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Correction to North Korea ICBM Estimate

Dear Reader,

This blog seeks to empower readers to do their own intelligence analysis, with simple, accessible tools. The calculation of  North Korea’s ICBM test Succeeds  is something you could do on a napkin while waiting for your sushi. And unlike the news, it outlasts the event itself, as something you can use at a later time. It would be really cool if I could give you a feeling for the physics with something so simple. Alas, it misleads.

The outside estimate of range is given by the Union of Concerned Scientists, as 4800km = 3000 miles, short of the 4800 miles required to hit the U.S. The distance from Pyongyang to Anchorage is 3723 miles. If Anchorage is expendable, Seattle is 4700 miles distant.

The actual math for the range of a ballistic missile is complicated, unrevealing, and useless to the readers of this blog. I did a somewhat more involved calculation to see if there is something you can put on your napkin the next time North Korea launches a missile almost straight up.  This is the new rule-of-thumb for use on cocktail napkins:

The range of the missile when used as a weapon is approximately twice the height it can reach when aimed almost vertically.

This is for public use, to understand the news better, and does not replace or challenge estimates based on engineering calculations.

 

North Korea’s ICBM test Succeeds

Reuters: North Korea fires missile that lands in sea near Russia.

The distance of the impact point, 430 miles, is irrelevant. The height it reached, 1245 miles (=2000km), indicates it was a test of of part of an ICBM.

Physics for poets: You can travel 430 miles in a rowboat. It requires little of what physics calls “work.” But how high can you jump? The height requires energy, which is roughly proportional to the height reached by the missile. North Korea tested the energy of the missile by launching it almost straight up.

We can tell how much energy the missile had by the height it reached. This then tells us how fast it would have flown in the more horizontal trajectory of an ICBM.  Your precocious high school physics student will tell you to use this relationship: P.E. = K.E., potential energy = kinetic energy.

An ICBM does not have to reach orbital velocity. It needs to reach about 15,000 mph = 24000km/hr = 6.7 km/second The energy required by an ICBM is about 65% that of a missile that achieves orbital trajectory.

Did the missile have enough potential energy at the peak height of 2000 km to qualify as an ICBM? Equating kinetic energy with potential energy, which we know from the height, let’s calculate the height the missile could reach if it were an ICBM with a speed of 24000 km/hr:

1/2*m*v^2 = m*g*h. Spelling out,

1/2 X (mass of missile) X velocity of missile squared =

mass of missile X gravitational constant X height

where

“m”, what you might call the “weight” of the missile, cancels out. It makes no difference.

g is the gravitational constant, 9.8 meters/second squared.

h = the height the missile reached.

v^2 = 2*g*h. Now solve for h.

h = 2290  km, which is very close to the reported height of 2000km. It indicates a missile with enough range to reach some targets in the U.S. A little faster, and it could hit anywhere.

Conclusion: North Korea has tested a rocket which, for all intents and purposes, the “practical truth” of journalism, is an ICBM.

Pundits will probably try to buy us a few more minutes of peace by pointing out that it has not been demonstrated with all the pieces in place, an “end-to-end” test. That will happen when the missile is fired in a flatter trajectory. It may also reveal the uncomfortable truth about missile defense systems: none of them satisfy a benefit analysis.

To clarify, let’s make it concrete. Suppose the calculation is for a bitter war in which you are attempting to defend the battlefield from a missile attack. Since this is war, your forces might be attrited (reduced) by 50% in a week, or, in the case of nuclear war, in a day. In this case, a missile defense that works 90% of the time can markedly reduce the attrition of your forces, so that at least some of your soldiers are alive when those of the enemy are mostly dead.

Now consider what 90% means with New York City. Every time the enemy lobs a missile, there is a 10% chance NY will be destroyed. We solved this problem better with the various doctrines related to MAD, “mutual assured destruction.” But the assumptions of MAD require that the adversary is more like us than different.

About an ICBM test, Donald Trump said, (NY TImes) “It  won’t happen.”  

Now it has.

Looking for a Gig; Korea-Russia-Nuclear-Putin-KGB-China Sea

(Click to Enlarge)

“The Predictors”, 20″x16″, oil on canvas, the first painting I know of devoted to open source intelligence.

I’m looking for a gig. The string of keywords in the title is just to get it on your radar.

