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Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?

gnfargbl
51 replies
8h30m

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.

defrost
25 replies
8h13m

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.

https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/about-me/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Wellerstein

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.

gnfargbl
24 replies
7h35m

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.

defrost
9 replies
7h7m

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.

scubbo
4 replies
1h49m

walked up to the line

I'm not familiar with that idiom, and searching for it only gives me "Walk the line" - what does it mean?

fragmede
0 replies
1h6m

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.

MereInterest
0 replies
1h6m

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.

Merad
0 replies
1h10m

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."

MadnessASAP
0 replies
59m

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.

gnfargbl
2 replies
7h1m

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.

rsfern
0 replies
5h9m

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.

renhanxue
0 replies
3h13m

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.

[0]: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2021/05/17/how-not-to-redact...

morpheuskafka
0 replies
3h4m

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.

For example, this Quizlet user is easily searchable given the plethora of military acronyms, and contains information about the location of wiring inside a naval facility and the structure of classified satellite networks: https://quizlet.com/578117055/tcf-specific-flash-cards/ , https://quizlet.com/414907821/eiws-study-guide-here-it-is-bo..., https://quizlet.com/463959814/scif-flash-cards/.

Now Google some of those terms and find more Quizlets: https://quizlet.com/593984066/osi-308-odin-sphere-enclaves-f..., https://quizlet.com/595864454/transport-layers-flash-cards/.

This one has info about hidden security features on a USAF ID badge authorizing access to parked aircraft (logo mistakes and base name spelled with 1 for L): https://quizlet.com/763351519/response-force-member-knowledg....

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.

next_xibalba
8 replies
2h53m

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.

kstrauser
4 replies
1h44m

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.

Titan2189
1 replies
1h8m

I would ask you to elaborate, but I guess that'd be pointless

kstrauser
0 replies
9m

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.

tsss
0 replies
51m

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.

pests
0 replies
28m

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.

forgot-im-old
1 replies
2h23m

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.

They have some interesting images.

next_xibalba
0 replies
2h19m

Link? I can't find any images that articulate a nuclear warhead like the one in OP's link.

gnfargbl
0 replies
1h38m

> 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.

And with good reason: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science

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.

tgsovlerkhgsel
1 replies
4h9m

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).

ethbr1
0 replies
1h52m

Aka most of Congress doesn't have a background in nuclear physics but does want airtime. And everyone reacts when someone yells "Nuclear secrets!"

nmadden
0 replies
7h23m

The article goes into a lot of detail about why the author thinks its unusual.

jonstewart
0 replies
6h24m

Read the article?

DoneWithAllThat
0 replies
5h56m

I’m sorry but all I can think of reading your comment is “but why male models?”.

matthewmcg
6 replies
7h13m

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.”

gnfargbl
4 replies
7h9m

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!

lazide
2 replies
4h22m

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.

fragmede
1 replies
1h0m

Or it's a psyop designed to make adversaries waste their time on a design that couldn't work.

lazide
0 replies
59m

Spooks man, goddamn spooks!

bathtub365
0 replies
3h27m

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.

snowwrestler
0 replies
2h39m

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.

SiempreViernes
5 replies
7h37m

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.

gnfargbl
4 replies
7h19m

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.

proto-n
3 replies
5h25m

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

krisoft
2 replies
3h17m

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.

proto-n
1 replies
2h29m

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."

krisoft
0 replies
2h0m

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).

ianburrell
2 replies
3h13m

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.

scottlamb
1 replies
2h59m

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

ianburrell
0 replies
50m

I meant the other post about wrecks.

tivert
0 replies
3h49m

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!

This linked post of his about an earlier redaction mistake also makes it clear (https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2021/05/17/how-not-to-redact...):

...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.
thadt
0 replies
3h50m

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).

taneliv
0 replies
7h16m

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.

snowwrestler
0 replies
2h42m

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.

mhh__
0 replies
7h22m

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

mannyv
0 replies
1h9m

The best guess about fogbank is that it’s plutonium suspended in aerogel.

freestyle24147
0 replies
1h9m

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.

evo
0 replies
1h18m

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.

bryant
0 replies
6h22m

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.

virgulino
24 replies
10h28m

For anyone interested in the basics of nuclear weapons, I highly recommend the "Nuclear 101: How Nuclear Bombs Work" lectures by Matthew Bunn, a man heavily involved in nuclear arms control.

His lectures are always highly entertaining, a real pleasure to watch.

