>>Audio's good? >>Yes >>Okay so
I'm 3AlarmLampScooter and uh
today I'm giving a talk on DIY
Nukeproofing so, show of hands
real quick, anyone here try to
come to this talk last year?
Anyone? Anyone? We've got a few
okay. Anyone spotted as a fed in
the spot the fed panel that uh
replaced this talk last year?
[chuckle] Okay guess no one's
that brave. So anyways [chuckle]
ah got a little, a little
background radiation I guess
you'd say as far as uh
motivations for this. I
originally submitted this talk
to CFP uh with some outstanding
questions as to what exactly
that I could and couldn't
discuss uh there was actually
some information in this talk
that was pretty previously
classified but has since been
published in an open access
journal and uh I couldn't- I
couldn't deliver that content
last year as it had not yet been
published and uh now I'm you
know not afraid of ending up in
getmode to discuss it that info
specifically is uh third
generation laser isotope
separation technology. In
addition to that unfortunately
there was some tritium
implicitly imported for the
black badges last year and uh
also I was warned you know,
don't- don't get caught up in
that. So I guess that's- that's
a little bit about background.
I'm really trying to keep this
fast 'cause we've only got like
what? Ten minutes or whatever.
Anyways, so we're just going to
talk about physics a little bit
uh as we move into DIY
Nukeproofing. Uh there's kind of
more fear uncertainty and doubt
surrounding nuclear weapons than
uh perhaps any other technology
out there especially their
hypothetical capabilities in
electronic warfare, of course
Defcon is a computer security
conference and nuclear weapons
and fortunately for the most
part have not done much physical
damage in the last seven decades
outside of some cold war
accidents however Defcon did
originally stand for defense
condition and I think it's a
valuable form to look at how the
confluence of factors in
technologies are uh causing what
you can basically refer to as a
changing threat landscape on the
nuclear side. Uh so to really
brock the gestalt of nuclear
weapons and the threat landscape
that has been there in the past
uh we kind of have to go back to
a little quick remedial physical
lesson you've got uh two
different main isotopes of
Uranium and Uranium two thirty-
[audience shouting] >>It's
really hard to understand >>Okay
let me try and speak up a little
bit more, so we're gonna have a
uh like a ninety second remedial
physics lesson here if my
microphone could work properly
[laugh] we've got two different
isotopes of Uranium that are
kind of important to all this,
one of them is Uranium 235 the
other is Uranium 238 they uh
differ by three neutrons and
that is why they have different
mass and uh a kind of the real
short version of this- I had a
lot more prepared- but you can
use what's called the kinetic
isotope effect to separate uh
the hi- uh the lighter from the
heavier uranium and uh the
lighter uranium 235 actually is
what's called fissile material,
if you hit it with a neutron it
can sustain a nuclear reaction
if it's enriched above around
five percent usually unless it's
a you know pressurized light
water reactor uh anyways the uh
the heavier uranium isotope is
much more stable, has about four
and a half billion year half
life whereas the uh lighter
uranium isotopes about seven
hundred million years and uh if
you manage to get about a fifty
seven kilogram ball of this
lighter isotope separated out of
the heavy stuff that's naturally
occurring at ninety nine point
seven er sorry ninety nine point
three percent. Naturally uranium
you can uh you can actually make
a- a physics package as they
euphemistically call uh a
nuclear weapons uh with again
about fifty seven kilograms as a
minimum uh for the 235 content
uh interestingly uh uranium 238
is also not just a nerd filler
you can actually hit it with a
neutron and it will undergo a
transmutation to plutonium 239
which is also fissile material
actually has about a uh ten
kilogram critical mass that
translates to about the size of
a baseball uh but you need a
nuclear reactor that's running
to do that, so that is a very
difficult thing for a anything
but a really a nation state
actor to do whereas as I'll get
to this uh U235 route to uh a
physics package is becoming more
practical for a potential
proliferator. So moving on a
little bit more uh we kind of
had the original proliferation
was uh was really the United
States in Manhattan project back
around World War two and I
really again won't touch on too
much here I'll just try and go