Since I began writing this blog in June of 2014, it has acquired the most intelligent, select readership on the planet. You must be, because I make no compromises in the material of the presentation, save a slightly folksy style, and the occasional joke. The jokes are included because I don’t feel the reader should have to feel desperately miserable from reading.

As deeply intelligent as you are, you are limited in number. The desire to extend one’s reach is natural. With the web,  multiple presentations, to reach different audiences, are easy.

You may have the suspicion that the writing is the work of multiple individuals, or that I am a leaker,  a back channel, or a front. None of these are remotely true. When I appear to pull a rabbit out of a hat, it is because I have a unique fund of knowledge geared to the task, I have my ear to the ground, and a mindset. Many try this, but I hear more acutely than most. With almost 300 articles over three years to examine,  almost 300,000 words, you have ample opportunity to search for a cant, bias, or agenda. There isn’t any.

There is a slant, which is different. It has to do with using the methods of analysis, and mindset I used to compile an outstanding record as an open source analyst with the IARPA crowd-sourcing intelligence program, Forecasting World Events. My methods and articles compliment these viewpoints already represented in the  press:

  • The unabstracted, visible here and now
  • Diplomacy and international law
  • Conflict and deception
  • The physical world
  • Historical perspective
  • Domestic politics

All these frameworks are internally consistent, yet in constant conflict with each other. When one framework dominates, experts provide analysis within that framework. But when the dominant mode changes, or the story straddles more than one of the above, the real story is often lost. I work with fusion, with outstanding results in open-source intelligence. Kovach and Rosenstiel, authors of Elements of Journalism, state (American Press Institute) that journalism seeks  “a practical and functional form of truth.”  In the intelligence community, this is referred to as product. In journalism, it’s story. With open-source intelligence, the only subject of this blog, they are one and the same.

The just completed piece, Meeting between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un ? John Ciliza, and hyperlinks,  is a good example. It ties together apparently unrelated fan-dancing by world leaders. It offers a reasonable story that fills a void, though historical certainty must await future presidential historians.

For immediate validation of this process, consider the article “Understanding the Mother of All Bombs“.  By reference to three simple tables, from BATF, FEMA, and CDC, the article shows that  the so-called blast radius of the MOAB could not have been even a substantial fraction of the size trumpeted by major media sites. The enthusiasm for things that go “boom!” overpowered the real story.  Meanwhile, Reuters and CNN actually sent teams to Afghanistan to look at the site. They found — nothing. What was the real story? The reaction of Hamid Karzai, who mimicked the overblown and inaccurate media descriptions of the bomb with expressions of graphic political horror.

It may be true in journalism, as it is with some other fields, that the writing of which you are most proud is not that for which you are most recognized. In January of 2016, I wrote a five part Address to Davos, and one article in January 2017. It disappoints that they received much less attention, even from you, my esteemed readership, than articles about the machinations of our geopolitical rivals and enemies.

With Davos, I indulged myself. But a modern news organization also has to interest the reader. What can I do for you, without imposing my perhaps overly sophisticated approach in a way not appropriate to your reportorial activities?

  • To a story resembling a stone, polished by custom into a smooth, unrevealing, boring object, I can help you add enticing glints to it, all the while staying within, or tightening, the envelope of journalistic, practical truth. And we don’t have to magnify the Boom! of bombs and missiles to do it.
  • Demystify technology as it applies to world conflict. Example: In July of 2014, in “Pentagon’s big budget F-35 fighter ‘can’t turn, can’t climb, can’t run’”, I predicted that the F-35 would be a success. Was I right? See The Aviationist article  F-15E Strike Eagles unable to shoot down the F-35s in 8 dogfights during simulated deployment.
  • Serve as a congenial but disruptive influence to ingrained patterns of thought, both humanistic and technological. My affinities are to both the humanistic and technological spheres. This is how I achieved the predictor rank of #9 out of 4460 in the IARPA Forecasting World Events program.
  • Write and edit at supersonic speed.
  • I’m an artist. I work in oils. This should suggest interesting reserves.

So I’m looking for a gig that allows me to write, and/or provide editorial input and inspiration to other writers. I am signatory to no covenants. My requirements are simple:

  • Independent, western based media, with an exception for the BBC.
  • The highest ethical standards, either in tradition (NY Times), or explicit, as with the Reuters Trust Principles.
  • There is no third.

I am in Manhattan frequently.