This is a clip from his lecture explaining the basics of thermonuclear warheads:

https://youtu.be/YMuRpx4T2Rw

And the full “Nuclear 101” lecture, in two parts:

https://youtu.be/zVhQOhxb1Mc

https://youtu.be/MnW7DxsJth0

sidewndr46
22 replies
7h10m

Given the nature of nuclear weapons work, isn't anything presented by someone basically speculation? If he actually had the information he wouldn't be able to talk about it. He seems to have been involved at the government level in the storage and handling of weapons, not production of them.

bitexploder
20 replies
7h7m

Fun idea, there basically are no nuclear secrets. If you look long enough you can pretty much learn everything except some in the weeds details of the most modern nuclear warheads. My basic premise is all our “enemies” have this info by now and the complexity is actually in building them, not how they work or how to build them.

Cthulhu_
11 replies
6h38m

There was once an article in a pop sci magazine 25 odd years ago about how to build a nuke in a house; basically a pipe / barrel from the attic to the basement, a concave bit of plutonium or the right kind of uranium in the basement encased in a good carrier like concrete, and a convex matching part at the top of the barrel. Explosives behind the top one, launch the one towards the other, ????, nuke. In theory.

That said, if it was that easy, I'm sure we would've had terrorist attacks with nukes already. Or if terrorism was that big an issue. I don't know if it hasn't happened yet because technology and three-lettered agencies are doing their job right though.

cannonpr
4 replies
6h32m

Casting, machining or welding plutonium into the right shapes and purities without killing your self, or some of the other exotic metals, without killing your self or making your neighbours sick in a sub 1-3 week horizon is incredibly challenging. The exact geometries you need to achieve aren’t easily available either neither is measuring is you achieved them without again killing your self. Getting a dirty fizzle is a lot easier which is why people are afraid of dirty weapons by terrorists.

lupusreal
0 replies
4h50m

Plutonium won't work in a gun-type device like described in that magazine, the Pu-240 contamination makes it far too sensitive.

lumost
0 replies
5h30m

Making the entire thing efficient enough to actually be delivered to a target is also another matter. This requires precise calculation of the geometries and very precise grades of plutonium, barrel pipe, and explosives. How do you even keep the gun type shapes from deforming in the barrel?

lazide
0 replies
5h10m

Getting the right type of plutonium in sufficient quantity is an order of magnitude harder than either of them - there is essentially no naturally occurring plutonium, it only comes as a side effect of neutron bombardment of specific isotopes of Uranium, which are already hard to seperate, and only under specific conditions are the right types of plutonium isotopes to be useful produced. And even then, it’s non trivial to seperate them.

The whole thing is a giant, high profile, and dirty mess.

AnimalMuppet
0 replies
6h9m

Getting the plutonium, in sufficient quantities, is also non-trivial.

oneshtein
1 replies
4h29m

Chemical attacks, like one sarin attack in Tokyo by Aum Shinrikyo, are few orders of magnitude cheaper than any nuclear attack.

thesuitonym
0 replies
4h40m

I'm sure in 1985 plutonium was available in every corner drugstore, but in 2024 it's a little hard to come by.

taneq
0 replies
6h23m

[Cut to me in 1999 driving my old station wagon down to the local hardware store to pick up a few kilos of highly purified enriched uranium and some C4]

nikcub
0 replies
5h16m

This is the same method published in the BBS/FTP distributed Jolly Rodger's Cookbook in the early 90s.

ClumsyPilot
0 replies
5h41m

> ,I'm sure we would've had terrorist attacks with nukes already. Or if terrorism was that big an issue

There are two problems with that statement. Let’s examine them

Firstly, does majority of terrorists want to nuke NewYork? If you gave 9/11 bombers a 5 megaton warhead, would they use it? You have to remember that many of them imagine they have a just cause.

Second, imagine you are could make a nuke at home and were completely immoral, who would you sell it to?

There are many evil governments and organisations that could pay more and be better clients than terrorists.

xattt
2 replies
7h5m

You might have the theory, you might have an understanding of the materials involved, but you’re missing the way they fit together.

Assembly of the actual warhead could be aided by the OP diagram.

Ginden
1 replies
6h5m

This is merely an engineering problem.

The hardest part of building nukes is acquiring weapon-grade enriched uranium, because it's controlled as hell and you will get bombed if you try to make your own.

If you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on enriched uranium, paying salaries for team of engineers is the easy part.

sidewndr46
0 replies
18m

North Korea, Pakistan, India, South Africa & likely Israel didn't get bombed due to their enrichment programs.

