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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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/what_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/1clxfn8/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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
> 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).
I'm not contemptuous or mocking, and I'm sorry it came across that way. I am annoyed at having my time wasted by what I feel is a clickbait article.
Given the article title, the accusation of straw-manning is really unfair. Your comment would also have been better without the jab; if you're familiar with the field then we both know why I left science for software, and it isn't because of a lack of jobs.
Gently: The snark you’re getting is undeserved, but you are doing the “but why male models?” thing. You gotta make a left turn here :)
Let’s reset: Hey, did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo? Did they actually? Despite all the reasons they wouldn’t? If they did, why? Was it a mistake or on purpose? Neither one quite makes sense.
Those are interesting questions! But there’s no alleged secrets leak, and there’s nothing else that’s interesting about that specific picture. You could say it’s implied somehow, but in that case you really got got by anti-clickbait. “Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?” is the whole riddle, and the answer is the whole blog post.
Well, I think the (wouldn't really call it snark, more accurate dissection) is deserved, and instructive! But otherwise I think you're right. They are interesting questions, and gnarfgabrl (or whatever) seemed obtusely resistant, to the point of needlessly quarrelsome for quarrels sake, of appreciating that genuine interestingness.
To base an adjudication of the accusation of straw manning on an article title is proving my point so thanks. Hahaha! :)
Your "apology" would be better (and real) without the mislaying of responsibility: you cannot be sorry for "how it came across" (ie, other people's reactions, not your responsibility). You can only be sorry, if you think you have something to be sorry for, for what you did. Otherwise it seems like a fake apology where you pretend the blame is other people's reactions, rather than how you acted. Hahaha! :) Get it? Yeah, anyway. :)
I just felt you were being deliberately provocative based off an incomplete understanding/reading of the article, for attention (mocking genuine outrage). Which is basically live straw manning HN for selfish reasons, so I attacked with insight. Was i wrong?
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.”
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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."
> 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).
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!
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
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.
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).
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.
> 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!
> ...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.
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.
> 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
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).
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.
plus the us disinvolvment has driven incentives to get nukes through the roof.ukraine support is a scary casus belli if you are the neighbor of a landenpire.
Now imagine broke Pakistan auctioning off nukes to american allies in eastern europe or chinese neighbors. the maga movement has a price tag and thats that for this world order.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.