Covering government is boring, until it isn’t. Trouble is, you need to know something about the boring parts to see when it isn’t. I’ve seen two of those – potentially big stories – today.
Trump’s Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non-Proliferation Spills The Beans
Chris Ford has been in government a long time in positions relating to arms control and nonproliferation. I don’t agree with his policy positions, but I was relieved when Trump appointed someone who actually knew about the field to this position. He is a quiet and professional man.
He published a tell-all open letter on Medium today. My jaw is still dropped.
There’s a lot to the letter, and I don’t have time to go into it in detail, but basically a couple of Trumpian bozos in one of his bureaus were ginning up a conspiracy theory about China and the coronavirus. And they did everything they could to keep it from him! This is the backstory to every “lab leak” story out there, oh useful idiots like Nate Silver, Jonathan Chait, Matt Yglesias, and others.
Los Alamos Can’t Make 80 Pits A Year
Dan Leone covers the nuclear weapons bureaucracy for EM Publications. He tweets Congressional hearings, which is a great service to people like me who usually don’t listen to the whole thing. The House Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Strategic Forces held a hearing today on the FY22 budget request. Charles Verdon, the nominated Administrator for the NNSA, the part of the Department of Energy that is responsible for nuclear weapons, testified. The nuclear arsenal is getting old, and there has been a plan to remake the plutonium cores (pits) for some nuclear weapons. That would be done at the Los Alamos Plutonium Facility, PF-4, and at a repurposed plant at Savannah River, Georgia.
Verdon said that the Savanna River plant won’t be ready for several years and will cost a lot more than has been projected. He also said that PF-4 won’t ever be able to produce 80 pits a year. Here’s Leone’s summary of a long thread:
This is the first time that the NNSA administrator has admitted that the big talk about pit production is just that – talk. It’s significant that the Biden administration is saying this; it may pave the way for a different sort of talks between the US and Russia. And maybe China, if they ever become willing to talk.
I find both of these stories amazing. I’ll be interested to see which news media pick them up. You read them here first.
Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner
Old School
So the nuclear arsenal won’t be able to be maintained at its current level?
Cheryl Rofer
@Old School: That depends on what you mean by “its current level.” We have about 1500 nuclear weapons deployed, as limited by the New START Treaty, and several thousand more weapons and pits in storage. Seems like that should last a while.
trollhattan
That’s quite the letter. I’d love to see Covid hearings launched along with Jan 6 hearings. Trump’s mismanagement killed hundreds of thousands unnecessarily. Let’s find out just how and where they went sideways.
In good news, this.
Old School
@Cheryl Rofer: I guess I’m asking what the real world implications are of the pit disclosure.
Ken
@Old School: I think it means we can’t be sure the bombs will explode if used. Which is a bad thing, I guess? It reminds me of this xkcd.
Ken
Well, that too. For me the main question was why the governments of Canada and the US were falling all over themselves to build a pipeline for a private company. Was capitalism not working properly in this case?
Cheryl Rofer
@Old School: That’s a whole post to itself that I don’t have time to write. Here’s a quick Twitter thread:
Jeffro
“Manic performative outrage is much more fun than sober analysis” – LOL
Hey Chris, you should stop by Balloon Juice sometime, we do both, sometimes in the same sentence. =)
trollhattan
@Ken:
Cross-border wheeling and dealing seemed a huge influence, and across several US and Canadian administrations. It was a project that Just Wouldn’t Die.
Separately, I’ve read the tar sands project only makes money when the crude price is very high and yet, because of the methodology and equipment they can’t just shut it down while price is below production cost. We can’t get to that “all”-electric future too soon.
jl
RE covid lab leak shenanigans: Wow.
The pundits who are accusing ‘liberal media’ (whatever that is supposed to be) of suppressing the lab leak theory don’t give much attention to the obvious and toxic BS that the Trump administration was pumping out.
One thing that I am curious about is that I remember reading that some parts of the intelligence community that specialize in sources and methods (I guess that means the people who are BS filters) found problems with evidence for the lab leak theory early on, and noted reports of evidence inconsistent with it. But I haven’t read much about that for a long time. Anyone know about that angle?