with the very basics but kind of
the one on the uh the device on
the right there was called Fat
Man that was a plutonium
implosion style device again you
need a nuclear reactor to build
that uh pretty difficult to come
up with the plutonium uh you
also need explosive lensing
because plutonium is uh
naturally liable to kind of go
off ahead of time whereas
uranium isn't uh you need to
slam several pieces of the
plutonium together at a very
high speed and that's also
something that's non trivial
with explosives engineering. The
one on the left uh Little Boy
which was dropped on uh
Hiroshima versus Fat Man was
dropped on uh on Nagasaki uh the
one on the left is much much
easier to build uh again as I'll
get to because of third
generation laser light strip
separation uh so moving on again
real quick and I'm skipping over
so much content but I want to
get into essentially the USSR
you know Soviet Russia at the
time- ripped off uh the US'
design they had a spy named
Klaus Fuchs in Manhattan
project, he turned over a lot of
diagrams and uh information on
the US' army in the Manhattan
project over to the Rosenbergs
who were subsequently
electrocuted for their spying by
the US and uh then the USSR made
uh RDS-1 or Stalin's Jet Engine
and that kind of really got the
Cold War into uh into over drive
you could say um So anyways
moving on from there uh there
was of course further R and D in
nuclear weapons and this is
honestly not super duper
relevant to the presentation
either, there were what were
called teller-ulam devices which
is where you have a nuclear
fusion reaction going on near a
fission reaction and uh again
that actually requires a
hydrogen isotope called tritium
it's quite rare and there have
not been any big breakthroughs
recently in in producing er uh
er in uh separating tritium out
from regular hydrogen so that's
again not super duper relevant
other than you know the largest
fireworks out there essentially
try- tsar bomba was uh weighed
over fifty megaton detonation
that the USSR did. Uh so moving
on again [chuckle] uh there were
a lot of other countries that
you know proliferated and uh
there was the UK, France, China,
India, Pakistan, etc. I kind of
call them all the nuclear also
rans. Most of them didn't do
anything to uh necessarily
innovative uh but one of the big
exceptions to that which was
interesting from a strategy
perspective, and I'll get into
strategy a get- uh again in a
second is uh Israel, and they've
officially maintained nuclear
ambiguity uh supposedly they
might have set off a nuke in
1979 called the- the Vela
incident somewhere in the uh
[whistles] you know exact se-
but anyways the Vela incident in
nine- 1979 was supposedly a test
of theirs but they don't confirm
or deny that they have nuclear
weapons so all outside sources
have that kind of graph on the
right there as a uh as a
probability distribution of how
much plutonium they likely have
with yeah know low end there and
the uh five hundred kilogram
range and a high end in the nine
hundred kilogram range and
that's uh that's kind of that
and then on the left you kind of
see this graph of uh you know
the stock pile of the world over
time. In the US and USSR were
essentially engaged in uh kind
of deadlock race to try and get
the most nuclear weapons up
until there was a change in
strategy that I'll get to in a
second and then that kind of
came down and then over time you
had these other countries
emerging and uh and also joining
the nuclear club. So here are
three people who I think were
really central to kind of that
graph we saw previously. The uh
the first one is John von
Neumann and the really
interesting thing that he did is
he came up with what was called
mutually assured destruction
which was sort of the idea that
as long as you've got two super
powers that are perpetually
locked in a uh you know a cold
war essentially that they will
never nuke each other because
they're afraid of getting blown
up by the other. And uh he kind
of said you know the only way
you can keep a a strategy like
that going is you have to have a
massive response of being able
to obliterate the other side no
limited response of just you
know tit for tat uh and that was
a a bit of a interesting
strategy at the time fortunately
nuclear war obviously never
happened but one of the guys who
was really uh instrumental in
changing that strategy and I'd
say led to a lot of those
stockpile eruptions over time
was Herman Kahn and he argued uh
rather controversially in his
book on thermonuclear war which
was rather famously parodied by
Stanley Kubrick's as Dr.