Contact@intel9.us

 

 

 

 

 

Meeting between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un ? John Ciliza

CNN: Why Donald Trump floating a meeting with Kim Jong Un is a very bad idea.

It could be a bad idea, if it stems from naivete, which is certainly possible. Most infamously at the Yalta Conference, an American president, FDR, also relied on his people-judgement of Stalin, ceding Eastern Europe to Soviet domination.

It could also be futile, or it could be for show, which is most likely. But a meeting with Duterte is actually possible. And Duterte demurs, as too busy, which is actually quite telling. John Ciliza’s narrative of “why” is based on a presupposition of Trump as a simple, visible person. This contrasts with the other popular view of Trump, as a devious, maneuvering person. The two views contradict.

From the intelligence perspective, the diagnosis of a world leader as “simple” can only be reached by exclusion, and rarely, if ever. It seems to go against having the job. Was Mahatma Gandhi simple, or devious? Quoting from Time Magazine,

The real man, if it is still possible to use such a term after the generations of hagiography and reinvention, was infinitely more interesting, one of the most complex and contradictory personalities of the century. His full name, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, was memorably—and literally—translated into English by the novelist G.V. Desani as “Action-Slave Fascination-Moon Grocer,” and he was as rich and devious a figure as that glorious name suggests.

 The astute reader will note that Donald Trump is not a Gandhi. But neither is he a Dennis Rodman, the last sucker to be gulled by a psychopath. Trump’s genuine campaign naivete about the rest of the world has not continued, as shown by  fifty-nine cruise missiles.

Let’s now explore a theory that grants Trump a beneficially devious nature. For this, we need to do a quick evaluation of U.S. foreign policy since World War II, billions spent for influence, projection of power, and wars, on behalf of  noble aims:

  • U.S. Foreign policy since World War II had a single major success, the policy of Containment. Even with the consideration that Putin’s Russia has a spiteful desire to tear down anything with the fingerprint of NATO, things are still better than they were before.
  • A conditional success, with the creation of a great competitor, was the opening of China by Nixon and Kissinger. But it is arguably true that left in isolation, China could have evolved as implacably as North Korea, with mortal result.
  • All the rest of U.S. initiatives, pursued at great cost in lives and treasure, and even those of guile and cunning,  had negative or ambiguous result.
  • The above excludes some notably successful negotiations, such as SALT, excluded because they had zero or negative cost.

In the old days, U.S. policy was guided by a brain trust of  “old wise men”, some of whom appear in group photos of Henry Kissinger’s White House Years. Even though the old wise men (except for Kissinger, who wasn’t old at the time) are no longer with us, foreign policy receives constant input from those who think they are the current gray eminences. It’s natural for a political commentator to pattern his thoughts on what they might have done or said. It goes with the top hat and striped pants.

One of the most overused words of the foreign affairs vocabulary is “influence.” A commentary frequently ends a topic with the word. Nobody remembers what it’s good for. There is a similar word, “leverage”, that is far more topical. Firmly entrenched in business, everybody knows what it is. So let’s use it.

Trump may be the first president to understand how the rise of China  has diminished U.S. leverage in the Pacific. The problem of North Korea cannot be solved without more leverage than the U.S. has. Hence, the search for leverage.

Leverage was crucially lost with the defection of Duterte’s Philippines to the China orbit. The consequence of loss of this country is the disputed international status of the South China Sea, discussed in Trump White House vows to stop China taking South China Sea islands. The international status of the sea cannot be defended in any meaningful way by the transience of U.S. presence forced by Duterte. This is why, in Xi-Trump meeting; Long Range; North Korea, I concluded,

Since Trump’s concept of achievements is that they are fungible, he reconsiders the South China Sea.  There are things you want to keep, and things you want to trade. It’s key to streamlining a business….Maybe it’s trading material. I’ll finish this a little later.

Trading material, in the form of some compromise on the Sea, could take the form of the agreement-to-ignore-contradiction, as with Taiwan. This contradiction-in-formality, new to us, figures throughout the history of the Celestial Kingdom. But perhaps it is not enough material to enlist China in the only North Korea goal with a chance of success, regime change. The program requires, at the very least, China’s seamless participation with interdiction, isolation, blockades, and U.S. use of force that would otherwise have insufficient effect.

Trump may have inventoried our trading material, and discerned that it isn’t enough. But if he can pull Duterte back from the China orbit,  China’s certainty that they own the Sea lessens. It’s back in play. This is the likely reason for Duterte’s demurral on a White House visit. He’s not “simple” either.