Mary G
Wow, Mr. Ford doesn’t mince words. That is a NFLTG letter if I ever saw one. Surprised that someone who wrote books on the subject made it that far in TFG’s administration even if he did the racism by calling Covid the “WuFlu” and the “KungFlu.”
jl
@Jeffro: Bipolar bingo is a unique feature of this blog.
sab
This Wuhan lab story has been out there and consistent since February 2020. My RWNJ brother even told it to me back then (Fauci in kahoots with Wuhan lab.) When a situtation is as fluid as the pandemic, if the story coming out from sources all over the right wing media is consistently the same for a year and a half I suspect organized propaganda rather than different perspectives. Unfortunately, modern reporters are so afraid of being out of step with the herd that they are easily lead by propagandists holding their nose rings.
jl
@sab: I mostly agree. My one quibble is that I’m not sure the lab leak stories pumped out by the wingers has been consistent. As accurate information about what the Wuhan lab actually had and actually did spread, the conspiracy theorists adjusted their stories accordingly. A kind of whack-a-mole war waged against accurate info popping up.
For example, after it became clear that the Wuhan lab mostly worked with genetic material recovered from rat poop (Edit: rather than viable whole viruses which could actually infect any living thing), their story changed. The lab wasn’t doing naughty things with the viable viruses that appeared in publications. Nay nay, those viruses in publications were complete frauds, nothing more than fake genetic codes typed into a computer. They were just covers for naughty tricks done with secret viable viruses they never told anyone about.
Same song and dance about whether there really were likely host animals at the Wuhan market.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: As long as the headline is consistent, the details don’t really matter.
Matt McIrvin
@sab: I heard it early on but the story at the time was definitely “the virus was man-made”.
Baud
What does any of this have to do with Kamala and the border?
Gin & Tonic
From dog shit to plutonium production, this blog has it all. Thanks, Cheryl. Seriously.
jl
@sab: The big disaster that the conspiracy theorists had to recover from, was the fact that their smoking gun RATG-13 virus that was supposedly engineered or used for gain of function experiments doesn’t exist as a viable virus.
All they have of RATG-13 is the genetic sequence from bits and piece of the virus found in bat dung, and which was patiently reconstructed over several years.
Edit: that is why the conspiracy theorists had to avoid experts with any knowledge at all of what went on at the Wuhan lab. The fact that the lab had never recovered a viable RATG-13 virus was completely obvious to anyone who knew anything about the research.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
Who you calling dog shit?
jl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: “As long as the headline is consistent, the details don’t really matter.”
Certainly works for macroeconomic policy.
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: Hey, if the shoe fits…
jl
@Baud: ” Who you calling dog shit? ”
If it was directed at Baud XXXX!! it should have been ‘bat shit’ and you are owed an apology.
Elizabelle
@sab:
Or, they are hacks. Too many of them.
jl
@Elizabelle: We could send them links to, for example, relevant episodes of the This Week in Virology podcasts.
JMG
Among its many reveals of issues in our society, the pandemic has cast a bright light on the inadequacy of science and medicine reporting in almost all news media.
TKH
The classics, old they do not get:
The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ […] ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’.
For the younger whippersnappers around here (are there any?), this was Ron Suskind from the Bush the Lesser White House.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: That’s why I stayed on the Micro side.
Steeplejack
@TKH:
Ron Suskind was the reporter. The quote was widely attributed to Karl Rove, although he has denied it.
prostratedragon
@Cheryl Rofer: May the Nuclear Destruction tv channel become a reality. “More riveting than CyberNinjas!”
MomSense
@Matt McIrvin:
There were simultaneously thet virus is a hoax stories which is why they believed the masks were just to control us or whatever the fuck they thought it was.
I’m so tired.
jl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: ” That’s why I stayed on the Micro side. ”
I think that is the side of economics that is called ‘applied mathematics with no applications’
TKH
@Steeplejack: Oops! How did I get those wires all tangled up? On a top 10,000 politics blog, no less.
Next time Ron Suskind screws something up he’ll get a mulligan from me. That should just about cover it.
But thanks for the correction!
smith
@TKH: And somehow, discernible reality has just kept sneaking up behind them and biting them on the ass: the abject failure that was the Iraq War, the catastrophe of Katrina, the demographic tides that put Obama and Biden in the White House, and now, of course, Covid-19. The “Empire” has had to reach more and more into the realms of fantasy to keep up the pretense. Reality has not yet won decisively, but the thing about reality is that it’s always there.
