[mikeash]

Please, tell me more about this "realistic" scenario. I'm particularly interested in:

1. How terrorists manage to refurbish such an old weapon into working condition again without access to a nuclear weapons plant.

2. How they get it into the country undetected.

3. How they defeat the warhead's PAL.

4. Where they get the rocket capable of launching the warhead into space.

5. How they actually carry out the launch without a bunch of Iowans saying, hey, what are all those crazy terrorists doing with that giant rocket?

[MichaelGG]

And then, despite being clever enough to launch a nuclear attack, they're somehow stopped because they Skype'd each other "hey Bill, when are we launching that nuke?" That despite the financing and coordination behind a nuclear strike, they can't figure out any sort of way to communicate in a covert manner.

[lupatus]

So, because you can't find fault with my main point that there are scary high-impact potential threats that the US government can and should try to protect us from, you are instead picking apart an imaginary scenario that I spent all of 30 seconds thinking up in order to illustrate my main point? Or, did I miss something?

No crap there are holes in Scenario B. Why don't you describe one that would be realistic since you seem to be good at looking at the details? I gave you all sorts of links about missing plagues and other bomb-making materials.

Or maybe the terrorist's just put up a sign at the launchpad that says "Acme Oil Drilling, Serving Des Moines since 1897!"

Regardless, Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution lists one of the duties of the federal government as "repel Invasions". An invasion occurs when someone or some group enters the land as an enemy and any activity to prevent or discontinue that situation would constitute repelling.

Additionally, Article IV Section 4 says "shall protect each of them [State in the Union] against Invasion".

I know the 4th Amendment talks about being secure in your papers and effects against searches, but this NSA surveillance (from what I've read) seems to be reasonable, warranted, and used in a limited manner (given that the real economy is still in a slump and new politicians get elected to existing posts).

Please try explaining to me again how the NSA looking for potential high-impact terrorist events is not a valid and important government function.

[CodeMage]

So, because you can't find fault with my main point that there are scary high-impact potential threats that the US government can and should try to protect us from, you are instead picking apart an imaginary scenario that I spent all of 30 seconds thinking up in order to illustrate my main point? Or, did I miss something?

I think you missed the point. He's essentially pointing out the fact that you spent all of 30 seconds thinking up a ridiculous scenario and then expected everyone to take it seriously as something that supports your argument.

An invasion occurs when someone or some group enters the land as an enemy and any activity to prevent or discontinue that situation would constitute repelling.

See, that's precisely the kind of thing that makes it hard to take you seriously. You're essentially redefining words "invade" [1] and "repel" [2].

this NSA surveillance (from what I've read) seems to be reasonable, warranted, and used in a limited manner

You're trying to argue that the NSA surveillance is "warranted" by redefining words "invade" and "repel". I don't think we need to go farther than a dictionary for a counter-argument.

What @mikeash disputed, though, was your attempt to argue that the surveillance is "reasonable" by coming up with that amusing little scenario.

Basically, you argued that the surveillance is reasonable because the magnitude of the outcome of the terrorist threat is serious enough to make the surveillance reasonable, because it's supposed to diminish the probability of the terrorist threat manifesting itself in an outcome like that.

Of course, one big problem is that you tried to support your argument with the aforementioned scenario and then blew up at @mikeash for criticizing you, as if the onus of coming up with the support for your argument was on him and not on you. Another big problem is in your assumption that mass-scale NSA surveillance of everyone in the USA and the world will really drive down the probability of a terrorist threat worst-case outcome, which is a subject of a heated debate, instead of being an assumption you can just take for granted.

[1]: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/invade [2]: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/repel

[foobarqux]

The bigger problem is that line of reasoning doesn't allow for any restraint whatsoever: There was nothing in the argument that wouldn't apply to stationing a police officer in your home.

[lupatus]

First, I have not redefined anything. I simply went with dictionary.com instead.

Invasions: an act or instance of invading or entering as an enemy, especially by an army (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/invasions)

Repel: to keep off or out; fail to mix with: Water and oil repel each other. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/repel)

Second, I mean warranted as in "has a warrant". From wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)_ "U.S. government officials have disputed some aspects of the Guardian and Washington Post stories and have defended the program by asserting it cannot be used on domestic targets without a warrant, and that the program receives independent oversight from the executive, judicial, and legislative branches."

Third, I tried to let you people know that my scenarios were a bit factually incorrect by saying that I was "pulling the numbers out of my arse"! That some aspects of Scenario B were wrong beyond just the numbers shouldn't be surprising. Furthermore, where's the nitpicking about Scenario A then? I spent even less time thinking about it, so it should a little easier to pick apart.

I blew up at mikeash not because he was criticizing you, but because he is being blockheaded. As are you.