Strangelove uh the concept of
winability which is
controversial though I wouldn't
say he looked as much of that as
uh as really you know how you
can make it a little more
survivable uh and what he
essentially concluded and he
quite controversial was an
extensive fortification anti
ballistic missile and related
and defense technologies uh were
not the only way of looking at a
massive retaliatory response or
as he called it a 'wargasm' you
could uh end up having a
tremendous amount of over
targeting where mass gallons of
you know pointing a dozen
warheads at a hot dog stand at
the pentagon or vice versa. Uh
but his thinking was certainly
heard in Moscow too they
excavated M2 a second
clandestine subway for uh soviet
leadership, Kennedy also looked
at uh a bunker at one point too
but that was never built under
Washington um and then the third
guy on the right there is quite
interesting uh Abdul Qadeer Khan
and he was essentially the first
state agnostic uh proliferator
of nuclear technology and he
pretty much just spread it
around everywhere- I won't get
into too much but he uh was
called the father of Pakistan's
nuclear program but he really
proliferated to a lot of other
countries including North Korea,
Iran and he he originally worked
for Uranko in the Netherlands
and he developed a non proved
version of uh Centrifuge to
separate out uranium and then he
just went and dealt it
essentially to the highest
bidder [chuckle] uh so let's
move on again uh yes so one of
the big things- my slides are a
little off of work here
[chuckle] uh but one of the big
things really with reexamining
this threat model uh is not
necessarily looking at mu- as
much as a uh full out nuclear
wars perhaps um maybe an EMP uh
EMP event and that is something
that was learned to a large
degree during US testing ah back
in 50s and 60s there was the uh
the starprish- starfish prime
shot which took out about uh a
third of the satellites uh
orbiting the planet at the time
and this was uh you know well up
into the exosphere this is not a
detonation down near the ground
and uh what it does essentially
is it ionizes the plasma in the
upper atmosphere, ionizes the
gas in the upper atmosphere into
plasma and uh that leads to a
compton current where a very
large amount of electrons are
all coming downward and then you
have relatively broadband
radiation down from the very low
frequency ELF side all the way
up to uh you know a mid range
microwave if you up to a few
gigahertz uh all projected by
the CNP of course this would be
a quite catastrophic potentially
to electronics if you see a map
here of just a an EMP over South
Dakota you know a few hundred
miles up you can have voltage
strengths of you know five
thousand to fifty thousand volts
per meter in some of these bands
you know the red one there is
fifty thousand the uh kind of
turquoise ish is is more of five
thousand and uh you know
obviously you need schuling for
that so this is something that
US government and military has
been pretty proactive about ever
since the starfish prime test
but the civilian sectors really
been lagging behind and uh oh my
goodness I'm running out of time
already let me run into this
much longer uh I guess the
[inaudible] are out anyways
[chuckle] uh so when you think
about a uh this proportionate
risk for high altitude for EMP
uh you really think of maybe a
non state actor more even than
necessarily a state wanting to
do something like this I mean it
would be a tremendously
devastating attack from an
economic perspective- I'm
waiting for a hook any minute by
the way uh but uh oh dear uh
yeah in terms of a hypothetical
day to day life post EMP really
the industries would be hardest
hit is anything that relies on a
just in time supply chain so in
terms of goods and services,
anything uh could be uh very
homogenous you know availability
from area to area uh most
internet backend providers are
pretty EMP hard in this day and
age and some of them uh can be a
little more forward thinking
even in commercial data centers
uh of course uh a lot of devices
would survive that are just very
small because there is a uh kind
of upper limit on the
frequencies that this EMP puts
out and as I said that's the
gigahurtz so if you have a small
enough device that doesn't
really behave like an antennae
anymore and if it's not plugged
into you know a large power line
which is maybe resonating at say
uh you know somewhere extremely
low frequency range and if that
device is more likely to
survive. Uh then you know you
might just well we haven't had
an EMP attack in over the last
half century in which we've
known about these effects, is it
really something to be concerned
over? And I'd say some concern's
reasonable but certainly not
panic uh however the interesting
thing I'm going to get to if I
can get this video up here in
one second [chuckle] uh is this
new uranium uh separation
technology. It's in the video-
videos folder here and uh this
uh the CEO of Silex systems
actually uh explains the uh
explains it quite well. If we
can hear. Do we have audio? I
guess we might not have audio
here. Oh dear. Okay well I guess
we're not getting uh audio on
our videos for now so we'll just
go ahead and skip over but
basically this guy says that
they build this uh great new
laser enrichment technology in
uh in Australia and this indeed