There is a rumor that the USSR flirted with the idea of a pre-emptive strike on Mainland China to decapitate their nuclear program after the Sino-Soviet split. This did not happen obviously.

Iran didn't get bombed, although that may just be because other forms of sabotage were available.

Syria & Iraq on the other hand, yeah those got bombed. But it's not 100% a guarantee.

qchris
0 replies
5h23m

This is concept is a neat one that I think differentiates the real world from many fantasy worlds. In the latter, many of the core problems are built around somebody having "forbidden" or "dark" knowledge, or the heroes needing to find just the right rare answer to some kind of fundamental problem that somebody wrote down but that was suppressed. Think Horcruxes in Harry Potter sort of a deal.

In the real world, we have classification, but by-and-large those are about very specific elements of very specific things (i.e. the exact shape/location of that secondary, not that the secondary exists or that Sandia does modeling of that sort of thing). No one's really the gatekeeper of knowledge of things like nuclear engineering or biological gain-of-function. There's not really a litmus test for someone to attend to a microbiology graduate program or take a chemistry class that would enable them to develop synthetic drugs.

Same thing with martial arts; no one's hiding some secret martial technique. A BJJ purple belt will, in a fistfight, toy with just about anyone else on the planet not trained in jiujitsu like they're a toddler. And you can just, like, walk into many strip malls across the North America, pay your $200/mo, and a few years later of consistently showing up, you're there. No secret death touch or spiritual clarity needed.

meindnoch
0 replies
4h1m

Using publicly available knowledge won't get you a working nuke, even if you have the necessary fissile material. A lot of finicky details have to be just right in order to get a nuclear explosion instead of a fizzle. C.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank

More often than not, comparatively simple chemical reactions are hard to reproduce reliably just by reading the research papers.

jerf
0 replies
5h25m

The hard part has never been the design:

1964, Physics PhD who knew nothing about nuclear physics designs a bomb: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science

Physics junior in the mid-1970s designs a device good enough to impress Freeman Dyson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Aristotle_Phillips#%22A-B...

As search engines continue their trend of considering your search term just a suggestion, I can't pull it up, but there's also a case where a high school physics class decided to try to design one and also came adequately close.

The hard thing that is actually the stopper is the enrichment of the relevant materials. The other hard part is getting the best possible yield; there's huge variances in what you get from the same amount of fuel depending on how well you can put it together before it blows itself apart, but that's not a stopper for a terrorist group. Getting to Hiroshima levels is apparently not that difficult, as evidence by the fact it was done so many decades ago.

Delivery is another major challenge, but I'll consider that separate from the task of creating one at all.

gorjusborg
0 replies
6h51m

Which is probably why the U.S. looks out for uranium enrichment.

JohnMakin
0 replies
5h50m

The fact nukes are hard to make aren't because of lack of knowledge, everyone knows how to make nuclear weapons - the issue is materials. Control of them is closely guarded and you tend to get disappeared or bombed if you make them yourself.

HelloNurse
8 replies
9h1m

This thing could be a test object that doesn't work as an actual nuclear warhead but is similar enough to validate the discussed software: real-world crash tests match software simulations, and being accurate at simulating the dummy is a guarantee of being accurate at simulating classified weapon designs.

eesmith
3 replies
8h47m

Except as the author commented:

Someone reminded me of something I had seen years ago: the British nuclear program at Aldermaston, when it has published on its own computer modeling in the past, used a sort of “bomb mockup” that looks far more deliberately “fake” than this Sandia one. I offer this up as what I would think is a more “safe” approach than something that looks, even superficially, like a “real” secondary design:

This is called the MACE (Modal Analysis Correlation Exercise) assembly, and was created by the UK Atomic Weapons Research Establishment in the 1990s to serve as a sort of a Utah Teapot of weapons structural modeling: a benign shape that could be used to test aspects of the code that would nonetheless tell you if the code would work for real weapons assemblies.
lupusreal
2 replies
8h3m

The author doesn't convincingly rule out the possibility that this is what it is. The other possible answers seem less plausible than it being a fake shape for software testing that happens to look fancier than past test shapes.

eesmith
1 replies
7h11m

The author wasn't trying to be convincing. "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!"

My reply was to point out that the author discussed issues related to HelloNurse's suggestion.

HelloNurse
0 replies
6h32m

The tone of this kind of article has to be nice and diplomatic, and mistakes need to remain hypothetical and attributed to the largest possible organizational unit (DARPA having surprising policies, not the mechanical finite element simulation software team spreading data they consider harmless).