The meeting with Kim Jong-un will not happen. Does Trump know this? John Ciliza thinks not. I think Trump floats it for show. But when considering someone’s “meetability”, it is worth noting that Mao Tse Tung’s Great Leap Forward killed, by one estimate, 45 million in four years. This was preceded by Mao’s Classicide of landlords,  with death estimates ranging from 1 million to 28 million.  This is twice the population of North Korea. So we cannot deny Kim Jong-un “meetability” simply because he is, along with the eminently meetable Stalin, one of the great mass murderers of history. Diplomacy makes liberal use of deodorants.

Perhaps Donald Trump is as devious as Mahatma Gandhi.

Reuters: Trump says ‘major, major’ conflict with North Korea possible

Reuters: Exclusive: Trump says ‘major, major’ conflict with North Korea possible, but seeks diplomacy.

The most important goal  of  the IARPA crowd sourcing intelligence program was to improve the ability of the U.S. intelligence community to predict conflict and revolutions. North Korea is obviously on the top of the intelligence community’s menu.  So I can’t duck the obvious question.

The question would be posed to members of the intelligence community in terms of probabilities and timelines, which could be updated daily. I don’t feel the need to spin the wheel daily in this blog. It would simply bore you. But a version of this question can be answered with very compact, compelling reasoning. The question is:

“Will the U.S. – North Korea conflict on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles end in a negotiated settlement while Kim Jong-un is in power?”

The answer is no. A unique combination of facts work on both North Korea and the U.S. to prevent it.

The power base of Kim Jong-un is weak. This has been repeatedly emphasized by defectors as the cause of rampant executions of high level functionaries. And the executions do not cure the weakness; they may even exacerbate it. The rule of the dictator is a combination of carrot and stick. Too much  stick devalues loyalty;  the carrot becomes irrelevant to happiness.  Hence:

  • The rule of Kim Jong-un is too weak to survive cancellation of these programs.
  • If Kim Jong-un is deposed, it is most likely that he will die. He is too dangerous to his challengers to be left alive.
  • In the protracted negotiations with the father, Kim Jong-il, under the 1994 framework, the program slowed, or appeared to stop for periods, but no assets were relinquished by North Korea. Hence the son cannot relinquish assets.
  • The portraits of father and son hang side-by-side. This is not for decoration. It is symbolic proclamation that the son is the continuation of the father. A loss of symbolic continuity would immediately activate the weakness of the son’s power base.

About the rationality of Kim Jong-un, Trump says,

“I’m not giving him credit or not giving him credit, I’m just saying that’s a very hard thing to do. As to whether or not he’s rational, I have no opinion on it. I hope he’s rational,” he said.

Perhaps Kim Jong-un is rational in the desire to stay alive. But more than anything else his presidency can accomplish, Trump has personally staked himself to solution of this problem.

The IARPA program included multi part questions. Part B could be:

“If there is an active U.S. – North Korea conflict, will China participate on the U.S. side?”

This question has a hidden dependency. If the progression towards conflict, which has now started, proceeds in a concert of the U.S. and China, the answer is  yes,  to nonmilitary, but extremely effective steps.  North Korea’s nuclear infrastructure cannot be eradicated by air power alone.  So there is a strong incentive on the part of the U.S. for a combination of  military and economic pressure, with the object of regime change.

The bullet list has tight linkages, implying that the object of regime change is identical as a goal with nuclear disarmament of North Korea

 

North Korea says it is ready to strike U.S. aircraft carrier

Reuters: North Korea says it is ready to strike U.S. aircraft carrier. The probability that it could is not zero. The ROKS Cheonan was a small South Korean warship that was sunk by a North Korean torpedo, launched from a submarine. Perhaps to make a point, the sinking occurred 75 miles from a joint U.S. – South Korea antisubmarine exercise. The psychological aspect of the Cheonan sinking is discussed in North Korea ICBM test — Trump says, “It’s not going to happen.”.

In NBC: U.S. May Launch Strike on North Korea Nuke Test, I used Benjamin Franklin’s method as the analysis tool. Tools like this may seem utterly crude, yet they help us grapple with the otherwise imponderable. Here’s another tool, which I used to advantage in the IARPA program “Forecasting World Events”,  to predict Assad’s use of chemical weapons around the time of Obama’s “red line.” The reasoning was analogous to the aphorism, “Money burns a hole in the pocket.” The fact of possession of chemical weapons  occupies a certain amount of Bashar Assad’s mental space. To a personal dictator,  possessing the weapon promotes the desire to use the weapon.