[CodeMage]

First, you have redefined both words. We could quibble semantic details ad nauseum, but since your written English is pretty good, I suspect your overall English is good enough that you know exactly what you're doing. Even if it wasn't, the "especially by an army" bit should have been a huge hint about the spirit of the word "invade".

Second, if you want to argue the legal points of whether the surveillance is warranted, you don't need to come up with vague, hand-wavy terrorist threat scenarios. You could just state your legal argument and let some expert out there destroy it ;)

Third, an excuse of "I know this is crap, but" is not a valid excuse. It's like saying to someone, "No offense, but you're a total idiot." Just because you said "no offense", it doesn't mean they shouldn't or can't take offense. Likewise, explicitly stating that you were "pulling the numbers out of your arse" doesn't make your scenario any less ridiculous or a better fit to support your argument in any way.

As for the nitpicking about scenario A, you're welcome to argue against it as much as you want. Again, the onus to do that is on you, so knock yourself out.

Fourth, @foobarqux hit the nail on the head with his comment about restraint. One thing is to argue that "repelling an invasion" is "warranted" by the government, another is to try to classify PRISM and other such surveillance programs as "repelling an invasion" and yet another is arguing about whether the extent of those programs is "warranted" or not. I don't know the Constitution by heart and to the letter, but I'm pretty sure that there's a lot of stuff in it that, taken to extremes, will contradict other stuff in it.

And fifth, if "being blockheaded" means not allowing bullshit arguments to pass as valid just because there's strong emotion behind them -- or because their author is throwing a temper tantrum -- then I hope my cranium gets as cubical as it can.

[lupatus]

I bend no words. One of the experiences of colonialists was the Beaver Wars in which the Iroquois invaded and captured the territory of the Huron. The Iroquois would not constitute an army in the traditional sense because they were not uniformed and regimented - they were a force of irregulars, much like Al Qaeda is today. Suppose the Iroquois wanted to invade and recapture New York, that would be an invasion by a force other than an army that New York would need to repel.

And, do you spray insect REPELlent on yourself before you get bug bites or after? Protective measures also constitute repelling.

Also, I originally didn't want to argue the legality of the surveillance. I devised a hand-wavy scenario to illustrate my threat-assessment point.

Because, saying that kittens are as or more dangerous than terrorists IS blockheaded. If I'm wrong, I invite you to go down to your local SPCA and adopt a new pet terrorist.

[mikeash]

If you don't want me picking holes in your "realistic" scenario, don't present it. I mean, seriously. Where do you get off in giving me an example of a supposed "realistic" scenario, then complaining when I point out its flaws? It's not my fault that your example was bad.

[jlgreco]

> 3. How they defeat the warhead's PAL.

Not that I think this whole scenario is a credible threat, but I would say (barring an explosive anti-tamper mechanism): spend a weekend in a shed beating the shit out of it with a sledgehammer.

The core material is the important part, the rest you can reconstruct yourself.

(If there is an explosive anti-tamper mechanism, you might have some luck with those water-jet bomb disarmers.)

[mikeash]

The core material is the important part if you are, say, Iran or North Korea. However, if you are in a cave with a box of scraps and no Tony Stark, there's a lot more to it.

Exactly how PALs work is not really well known. A lot of well-informed speculation can be found here:

https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/nsam-160/pal.html

The most plausible mechanism for how they work is lots of crypto, plus physical-level crypto-like mechanisms wherein detonation requires setting off the various explosives in the bomb at precise and different times, and those times are not stored in the bomb itself, but rather extracted from the PAL code.

It's possible to build simple nuclear weapons that don't require a lot of complicated steps to explode. But they're tremendously inefficient, and nobody bothers with them today. A stolen nuke will be an implosion design requiring a virtuoso performance of nanosecond-level timing to detonate properly, and those timings will not be easy to reverse engineer. Build a new weapon using the fissile material from the original bomb would likewise be a massive undertaking (only "easy" if you're Iran etc., not al Qaeda), and really would no longer qualify as a "stolen" weapon as proposed.

[nl]

You think the PAL on one of the missing soviet "suitcase" nuclear devices[1] is that sophisticated?

They are booby-trapped against misuse though, so that's ok.

One such cache, identified by Vasili Mitrokhin, exploded when Swiss authorities tried to remove it from a wooded area near Bern.

I don't think civilians know enough about the current state of Soviet-era nuclear devices to be able to assess the risk very well.

Personally I'd be much more concerned about Al-Qaeda linked terrorists getting access to a Pakistani bomb. The Taliban successfully launched a raid on one of Pakistan's main naval bases[2], and NATO also admitted its concern over the Taliban's ability to target the Pakistan's nuclear installations.

Given that the Pakistan Navy noted Al-Qaeda members within its ranks it isn't difficult to imagine a scenario where they get access to the disarm-codes for any PAL-like on the bombs.