The second object that appears near the end of the article looks like a simplified version of the first with more basic shapes, as if someone was asked by someone else to draw a less suggestive replacement of the original (possibly with the sole purpose of appearing in slides); in a natural design process the cruder design would have appeared first.

cm2187
3 replies
7h57m

No this is an espresso machine!

schmidtleonard
0 replies
5h7m

That radiation case couldn't focus water through coffee beans let alone X-rays onto a pusher.

mindcrime
0 replies
2h57m

No this is an espresso machine!

I don't know... hit it with an HTCPCP request and see if you get back 418 - I'm a Teapot, or not.

aeonik
0 replies
7h3m

A snow cone maker!

kingkongjaffa
7 replies
9h29m

Basically 0 CAD models you see with color coding and a mesh are actually accurate.

In order to mesh the geometry for finite element analysis, the geometry virtually always needs to be defeatured.

So the cross sectional CAD model here is a nice curiosity but basically useless for any reverse engineering purposes which is the key reason this stuff is kept secret.

weinzierl
5 replies
9h18m

In Germany we say "The DIN knows non color". DIN is our standardization organization and informally also how their documents are called.

I did finite element model preparation for a living many year ago and it did not only involve heavy defeaturing but interestingly also remeshing with quads.

Renderers love triangles, FE solvers love boring quads.

krisoft
1 replies
8h6m

Renderers love triangles, FE solvers love boring quads.

Btw even in Blender (which is pure visual rendering) people prefer quads. The common wisdom is that you should keep your topology quads with nice rectangle-ish aspect ratios if you can at all. It is not that triangles don't work, but they have a tendency to do visually unpleasant silly things when animated or sculpted or subdivided.

USiBqidmOOkAqRb
0 replies
5h43m

The "quads only" rationalizations come off as quite cargo-culty.

Sure, edge rings won't have dead ends, and that's useful when adding edge loops to increase detail, but doesn't necessarily mean the topology is of high quality. Using only quads some cursed helix type topology can be constructed.

First thing subdivision will do on non-quads is ortho(1) operator, so a nice averaged vertex in the middle will be added. High side count cylinders will have weird saddles around caps, but that's due to subdivision being wrong tool for the task.

Quads can be abused to look bad too. If a mesh looks bad, it's a bad mesh. If animated mesh looks bad, it's bad rigging and skinning. Knowing "this one industry secret" won't fix those.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_polyhedron_notation#Ori...

kingkongjaffa
0 replies
8h53m

yeah there are several adaptive meshing techniques that use a mixture nowadays, imagine a bar with a hole bored through it, you might use quad meshes for the majority of the bar and then switch to tetrahedral meshes close to the bore hole to better model the curved geometry of the hole, and increase the node density in high stress concentration regions for a more accurate simulation.

cherryteastain
0 replies
8h52m

Most 3D meshes will have a combination of hexahedral and tetrahedral elements anyway so the surface will be a combination of trangular and quadrilateral elements. Accuracy and convergence wise, it doesn't matter as much as polynomial order/time step size/element size.

albrewer
0 replies
2h11m

FE solvers love boring quads

That's because, in a mathematical sense, triangular and tetrahedral meshes aren't able to be as accurate as quickly.

thrwooshfem
0 replies
2h45m

Sandia FEM is using the different blocks (colors) to represent different materials. This is pretty common in a multi physics finite element program.

This story is probably nothing interesting because this went through all the public use approvals needed for public presentations and being available on osti.gov.

It is probably just a toy test problem used on a capabilities logo for Sierra. Maybe it comes from some sort of integration test that is easier to run than the actual problem.

joegibbs
7 replies
8h29m

Say if an adversary with a small nuclear program that hasn’t yet achieved a weapon got a hold of this, what kind of impact would that make?

krisoft
3 replies
8h14m

They would be in possession of an image. It is hard to understand what the author is hand-wringing about. It is not that nobody knows how these weapons are supposed to work. The real barrier is that to obtain the materials necessary you need a big-ish industrial base and if you do that that leaves signatures the relevant agencies can detect.

It is not even clear if when he speaks about "safe" is he talking about being safe from nuclear proliferation, or safe from clueless bureaucrats causing you legal trouble.

renhanxue
0 replies
3h33m

The author is a historian who has published a book that is specifically about the history of nuclear secrecy in the United States. Not about the history of nuclear tech or nuclear weapons, about the history of restricted data, the special classification grade for the information. How the classification works and what is considered safe to release and what isn't is in itself one of his main research interests.