Kim Jong Un doubtless knows the saga of the Saphir , a rather small and old French nuclear submarine that, according to reports that may have been suppressed, “sank” in exercises the U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. The diesel-electric submarines possessed by North Korea do not  have the endurance of the Saphir, but make less noise, by which submarines are detected.

There are hints that analysis of the exercise produced initiatives to revise U.S. antisubmarine protocol. Nothing in open source exists to substantiate it, or allow knowledgeable estimates of current strategies. But physics is a very helpful substitute. The ocean is divided into layers of differing salinity and temperature. Each layer  contains and blocks sound from the layers above and below it. If you’d like to read the now-declassified report, it’s available courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute as a pdf.

This is why, against the deepest veil of secrecy, one folkloric saying is widely known: The best hunter of a submarine is another submarine. The U.S. has many submarines specialized for this task. The game gets interesting:

  • A dictator of little intellect has proven toys, diesel electric submarines.
  • The defense against them is not apparent to him, or to us, because of extreme secrecy.
  • If the dictator succeeds in damaging or sinking a U.S. aircraft carrier, his mood will be elation.  But the torpedo must actually hit.
  • If the torpedo misses, the dictator sees no downside. It is his experience, with the Cheonan, that even a hit produces no retaliation.

So there is a significant probability of miscalculation by Kim, engendered by the prior failure of South Korea to retaliate for the sinking of the Cheonan. If Kim were a child, one would say he is the victim of bad parenting.

Kim  may not then understand why his fleet of submarines is then replaced by oil slicks and debris.

Prediction: Sarin Use in Syria

CNN: Putin claims intel shows more chemical attacks planned in Syria. Quoting Putin via CNN,

“We have information from a variety of sources that such provocations … are being prepared in other parts of Syria, including in southern suburbs of Damascus,” Putin said Tuesday during a news conference with Italian President Sergio Mattarella.

It surprises that this is not accompanied by one of the favorite phrases of current journalism: “send a message.” When Putin sends bombers into the U.S. Alaska air identification zone,  he is “sending a message.” A U.S. cruise missile strike on al-Shayrat airfield “sends a message” to Putin. Everybody is sending messages, but apparently, the style is to be very coy.  Now Putin advises us to expect more gas attacks in Syria. But where is the verbiage? He’s not sending us a message?

The specific location mentioned by Putin, the Damascus suburbs,  is noteworthy. The Ghouta chemical attack was the first large scale use of nerve gas in Syria. To date, it accounts for about 80% of all the chemical casualties sustained in the entire Syria civil war.

 The munitions used in the Ghouta attack were rockets. Various web publications portray different degrees of certainty as to which side is responsible. As before, in Russia denies Assad to blame for chemical attack, I refer to the BBC article, Syria chemical attack: What we know, as  more reliable than freely editable open sources on this controversial issue. Quoting,

However, by examining the debris field and impact area where the rockets struck in Muadhamiya and Ein Tarma, the inspectors found “sufficient evidence” to calculate azimuths, or angular measurements, that allow their trajectories to be determined “with a sufficient degree of accuracy”.

When plotted on a map, the trajectories converge on a site that Human Rights Watch said was a large military base on Mount Qassioun that is home to the Republican Guard 104th Brigade.

So let’s print the obligatory phrase: Putin is sending us  a message. There are several reasons why he would be so kind:

  • He couldn’t stop attacks in the Damascus area even if he wanted to. Assad’s rockets cannot be seized, controlled, or interdicted by the Russians in Syria.
  • In other areas,  aircraft may be used. But an endgame for Russia in Syria is nowhere in sight.   The more Assad’s forces can accomplish themselves, the less the Russians will be needed. Against the incredible uncertainties of dealing with  jihadis on the political level, “Assad the victor” is the only compact line of reasoning of sufficient simplicity to pass the Kremlin’s version of Occam’s Razor.
  • The implication that Russia is involved in gas attacks in Syria is potentially very dangerous to Russia. It’s so dangerous, the counter-propaganda comes in advance of the events.