uh has been ongoing for the last
couple decades, and then
surprisingly there is a wild
proliferation assessment a lot
of people have been calling for
a proliferation assessment of
third generation laser isotope
separation and one came out it
was published by a postdoc at
princeton named Ryan Snyder and
uh he essentially said you know
it looks like this is pretty
sim- carbon dioxide laser
technology they've probably
started working on carbon
monoxide laser technology and
that the uh possibility exists
that such a system could be
indigenously assembled which is
kind of just code for saying
this is not a very hard thing to
build like you could get your
hands on uranium in theory and
uh enriching it would would
really no longer be a huge
undertaking of nation states
making centrifusion spending a
lot- you know tens of thousands
of RPM that's really no longer
necessary with uh just gas laser
technology I mean we're talking
relatively simple things you can
build out, marks generators
which are made out of capacitors
and spark caps are stalled so it
switches and uh and that's
really kind of you know
switching things up because you
don't need that huge capital
investment and a lot of non
state actors may be able to
indigenously proliferate in the
future and uh that's why I think
we may be looking at kind of a
future of arms control failure
at least from the perspective of
being able to stop enrichment
because it's difficult to pick
up somebody making uh laser
isotope separation setup versus
a medical laser or you know just
anything that needs a lot of
pulse capacitors for example uh
so as much as I hate to agree
with Donald Trump on the issue
of nuclear arms control I I
think totality of the evidence
may point to uh being kinda
shoot [inaudible] for lack of a
better term. Granted there is uh
great progress elsewhere in our
arms control like the Newsford
experiment for remotely
detecting uh isotope signatures
operating nuclear reactors um
most arms control has really
been more around policy of
restricting enrichment but again
that's really going to be a lot
harder with uh with this Silex
process being reverse engineered
now. In terms of locating a
clandestine proliferation
facility uh turns out you only
need about seventy two hundred
kilograms of uh uranium ore in
order to proliferate and the
facility might fit within about
two hundred square meters so
this this could be very
challenging there really haven't
been too many good intelligent
solutions out there yet for this
Uh in addition to the
comparatively low upfront
capital expenditures the ability
to indigenously assemble laser
enrichment facilities really
presents a significant
operational security advantage
for a proliferator versus uh a
say probing an existing supply
chain to find an X to AQ con
because you'll need centrifuges.
Uh in terms of building a
realistic future of threat model
for a potential asymmetric
nuclear reactors I think
stepping back into the annuls of
civilian misadventure with
energetic materials is really
warranted, I mean you can say
for every you know Timothy
McVader ten thousand Jason
Pierre-Paul's who blow their
finger off with fireworks
[chuckle] for lack of a better
analogy and I think you probably
see a lot of similar things if
there's uh indeed a a surge in
nuclear proliferation in the
future you may see a lot of
accidents by would be
proliferators before you see
anything that actually uh know
comes to fruition uh you know in
the moral words of Boris Baranov
you can't make an omelet without
breaking some eggs pooksy
[laugh] so really in terms of
what to do with it you know like
I said I think the high altitude
EMP uh is really the you know
kind of the most likely threat
model given the really
disproportionate uh kind of
effect it can have on a whole
society versus you know maybe
you can affect a few square
miles with a ground detonation,
you can affect a country with a,
a high altitude EMP, uh and
believe it or not shielding is
actually not that difficult you
know you look at like a picture
of the Cheyenne mountain complex
well that was designed to
survive a five megaton direct
strike uh granted it's even
deprecated now 'cause there are
precise enough missiles to hit
it over and over and over again
are held by nation states but
when you think about just kind
of a pop shot coming in and you
know exploding at a high
altitude believe it or not
something like a trashcan can
give you you know forty or fifty
decibels of shielding if you
tape it up properly so it
doesn't act as a slot antennae
and let alone you know steel
culverts, drainage pipes, uh
there are really a tremendous
amount of options as far as
shielding goes the important
thing is just the inside of the
shielding it has to be non
electrically conductive whereas
the shielding itself has to be
electrically conductive and then
uh very large devices are going
to also need magnetic shielding
in addition to just conductive
electric shielding. So I decided
to look at you know some
different options for this and
uh you know you can obviously go
small like trash can or whatever
or go ahead and actually you
know purpose build a hardening
facility and that's where I
looked at uh Mil STD 188 1251
high altitude magnetic pulse
protection- oh we got time?
>>We're done >>Okay, shoot
>>Okay, Thank you! [Applause]
>>Okay thanks a lot [laughs]