My impression from his book is that his position on nuclear secrecy is that a lot of it is pointless or outright contra-productive, but that isn't really the point of the blog post. The point of the blog post is that if something has changed about what information is considered safe to release, that is interesting to him. He is more interested in the humans and institutions than in the technology, I'd say.

implements
0 replies
5h1m

It is hard to understand what the author is hand-wringing about.

The issue seems to be “Organisations party to classified information have to keep it secret regardless of whether it’s in the public domain”.

As an academic historian the author is intrigued by the diagram - was it a mistake or was it authorised as a declassified representation? Either way, the consequences would be of interest.

It is not that nobody knows how these weapons are supposed to work.

Optimally small, lightweight, robust, safe, reliable - all sorts of engineering short-cuts or novel techniques … you don’t want to give way accidental insights about the “hows” an enemy hasn’t thought of.

avar
0 replies
6h31m

The "large industrial base" is required primarily to highly enrich uranium (or plutonium).

A modern fusion bomb requires much less of that than the initial fission bombs.

So I don't know how much a state actor could infer from an image like that, if we assume it's a schematic of an actual bomb.

But it's just not true that someone in possession of detailed plans for how to construct a bomb isn't put into a much better position. They'll need a much smaller amount of fissionable material than they otherwise would with a cruder design.

PaulHoule
2 replies
6h25m

There is the fission stage and the fusion stage. The fission stage in this image is not well represented. It is generally known how to make a fission stage similar to the “Fat Man” device but the “Fat Man” device is larger than the whole warhead with both a fission and fusion stage that fits on a Minuteman 3.

The fission stage in that warhead has numerous refinements that help miniaturize it, for instance the implosion is probably not spherical so it can fit in the pointy end of the warhead. A really refined modern weapon is packed with details like that.

schmidtleonard
1 replies
4h44m

The secondary isn't well represented either: that radiation case isn't focusing any X-Rays and the stairstep in the tamper would tear it in two when ablation started. Plus, as you note, the primary is impossibly screwed up as well, with what looks like a single point of initiation and zero details on the boosting. It doesn't just look simplified, it looks like every part has been corrupted with a feature that makes it impossible to mistake for real while being slightly less crude than the "Mastercard" or British designs.

Besides, real engineering doesn't just need a schematics, it needs details, and some of the missing ones are notorious (FOGBANK) and inherently difficult to figure out with any confidence in the absence of weapons tests (or even more expensive giant buildings crammed to the gills with lasers).

So yeah, not very useful to an aspiring designer. I understand the author's surprise but I suspect they really did just become a few notches less crazy about the redundant protection on information that has been public for 30 years.

PaulHoule
0 replies
4h18m

Also the mental models of proliferation are warped by secrecy. For instance, Iraqis got caught building Calutrons when the official line was to watch out for plutonium reprocessing and centrifuges... Despite the fact that the enriched uranium used for the first nuclear weapon used in war was produced with a Calutron!

Anyone responsible who thinks about this stuff, even if they don't have a security clearance, will look into the question of what the ethics are and what the legal consequences of secrecy laws are if you talk about certain things you think about. I had dinner with a nuclear scientist at a conference, for instance, who told me that he hadn't told anyone else about his concern that Np237 was the material that terrorists would most want to steal from a commercial reprocessing facility (if they knew what we knew) and I told him it was no problem because people from Los Alamos had published a paper with specifics on that a few years earlier.

I will leave it at that.

mxfh
4 replies
9h55m

Why someone is calling a chart/diagram a logo is the bigger mystery here. Mockups of things exist.

ibeff
2 replies
9h20m

It's not a diagram or mock-up, it's a direct representation of the real thing for computer simulations, similar to CAD. The dimensions and shape of the components are accurate. And the author is calling it a logo because the picture is used to represent and advertise the software.

mxfh
1 replies
9h13m

It's a product diagram on a presentation slide. Hopefully meant to be read on handouts or proceedings.

A logo is the Sierra stylized text in the lower center.

And the two others in the slide's footer.

That Sandia might use, what was obviously intended as a diagram as a logo is a whole other thing but doesn't make it one.

As long as all representation of that thing are that big and readable one can assume they were not used as logos.

