Port 80

This morning, a piece has been making the rounds of the blogosphere claiming that a member on a terrorist forum has posted instructions for how to make a hydrogen bomb. This naturally piqued my interest, so I followed Michelle Malkin’s link to Internet Haganah, who linked to the actual forum post.

Five minutes later, I almost fell out of my chair laughing.

This forum post is priceless. It is one of the best pieces of scientific satire I have ever seen. I can only hope and pray that terrorist groups attempt to construct an atomic bomb using these instructions - if they survive the attempt, they’ll have at least wasted months of effort.

Perhaps the high point of this instructions is the author’s advice on enrichment of uranium hexaflouride:

First transform the gas into a liquid by subjecting it to pressure. You can use a bicycle pump for this. Then make a simple home centrifuge. Fill a standard-size bucket one-quarter full of liquid uranium hexafluoride. Attach a six-foot rope to the bucket handle. Now swing the rope (and attached bucket) around your head as fast as possible. Keep this up for about 45 minutes. Slow down gradually, and very gently put the bucket on the floor. The U-235, which is lighter, will have risen to the top, where it can be skimmed off like cream. Repeat this step until you have the required 10 pounds of uranium. (Safety note: Don’t put all your enriched uranium hexafluoride in one bucket. Use at least two or three buckets and keep them in separate corners of the room. This will prevent the premature build-up of a critical mass.)

There are two primary problems with these instructions:

1. The difference in mass between an molecule of uranium hexaflouride with U-235 and a molecule of uranium hexaflouride with U-238 is precisely 3 neutrons. Since these substances are chemically identical, they will tend to mix with currents in the bucket, and not separate “like cream.” Thus, the force exerted by a spinning bucket will not even begin to produce enriched U-235. Real centrifuge enrichment processes use thousands of extremely high speed centrifuges, one feeding the next, to create highly enriched uranium.
2. At room temperature and pressure, uranium hexaflouride is a solid.

The instructions also feature these gems, which are but a meager sample of the hilarities in this post:

• Michio Kaku, the noted string theorist, is a nuclear physicist.
• Edward Teller will be interested to know that, once you have an A-bomb, building an H-bomb is merely “frosting on the cake.”
• The difference between a gun-barrel and implosion bomb is not worth mentioning in the article.

The article then finishes up with a quiz on whether you, the reader, are “emotionally eligible to join the H-bomb club.”

Clearly, this article was written as a satire piece. But where did it come from? A little Googling on key phrases (try “casing of an old Hoover”) reveals that this set of “instructions” has been around for a long time - the oldest online appearance I can find is a 1994 posting to the USENET group rec.humor.funny. The introduction to that posting, along with the text of the article, suggest that these instructions were copied from the alternative national magazine Seven Days. Unfortunately, I can’t provide a link to Seven Days, as it was folded into The Nation in 1980. These “instructions” have been in circulation for at least 25 years.

The fact that this article is a satirical piece is not an indication that we don’t need to worry about nuclear terrorism. (Although we probably don’t need to worry about nuclear terrorism from the members of that particular forum.) It is a reminder that we ought to take “instructions” of this nature with a very large grain of salt. Building nuclear weapons is, to use an engineering euphemism, “non-trivial.” In the 1940s, it took the top physicists in the world years and a crash government program to pull it off. Today, atomic weapons are within the reach of most nations which can supply sufficient funding. However, we still have a long way to go before uranium enrichment becomes an afternoon kitchen chemistry project.

Today, we’re going to learn how to make plutonium from common household items. — Philo on Secrets of the Universe, UHF

Update: Welcome, Michelle Malkin readers! If you’re curious as to what else I’ve written, this post has a few good starting points.

It’s housekeeping time at Port 80: My last few posts need a few updates, and I’m going to take care of them all at once.

The War on Terrorism: “Surprise, Surprise, Surprise”

In “Surprise, Surprise, Surprise,” I promised to discuss why I felt that Jihadist terrorists could not be appeased or negotiated with. As I worked on this post, it began to involve into a general discussion of causes and roots of the War on Terror. However, this is a subject that many others in the blogosphere have already covered excellently. Thus, rather than reinvent the wheel, I’ve chosen to present a small selection of essays which I think best explain the current global situation.

I would start with “Out of Context” by Anticipatory Retaliation, which does a brilliant job of explaining the difference between what has been termed “September 10th thinking” and “September 12th thinking.” If you cannot comprehend the reasoning of those who prattle on and on about the War on Terror (or if you cannot comprehend the reasoning of those who don’t), this post is vital reading.

The quickest summary of the current situation and what must be done to deal with it is provided by Eric S. Raymond in his short “Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto.” On the other end of the brevity spectrum, there is Stephen den Beste’s “Strategic Overview.” While I don’t totally agree with all of den Beste’s arguments (notably as to the exact root cause of the current war), his work makes for a fascinating and thought-provoking read.

Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not mention “Three Conjectures” by Wretchard of the Belmont Club, who explores just how ugly the War on Terrorism could get. den Beste’s follow-up essay is also worth reading. However, don’t start on either of these if you plan on sleeping anytime soon.