In Notes to Russia, Putin, Medvedev, et al. on Shayrat Airfield, I wrote:

There is danger to Russia in complicity with Assad. If it becomes viral in the Islamic populations of Russia and Central Asia that Russia is complicit in gas attacks, it could boomerang on Russia. …Such a viral idea could not be controlled even by state media. In your justified fear of the potential for jihadism in Russia, do not make your problems worse by creation of a viral myth.

It would be natural to couple the above with the Russian bomber flights to conclude that Putin is “sending a message”, a warning not to countenance a second strike. In Reuters: NATO seeks to manage Russia’s new military deployments; Old Russian Joke, I offer another interpretation. It is an instinctive fear response, like a lizard inflating its sagital crest, or an animal posturing to appear larger than it is.

The thing to recommend this so-called messaging is that it worked very well during the early phase of the Ukraine conflict. Putin’s posturing as the “crazy man” was actually amplified by some western news media looking for article hooks.  This happens too often, as with the hyping of the Russian’s pleasantly named “Satan” missile.

 Now, hopefully, Putin-the-crazy-man is stale schtick. But General McMaster’s NSC may soon be challenged with multitasking two problems:

  • Deterrence of Assad’s use of sarin delivered by primitive, cheap barrage rockets. There is no infrastructure to disable, save destruction of the rockets themselves, which is generally considered too dangerous.
  • The North Korea game, in which the stakes for our close allies and distantly sympathetic China are incomparably higher.

But thank you, Vladimir Putin, for letting us know.

CNN: Russia tried to infiltrate Trump campaign

It is not known whether Page actually rose to the level of misconduct of White, who actually passed confidential information to the Soviet Union. This may have been nipped in the bud.

The danger was certain. The question of a prosecutable offense remains.

 

CNN: U.S. has a Program to Hack North Korea Missiles

CNN: U.S. has a Program to Hack North Korea Missiles. This is called “Left of Launch”

I wish this had been a “black program.” But “Left of Launch” has been peeking from behind the curtain since at least 2015. Quoting the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, (3/15/2015),

The “Left of Launch” strategy has been percolating over the past few years in the bowels of the Pentagon and government labs as part of an effort to reduce the cost of engagement of missile defense and to defeat an outnumbering force of offensive ballistic missiles that continue to proliferate around the world should they be used to threaten the United States and its allies.

Since CNN has given this a certain exposure, I feel I can add a little without helping North Korea. Left of Launch is practical against powers that cannot manufacture integrated circuits of a certain complexity. China, already self-sufficient or nearly so, is not in this class.

Back in the day, integrated circuits were relatively simple. A printed circuit board was required for just part of a small computer. For the most part, each chip performed a function so simple, it could be described by a “truth table”, that could be written down like a spreadsheet. You could test each chip and know exactly what it does.

The progress of integrated circuitry was so astonishingly rapid that it outran the words used to describe it. “LSI”, large scale integration, had at least a thousand gates. VLSI had many more. But some modern chips have more than a billion gates!

If you have something that complicated, and it has only a thousand pins (connections to the outside world) or so, can it be tested? Can the maker ever know whether it has any, shall we say, behavior, that is not in the specifications?

M.G. Karpovsky, a mathematician and digital logic  innovator, answered the question in the early 80’s. You can test about 71% of it. The rest is forever hidden. It would take something like the age of the universe to test all the combinations. Instead of being sure, it goes into your smartphone or laptop. At least it won’t catch fire like the battery.

A North Korean missile designer has two options. He can design the electronics for his rocket the really, really old way, using thousands of SSI (small scale integration) chips. It’s very tough to do this., and even harder to do it compactly. It was last done well by the famous names of U.S. computing. The rest gave up. Examination of scrapped Soviet electronics suggests their missiles might have not actually worked, so bad was their attempt. (Soviet missiles had a backup mechanical switch  so that if the missile actually hit the ground, it would at least not be a total dud.)

The modern alternative is to build the missile electronics out of Big Chips, with spiffy acronyms like ASIC, FPGA, and CPLD. All these chips are subject to the 71% rule. In the unknown 29%, these chips could be having their own conversation on the side. And Karpovsky has shown there is no way to test the truthfulness of a big chip.

Could Kim & Co. examine the chips with a microscope? It is doubtful they could learn anything, since an elaborate scanning system would be required for comparison with a “true” chip. Could Kim & Co. seek alternate suppliers? This is doubtful, since the technology remains in the hands of the G7. But as the technology diffuses, it could happen in the future.