InsideOutSanta
0 replies
8h19m

The author of the post claims that the warhead-like design "is literally the logo for this particular software framework." I can't verify this claim, but other Sandia frameworks (e.g. Sierra) use similar, equally overdesigned logos, so it's plausible.

QuadmasterXLII
4 replies
7h40m

Some people are confused why this could be a big deal. An analogy: on GitHub, if you echo a GitHub access token in an action’s log, it will be automatically censored. This post would be like noticing that someone’s action step is just named ghp_1ae27h… and that the name isn’t censored, and speculating on what that says about the token-censorship algorithm

ajsnigrutin
3 replies
7h6m

Same on hackernews, if you type your password here, it is printed like this: **** instead of clear text ("h u n t e r 2" spaces added for it to not be censored).

eszed
2 replies
6h22m

Key point: if you try it yourself, it will be in clear-text for you (you already know your password, so there's no issue), but everyone else will only see "***".

Reubachi
1 replies
5h13m

hunter2

mods, please allow this chain to remain as original runescape "hacks" are about as hckrnws as any other content.

permo-w
1 replies
8h38m

a product logo, according to the title, although that may be a hint of editorialising from the author.

PaulHoule
0 replies
6h34m

It really is, it’s just much more graphically detailed than the usual product logo, probably because it was designed by nuclear weapon designers and not by professional graphic designers.

chefandy
0 replies
4h1m

I've done branding and identity design in the past, and got university training to do it. I've also worked as a developer and contributed a ton to FOSS projects. That an engineering organization thinks this is a product logo is entirely unsurprising. I'll bet their interfaces are really something.

The most frustrating thing about being a designer in those environments is the dunning-krueger cockiness many technical people have in their understanding of design, which they usually believe is purely an aesthetic consideration.*

It's not even like a junior developer trying to 'correct' a senior developer about coding practices in a dev meeting— the better analog is a designer that watched a half hour Coding for Designers talk at a conference trying to correct a senior developer about coding practices in a stand-up, because they'd never have been invited to the dev meeting to begin with. If there were only designers in that meeting— and they likely find the other designer more credible because they jibe with their perspective, don't realize how important the developers input is, and might have watched that same conference talk— that could damage a project. In my experience, designers are way more likely to be solo in meetings with developers and the echo chamber of developer 'expertise' on design drowns out actual professional design expertise. In most FOSS projects, is bleaker than that because designers don't even bother trying.

* though completely out-of-context "rules" born from Tufte quotes aren't uncommon. In art school, we were told that we need to understand the rules in order to know when to break them. Imagine someone who'd never driven before that memorized a few pages of the driving manual calling you an unqualified driver because your actions didn't comply with the letter of one page they memorized even if it was qualified by another, or required for safety.

bee_rider
3 replies
5h2m

This is the kind of thing that I think people assume the government labs might do, but in my experience, is pretty unusual and pretty unlikely. In general, you have to remember that the national laboratories are pretty, well, boring, when it comes to classified information. They want to be boring in this respect. They are not doing cloak-and-dagger stuff on the regular. They’re scientists and engineers for the most part. These are not James Bond-wannabes.

The Sandia folks may be extra special, it is a pretty famous place. But engineers are people first of course, so lots of variation. And also, some are super serious of course, but there are hacker tendencies, playful tendencies. I bet if some intelligence agency folks wanted to, they could find some engineers out there who’d be receptive to this sort of thing.

If it is a fake, known-stupid design, including it would be a funny prank that wastes the time of people that might want to nuke us, right?

zubiaur
0 replies
4h34m

Extremely boring, bureaucratic and inefficient. With a few exceptions, I guess they are a way to have Phds on retainer.

writeslowly
0 replies
4h0m

Somebody (probably a programmer or engineer) took the time to create all of that rad 3D word art, multicolored pie-chart, and the mountain logo, it's not hard to imagine they'd also throw in an eye-catching fake nuclear warhead for fun.

csours
0 replies
59m

I visited Los Alamos earlier this year and talked to a retired materials scientist at the visitor center. He said that we have lots of books about the science and scientists that worked on the bomb during WWII, but very little mention of the engineering or engineers - and that's largely because it's extremely classified. The scientists can talk about most of their work because it's too broad to give any real aid to the enemy, but the engineers can't because they could REALLY speed up someone else's weapons program.

niemandhier
2 replies
6h57m

Putting a weapon of mass destruction in a logo is tasteless. It’s like advertising with cans of mustard gas.

krisoft
0 replies
3h0m

They build/test/design weapons of mass destruction. What would you advertise a can of mustard gas if not with a can of mustard gas?

lupusreal
2 replies
8h16m

Probably the guy who produced that part of the graphic was not told what a thermonuclear warhead actually looks like, because he didn't need to know, so he just whipped up his own idea of it from speculative public images. Knowing that the graphic came from somebody who didn't actually know anything, the censors didn't see the need to worry about it.

renhanxue
0 replies
2h54m

Knowing that the graphic came from somebody who didn't actually know anything, the censors didn't see the need to worry about it.