Anoniminous
Also Sprach Pew Research: 67% of Americans reject the Theory of Evolution
So Americans come with pre-packaged ignorant stupidity re: Things Biological.
MomSense
@Anoniminous:
Unbefuckinglievable. How the hell are we supposed to deal with the demands of modern life?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Anoniminous: I’m a hard core liberal elitist, no problem looking down on large numbers of my fellow Americans. I mean… trump. But that number seems on the high side to me.
TKH
@smith: True enough that all their projects failed, at great cost to others. However, I cannot think of any one of these asshats who paid a tangible price. Now, maybe, the fact that nobody mentions Wolfowitz, Feith e tutti quanti any longer is a price in their eyes. But the price paid is too damn low and the members of the cabal that is subject of Cheryl’s post won’t pay one either.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan:
I’m a third of the way through and WOW!
mrmoshpotato
@Jeffro:
LMAO!
J R in WV
@Anoniminous:
While people all over the world watch the Sars2-Covid-19 virus evolve in real time to be more dangerous. Not believing in evolution is like not believing in gravity, or that the Earth is a sphere.
We can fly to Europe and SEE the sphere with our own eyes out the window of the aircraft.
We can shoot a howitzer and know where the shell will land with great accuracy, the Army and Marines do this every day, because gravity is well understood, as is the spherical nature of the earth.
And virologists can tell us how the Sars2-Covid-19 virus is evolving right now, to provide data on future spread of the disease, how it will behave with regard to vaccines — oh, wait, these folks don’t believe in vaccines either! Never mind…
Just go ahead and die, Darwin Rules!
artem1s
Up next on Faux News, “If Only Hillary Hadn’t Sold All the Uranium to Russia We Wouldn’t Be Losing The Nucular Arms Race!”
Geminid
The Keystone pipeline was a real threat to the Oglalla aquifer and it’s cancellation was much needed. I hope the “Mountain Valley” gas pipeline is next. This 42″ pipeline would run from West Virginia more or less straight to the Atlantic coast before making a southward headfake forty miles from Morehead City. There are no residential or industrial requirements for that much natural gas (more populous areas are adequately served by 20″ pipelines). The backers of a similar “Atlantic Coast” pipeline to the north threw in the the towel a year ago, and hopefully the people behind the Mountain Valley pipeline will follow suit.
J R in WV
@Geminid:
I imagine this pipeline was intended to supply LPG (liquified petroleum gas) for export to Europe. If Europe is not going to need additional natural gas supplies, then this won’t make the gas frackers a jillion dollars, thus not worth the investment.
YY_Sima Qian
@jl:
And that is why people like Peter Dazsak have to be dragged through the mud, so any clarification he might be able to provide wrt the WIV’s work is automatically dismissed.
smintheus
“He is a quiet and professional man.”
No he is not. I knew him well when he was at Oxford; he was an obnoxious, arrogant, abusive know-it-all who didn’t let facts, evidence, or intellectual integrity stand in the way of believing whatever he chose to believe. I would not treat his assertions as credible just on his say so. He had barely arrived in Oxford when he started leveling preposterous charges against me in public and trying to shout me down as I was doing my duty in the role of a graduate student body officer. He knew precisely zero about the baseless allegations he was leveling against me. Long after his lies had been disproven conclusively, he grudgingly (and only privately) admitted he’d been wrong.
Geminid
@J R in WV: The pipeline promotors were noncommittal as to gas exports, but I can’t believe these 42″ pipelines are not intended for exports. I think the promoters wanted to line up support at the state level for a terminal before going public with their plans. Now that there is a Democratic governor of North Carolina, the approval process for a terminal may be more problematic than originally expected.
When these pipelines were announced five years ago, I did not believe they would be stopped, But landowners and environmental groups tenaciously fought the Atlantic Coast Pipeline at every stage, and delayed the project long enough for Dominion Power to cancel pipeline “for business reasons.”
Matt
TBH, anyone who’s concerned about our ability to produce enough pits is welcome to grab some sandpaper and some refined plutonium and speed the process up.
No safety equipment, because if you’re so eager to see millions of other people die for freedumb than you should be happy to go first.