Jeffrey Lewis

Pakistan announced nuclear explosions at two sites in 1998: five at Ras Koh on May 28, then another in the Kharan Desert on May 30. @coreyah.bsky.social identified where the Kharan shot likely happened. I processed 1998 SPOT & LANDSAT imagery and ... she's right! Clear ground disturbance.

ou can read @coreyah.bsky.social 's original article with David Albright and Frank Pabian in Earth Observation Magazine. Corey mentioned it during a conversation at a conference last week, asking if we easier access to data today then she did then. We do!

+1. A lot of the construction of risk has to do with underlying priors about existential and catastrophic risk more so than the particularities of a given technology. That doesn’t mean the view is invalid; but it does imply one should interrogate those assumptions.

Along those lines …

Trump says North Korea has "57 very powerful nuclear weapons." 57 is an oddly specific number. A short 🧵on why the real number is almost certainly higher.

One final caution. Remember Trump's "super duper" missile that Bob Woodward thought was nuclear? We're now pretty sure it was the Common Hypersonic Glide Body. Trump was describing a real program, but mangled beyond recognition. (He also reportedly kept saying "hydrosonic" in private.)

Trump says North Korea has "57 very powerful nuclear weapons." 57 is an oddly specific number. A short 🧵on why the real number is almost certainly higher.

Back to Trump. Where did 57 come from? Maybe he means some subset of North Korea's arsenal? Trump referred to "very powerful" nuclear warheads. I might believe that North Korea has ~60 thermonuclear warheads for ICBMs. That would be a plausible increase from 4-6 in 2019.

Trump says North Korea has "57 very powerful nuclear weapons." 57 is an oddly specific number. A short 🧵on why the real number is almost certainly higher.

How does that square with 250 Hwasong-11 launchers (each with 4 missiles)? Or 80 600 mm MLRS launchers (each with 5-6 rockets)? Or destroyers with VLS cells? North Korea is deploying a lot of missiles to arm with just 57 warheads.

Trump says North Korea has "57 very powerful nuclear weapons." 57 is an oddly specific number. A short 🧵on why the real number is almost certainly higher.

Indeed, North Korea is also producing MANY nuclear-capable delivery systems including new solid- and liquid-fueled ICBMs. Here's Kim looking at an ICBM production run. I count 25+ missiles. We think there are only ~30 more warheads left to go around?

Trump says North Korea has "57 very powerful nuclear weapons." 57 is an oddly specific number. A short 🧵on why the real number is almost certainly higher.

All told, the DPRK has produced roughly 80-100 kg of plutonium and nearly 3,000 kg of HEU. That is enough for many, many more than 57 warheads -- unless they're building W-47s.

Trump says North Korea has "57 very powerful nuclear weapons." 57 is an oddly specific number. A short 🧵on why the real number is almost certainly higher.

Do the math. 60 in 2017, plus 12 a year for nine years would put the upper bound at around 200 warheads today. Even starting with the more cautious figure of ~30 assembled weapons in 2019, one would have to believe North Korea builds only 3-4 weapons per year.

Trump says North Korea has "57 very powerful nuclear weapons." 57 is an oddly specific number. A short 🧵on why the real number is almost certainly higher.

One thing I would add is that my friends at @scientistsorg.bsky.social -- @nukestrat.bsky.social and @mattkorda.bsky.social -- and at @sipri.org all lean toward ~60. Disagreement is healthy as long as we're all appropriately uncertain.

Trump says North Korea has "57 very powerful nuclear weapons." 57 is an oddly specific number. A short 🧵on why the real number is almost certainly higher.

I wish we would take this opportunity to reduce over-classification instead of endorsing over-classification as a pretext to attack Trump. He’s broken enough real laws that we don’t have to endorse the fake ones.

Fact check: True. Caddell was talking about Reagan-like landslide for Romney in 2012 but in the end it wasn’t even particularly close as Obama swept Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania, while picking off Florida and Ohio.