Computer Security: “The Future of the Internet”

“The Future of the Internet” is the single post on this website that has gotten the most interesting responses. I’ve gotten e-mails from individuals in the computer security industry about the work, and have seen links to it reposted to other forums on the web. (I’ve also seen one individual try to repost the entire text - but trying to fit a 4000 word essay into a text box on a web page proved to be a bit too much.)

Now, however, the print media have picked up the article. The July 12th issue of New Scientist magazine briefly quoted the post in an article (”Vigilantes on the net,” by Barbara Moran) discussing the impact of counterstrike systems on computer security:

As web pundit Zachary Heaton of Dayton, Ohio, wrote online earlier this month, “Internet users everywhere are in for a wild ride.”

If you’re interested, the full article is available through the New Scientist archives, which you can get a guest pass for from the New Scientist website. (The exact issue is Volume 182, Issue 2451.) The focus of the article is far more on the short-range effects of counterstrike systems than the long-range effects I focused on, but it’s a worthwhile read.

While I don’t know about the claims of some that weblogs are “the new media,” it’s nice to see the “old media” taking notice of them. How else does an unknown self-published essayist get quoted in the same article as the network administrator of MIT, the head of the FBI’s Criminal Computer Intrusion unit, and miscellaneous other notable security experts, computer scientists, and attorneys?

It’s official: The FBI thinks that there is an elevated risk of terrorist attacks this summer.

In the words of Gomer Pyle: Surprise, surprise, surprise.

This is the precise reason that many were so dismayed at the actions of the Spanish electorate after the Madrid railway bombings: By supporting Zapatero as the Prime Minister, the Spanish taught al Qaeda that a mass-casualty attack immediately prior to an election could influence the result of that election to benefit al Qaeda. The ousted Anzar had committed troops to Iraq, the incoming Zapatero immediately withdrew all Spanish forces from the region, causing the withdrawal of the Honduran contingent as well.

Now, with US elections coming up in November, is it any shock that al Qaeda might try the same tactic again? They have learned that it is costly to engage US troops on the battlefield, but by attempting to influence the American elections, they may succeed in having the American forces in Iraq withdrawn quickly (or at least ahead of schedule) for a far lower cost. If the new Iraqi government can be collapsed after a US withdrawal, al Qaeda will not only have removed a major American base of operations in the Middle East, they will have created a new base of operations for themselves.

(more…)

Once again, DARPA’s Information Awareness Office has come up with a wonderful idea to fight terrorism. Unfortunately (and also, once again) the same office has demonstrated such an incredible lack of public relations skills that the same brilliant idea has been canned.

By now, I’m sure that you’ve heard of the proposed Policy Analysis Market, which was designed to create a sort of futures market for terrorist attacks and other such events. To quote from the website’s homepage (which is now only available through the Google cache).

Analysts often use prices from various markets as indicators of potential events. The use of petroleum futures contract prices by analysts of the Middle East is a classic example. The Policy Analysis Market (PAM) refines this approach by trading futures contracts that deal with underlying fundamentals of relevance to the Middle East. Initially, PAM will focus on the economic, civil, and military futures of Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey and the impact of U.S. involvement with each.

The contracts traded on PAM will be based on objective data and observable events. These contracts will be valuable because traders who are registered with PAM will use their money to acquire contracts. A PAM trader who believes that the price of a specific futures contract under-predicts the future status of the issue on which it is based can attempt to profit from his belief by buying the contract. The converse holds for a trader who believes the price is an over-prediction Ð she can be a seller of the contract. This price discovery process, with the prospect of profit and at pain of loss [sic], is at the core of a marketÕs predictive power.

At its core, the idea being proposed here is that of using a genetic algorithm to attempt to predict regional instability. (Genetic algorithms have actually been used to simulate stock markets before.) The basic idea behind a genetic algorithm is simple: You take a shotgun approach to predicting the answer to a question. Those rules (or genes) that do a better job of predicting the answer are weighted more heavily than those which don’t, and the process is repeated with the weighting in place. In a market, the feedback is equivalent to how much money each trader has to invest in futures. If you’re right, the amount of influence you have over the market goes up. If you’re wrong, the amount of influence you have goes down. Thus, most of the control over the market is given to those individuals who have the best track record in predicting events.

Unfortunately, DARPA decided to put this plan out on the internet, and to use real money. Both of these ideas have merit in an abstract, academic sense — using the internet opens the market to a wider range of perspectives, and using real money ensures that traders take the market seriously. Unfortunately, those ideas combine to form a public relations nightmare, which we saw explode today. Nothing kills a project like the phrase “Betting on Terror” splashed across every newspaper in the country.

Sadly, this is an almost exact repeat of what happened to the Terrorism (formerly Total) Information Awareness program. What started out as a very logical approach to identifying suspicious behavior using statistical patterns got demonized into visions of a 1984-esque police state.