That is not how nuclear secrets work. The US Department of Energy holds that restricted data (a special kind of classification that only applies to nuclear secrets) is "born secret". That means, even if you come up with a concept for a nuclear weapon completely independently without ever talking to anyone, it is considered classified information that you are not allowed to redistribute. This doctrine is highly controversial and the one time it has been tried in court the verdict was inconclusive, but to this day it is how the DoE interprets the Atomic Energy Act of 1954.

In general this is very precarious to attempt to enforce, of course. If the DoE sues someone because they published their nuclear weapon designs, that'd be seen as a tacit admission that the design could potentially work. Nevertheless they actually did do this at one point (United States v. Progressive, Inc., 1979).

relaxing
0 replies
5h55m

Knowing that the graphic came from somebody who didn't actually know anything, the censors didn't see the need to worry about it.

That’s not really true. If you manage to independently come up with classified info and release it to the public, you will get a visit from an agency.

Overall I think you’re correct.

smiley1437
1 replies
5h20m

Any chance it's a legitimate screw up but they don't want to cause any Streisand effect?

aidenn0
0 replies
1h51m

That was my first thought too. If you screw up once, and then redact it in the future it's screaming "Hey everybody look here, there's classified information"

simplicio
1 replies
8m

I've worked on (unrelated to nuclear stuff) computer simulation projects for the Navy where they had standard, notional models of the battleship which had the same sort of general properties you'd expect a battleship to have, but wasn't based on the design of any real battleship, so they could share them with researchers to develop their codes on without having to worry about revealing classified details.

Wonder if this isn't something similar, if the DoE has some sort of "standardized notional warhead" design they can use to give to outside researchers without having to give every post-doc and grad-student a security clearance.

walrus01
0 replies
6m

Do you actually mean battleship, or frigate, corvette, aircraft carrier, etc? Battleships in the sense of the Iowa class and similar haven't been a thing in the US Navy for a very long time, unless you were working on blast damage/effect simulations in the 1980s when Reagan reactivated them for a short time.

sandworm101
1 replies
7h21m

No. That is not a nuke. It is a mass simulator, specifically the electronic model of a mass simulator for a warhead. The various colors represent density of material. This would be used during aerodynamic simulations. That is why it is behind the graph about processors. This also explains the simple geometry as keeping things simple reduces the number of calculations.

(Note that nuke warheads fall nose-first, the opposite of space capsules. So the dense material is packed in the nose, with the lighter stuff at the back.)

The nearby disk looks like a represention of airflow around a falling warhead. They, like apollo, likely had an offset center of gravity that allowed them to stear by rotation, creating the asymetrical airflow shown on the disk. Falling in a spiral also probably frustrates interception. So that whole corner of the image is advertising Sandia's ability to do aerodynamic simulations.

thedrbrian
0 replies
31m

Nice try Sandia guy who forgot to redact this original picture.

sandos
1 replies
9h34m

Most likely is that it was deemed simplified enough not be an issue?

ceejayoz
0 replies
7h37m

The article addresses this by giving past examples of what “simplified enough” usually means. They’re much simpler.

pantulis
1 replies
9h56m

And why wouldn't they? As wikipedia states, SNL's mission includes "roughly 70 areas of activity, including nuclear deterrence, arms control, nonproliferation, hazardous waste disposal, and climate change."

KeplerBoy
0 replies
8h52m

Because such details are usually classified.

hbossy
1 replies
8h16m

I bet it's an inside joke, like Lenna.jpeg. Some outdated / test / dead-end, or otherwise harmless project put there as a wink to everyone involved in the industry. Maybe it's something an intern ruined on his first day and made entire lab work on for three weeks without realizing?

taneq
0 replies
6h14m

That was my first guess, that this picture is in the first page of image search results for "nuclear detonator" or whatever.

ggm
1 replies
9h55m

The entire half round with an inner core is surely half an explosively compressed primary. And, it's not a "logo" it's an infographic.

closewith
1 replies
9h24m

For everyone complaining that it's an infographic, not a logo, that's addressed in the article:

It’s literally the logo they use for this particular software package.

