, and skilled technicians to counter.

Disarmament, sadly, can never mean letting the nation’s guard drop, and staying out ahead of those nations who would cheat on the requisite disarmament agreements and / or non-state actors who would illicitly produce nuclear weapons or devices will forever remain a full-time job. There will be a need to continuously remap the threat in the face of emerging technologies, advances in industrial practices, and improved understanding of adversary capabilities. Such a threat mapping will be needed to determine the shortest route to a nuclear bomb or device, and what can be done about it. Detection capabilities will need to be built that are quicker, more accurate, and more cost-effective, and so can be made more ubiquitous, and this requires people steadily working on developing these technologies. Heaven forbid there is ever a malicious use of a nuclear device, there will be a need to attribute the activity to a particular source with the supreme level of confidence required of taking extreme  retaliatory measures.