I'm not sure if this is an argument for or against domestic surveillance by the NSA, though!

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuke

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNS_Mehran_attack

[mikeash]

Are you saying this cache near Bern blew up while containing nuclear weapons? Why haven't I heard of this before? Even with a non-nuclear explosion, such an event would make international news for a month.

[nl]

Allegedly (ie, according to Wikipedia) the details are on pages 475 & 476 of a book called "The KGB in Europe" by former KGB officer Vasili Mitrokhin.

I don't know if that device was nuclear or not - I suspect not.

Edit: some details about other caches:

A former Soviet spy testified at a congressional hearing in Los Angeles on Monday that Russian intelligence operatives placed weapons and communications caches--perhaps even small nuclear devices--in California and other states as part of a plan to destabilize the United States through sabotage

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jan/25/local/me-57346

[jlgreco]

> The core material is the important part if you are, say, Iran or North Korea. However, if you are in a cave with a box of scraps and no Tony Stark, there's a lot more to it.

Similarly, I suspect that PALs have traditionally been designed with the first in mind. They prevent a proper detonation as the bomb as it currently exists. They seem less concerned with someone using the bomb to cobble together a (relatively speaking) inefficient bomb, or even just a dirty bomb.

If you are satisfied with merely dozens to hundreds dead, and a massive clusterfuck of a disproportionate response, you may have to do nothing more than merely trigger the PAL's anti-tampering mechanism in a populated area. Worse case scenario there is that it doesn't work that way, then you just throw it into a truck with some fertilizer and blow it up anyway.

Nations are not interested in using a bomb like that, they would want the real deal in a form factor that is practical for military use. PALs seem designed to prevent that.

[mikeash]

The possibility of taking an existing bomb and using it to build a new nuclear bomb without being an actual military is absurd. You'll not get an inefficient bomb, you'll get a dud.

Dirty bombs are a different threat altogether. One that's almost entirely psychological. No doubt effective at that, but a completely different scenario than the one being discussed.

[jlgreco]

It is fairly trivial to do with uranium, but with plutonium you are correct; you would never get anything beyond a fizzle (if you were lucky).

If the discussion is "what if terrorists steal a bomb", then the discussion is implicitly about dirty bombs. No other discussion really makes sense.

[ars]

What do you mean undetected? Aren't you saying that we should ignore them and not spend energy looking for them?

You have to at least be consistent with your argument.

[mikeash]

There's a vast gulf between sane monitoring of items coming into the country and the vast surveillance state we are currently discussing.

[ars]

I know.

But I thought we are taking about the risks of terrorism, and how it's not really a big problem.

[mikeash]

And it's not.

Detecting terrorist nukes coming into the country is basically a side-effect of a sane defense policy against other nuclear states, and other nuclear states are quite a large threat.

[ars]

You are confusing the result of the thing with the thing.

Terrorism is not a big problem because we work so hard to fight against it. You've confused that with not being a big problem in the first place. (It's like Y2K - it wasn't a big problem because we made such a big deal out of it and everything got fixed.)

And detecting a hidden nuke coming into the country is not the same thing as looking for nukes from other countries.

In one case you watch the country, in the other you watch your borders.

[flyinRyan]

>Terrorism is not a big problem because we work so hard to fight against it.

Citation needed. The government has yet to stop a single terrorist plot. The only ones they claim they've stopped are very clear entrapment cases that never would have amounted to anything without the government supplying the motivations and the supplies.

Every time a terrorist has actually tried an attack they've either succeed or screwed up all by themselves. The reason terrorism is not a big problem for the US is because terrorists nearly never attack the US.

[mikeash]

I'm not confusing anything. Please read what I'm saying rather than relying on your projection of what you think I think.

I'm well aware of the possibility that terrorism is rare because it's so heavily fought. I just don't see any reason to think that's actually the case.

Yes, terrorism could be like Y2K, in that it's a big problem that's averted through lots of hard work. It just doesn't look that way to me. Instead, it looks like a small problem that has tremendous resources devoted to it for no good reason.

Consider the following facts:

1. Terrorist attacks are pretty easy to carry out. Any motivated HNer could easily plan and execute an attack, on a programmer's salary, that would outshine the Boston bombings. (Something like 9/11 is obviously harder. But there's plenty of low-hanging fruit.)

2. Doing the above without getting caught is still pretty easy. There's essentially nothing in place to catch the "lone wolf".

3. Despite #1 and #2, terrorist attacks remain extremely rare.

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that there are very few people who are actually motivated to carry out attacks. It's nothing to do with enforcement, it's simply that most people don't actually want to go out and kill a bunch of innocents.

As for detecting nukes, why do you think that smuggling a warhead into the US is a technique reserved for terrorists? There's nothing that says Russia or China or North Korea couldn't do it. They probably won't, but it's enough of a threat to be worth guarding against.