Which seems to refer to the image of the re-entry vehicle in isolation from the infographic where the author originally found it.

lupire
0 replies
4h50m

I don't see that claim supported in the article.

avar
1 replies
6h21m

Let's assume the schematic depicts a genuine weapon, and that this was a massive redaction screw-up.

I think the author is omitting the most likely explanation for why it wasn't redacted in future publications.

It took from 2007 to 2024 for someone (him) to publicly notice this.

If your job was to censor documents coming out of Sandia National Laboratories, and you screwed up this massively, what's your incentive to call attention to your screw-up?

Better to just coast along, by the time you retire or move on to another job your ass is off the firing line.

Ditto (but less so) if this was your co-worker or team mate, after all North Korea, Iran etc. already have access to the published document.

What could anyone in your organization possibly gain from the ensuing shitstorm of admitting something like that?

Has this person worked, well, pretty much anywhere, where people have a stronger incentive to cover their own ass and keep out of trouble than not?

Or, that internal report and subsequent shitstorm did happen, but what do you do at that point? Make a big public fuss about it, and confirm to state actors that you accidentally published a genuine weapons design?

No, you just keep cropping that picture a bit more, eventually phase it out, and hope it's forgotten. Maybe they'll just think it's a detailed mockup of a test article. If it wasn't for that meddling blogger...

Edit: Also, I bet there's nobody involved in the day-to-day of redacting documents that's aware of what an actual weapons design looks like. That probably happens at another level of redaction.

So once something like this slips by it's just glazed over as "ah, that's a bit detailed? But I guess it was approved already, as it's already published? Moving on.".

Whereas a censor would have to know what an actual thermonuclear device looks like to think "Holy crap! Who the hell approved this?!". And even then they and the organization still need the incentive to raise a fuss about it.

kridsdale3
0 replies
10m

My experience working for huge orgs where success and failure is many nodes removed from individual actions makes me vote for this as the most likely scenario.

_n_b_
0 replies
1h0m

I would bet a few dollars that no Facility Security Officer (the name for people who manage security programs for defense contractor, despite sounding like a Sunday name for ‘guards’) in the entire NNSA complex has ever read Arms and Influence. That’s not quite their demographic profile.

shahzaibmushtaq
0 replies
6h20m

In the era of CDs/DVDs and according to year 2007 perspective, these types of infographic logos were quite common.

Other than that, I'm not so sure about the particular design pointed out by the author.

karaterobot
0 replies
29m

One thing he doesn't consider: Perhaps if they do not call it a nuclear warhead, or place it in the context of a larger drawing that tells you it's a warhead, having a sort of blobby, colorful model shape is considered plausibly nonsensical enough that it doesn't matter to the censors.

jiggawatts
0 replies
7h8m

Reminds me of another design secret that leaked out because someone published a paper titled something like "X-ray crystallography of Lithium Deuteride under high pressure."

People very quickly figured out that this was the source of the D-T fuel in fusion part of the bomb instead of cryogenic D-T liquid. Lithium Deuteride is nasty stuff, but it's a storable solid. When bombarded with neutrons from the fission primary, the Lithium splits and forms tritium, which then combines with the deuterium that was the other half of the crystal.

The reason the usage was obvious (from the title alone!) is that very few chemists would care about any property of Lithium Hydride, which is dangerous to handle and has few practical uses. Lithium Deuteride is unheard of in analytical chemistry, and its crystallography under high pressure is totally uninteresting to anyone... except physicists working on atomic weapons.

dwighttk
0 replies
7h0m

That’s where I’ve ended up…

Where did he end up? Intentional misinformation? It was definitely not clear but that was the last one he listed…

buran77
0 replies
9h26m

I see a few commenters think the big chart/diagram in the first picture is the one being discussed. It is not, it's the rightmost slice ("Salinas") of that infographic which shows something like a warhead. It's shown blown up (pun intended) in the second picture of the article.

AnimalMuppet
0 replies
6h0m

Heh. Ask my mother about the time that Sandia dropped an atomic bomb casing in the streets of Albuquerque.

IIRC the story, this was still during WWII. They were testing the flight characteristics of the bomb casing. It did not contain a core. But it was still extremely classified. They had the test casing in the back of a truck, taking it from Sandia to Kirtland AFB. The truck got in an accident, the tailgate fell open, and the bomb casing fell out and went rolling around in the street.