Much of the problem is very, very bad PR management on the part of DARPA and the Information Awareness Office. The IAO in particular seems not to have realized that any proposal placed on the Internet is instantly subject to public scrutiny, and that using language that may be appropriate in an academic environment may cause a firestorm in a non-academic environment. The result of this political shortcoming is that potentially useful terrorism-fighting systems are getting the axe, and it is doubtful that any of the axed systems will be viable in the near future. Hopefully, DARPA can get its act together before another good idea hits the fan.

Update

The New York Times has exhibited a wonderful degree of schizophrenia on this issue. Yesterday they presented an editorial Poindexter’s Follies, an editorial calling for the immediate firing of John Poindexter and the closure of the “wacky intelligence operation” he runs at DARPA. Today, a separate piece in the business section argues that the futures market was actually a good idea killed by bad press. Determining which section of the paper might know more about how a futures market works is left as an exercise for the reader.

Markets do not always operate perfectly in the larger world of stocks and bonds. The idea that they can reliably forecast the behavior of isolated terrorists is ridiculous. — Editorial staff, New York Times, July 30

Similar markets have been organized to predict shifts in Federal Reserve monetary policy, the outcome of political conventions and sales of consumer products. The results are that markets typically perform at least as well, and generally better, than feasible alternatives, and they are much cheaper to organize. — Hal R. Varian, New York Times, July 31

I think it is necessary to say a little more on one of the points raised by Tony Blair’s speech, which I mentioned and linked to previously. One of the points Blair noted was the possibility of the convergence of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. In effect, the idea of such a convergence is the idea that warfighting capabilities that were previously the domain of nation-states are approaching the domain of individuals or small groups. This is not a new event in history. The closest parallel that I can call to mind is the development of the English longbow and gunpowder, and their rivalry of the sword as chosen weapons of war.

Maintaining a swordsman – or a mounted knight – was not a cheap affair. There is a reason that the European feudal system was arranged in such a way as to support the knights of the day — it took the work of a lot of peasants to generate enough wealth to provide for one knight. In other words, serious warfighting power was reserved to relatively large groups of people.

With the development of firearms and the longbow, this ceased to be the case. (I ask the forgiveness of any students of military history — I know that I am drastically simplifying the development of these weapons, but I am trying to make a point about the core effect they had.) With these weapons, serious warfighting power was made available to much smaller groups of people and even to individuals. Two of the societies that confronted this change – Europe and Japan – dealt with the problem in very different ways. Europe embraced firearms, and feudal society gradually collapsed as its rationale for being was removed. Japan, one of the few nations in history to voluntarily reject new technology, gradually eliminated all firearms from the islands, put the manufacturers of firearms out of business, and remained a nation of feudal swordsmen.

The Japanese decision to preserve their society rather than face the consequences of new technology cost them greatly when the gates to Japan were thrown open by Admiral Perry and a fleet of cannon-armed warships. Lacking any effective means to use against these warships, Japan’s isolationist foreign policy was literally ended at gunpoint.

The Japanese example suggests that avoiding the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction may be a mistake. To truly prevent the spread of these weapons, public research into diseases, immunology, toxicology, and nuclear physics may need to be sharply curtailed. Certainly nuclear power will not be allowed to spread beyond a few heavily-guarded plants. The long-term costs of abandoning these avenues of inquiry are incalculable. How are we supposed to cure disease if investigations into the the spread of disease may aid the construction of biological weapons?

The other example, that of Europe, hardly has better consequences. If the nation-state ceases to be an effective method of collective defense – an unlikely, but possible, result of increasing WMD proliferation – who knows what turns society may take. At the very least, the concept of a nation will be weakened, if not destroyed outright. The widespread advent of firearms destroyed the fiefdom — will the widespread advent of WMDs destroy the state?

Beyond mere societal consequences, the nature of the weapons we are dealing with makes passive acceptance of widespread proliferation an untenable position. An intelligent crackpot armed with a rifle can kill dozens, the same crackpot armed with smallpox can kill thousands. With biological and chemical weapons especially, the cost of a weapon of mass destruction is not influenced by materials, but by technology and expertise. History shows that prices based on technology and expertise rather than raw materials and labor tend to decline rapidly. (If you don’t believe me, consider the falling price/power ration of the computer.)

What is the solution? If we suppress those things which are needed for the manufacture of WMDs, we risk crippling science, and thus society. However, if we don’t suppress these materials and pieces of information, we risk either radically disrupting or possibly destroying society. This is not a minor dilemma we face.

The long-term solution undoubtably lies somewhere in the middle ground between two extremes. Although some technological progress will surely be made that can limit the impact of WMDs, our long-term goal must be the construction of a world where, although weapons of mass destruction are available, they are not used. Bear in mind, however, that MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction, for those who are not students of the Cold War) is useless against lunatics, and that even one use of WMDs may constitute an unacceptable loss. The process of creating such a world may begin with the removal of dictatorships such as that of Saddam Hussein, but it cannot stop with mere removal. It will be necessary to stabilize many troubled regions of the world — Palestine and the Middle East, Kashmir, the Koreas, the Balkans, Africa. Providing the details and methodology of this stabilization is left as a trivial exercise for the reader.