Israel’s H-Bomb

Jeffrey Lewis 0:02

He would keep saying, it's not nuclear, is it? And they said, cap, it go boom. You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California.

Aaron Stein 0:28

And I'm Aaron Stein. I'm a contributor to the Arms Control Wonk blog. I'm also an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London and a doctoral fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy.

Jeffrey 0:38

A 1987 Institute for Defense Analysis report about Israel's technology bases in the news, only about 30 years too late, with some people claiming it shows the United States helped Israel build a thermonuclear weapon and others claiming that the Obama administration is engaged in a pattern of carefully controlled leaking of information to harm Israel. Hey, guess what, Aaron?

Aaron 0:57

What? It's all bulls**t. That's bull fecal material. This is a family show, Jeffrey. Yeah, Carl can bleep that out.

Jeffrey 1:04

The report doesn't say any of those things. Can't anyone read?

Aaron 1:08

And it's been on your shelf for a decade now?

Jeffrey 1:12

At least four or five years. Yeah, this report, it doesn't say any of these things. Should we catalog all the crazy things that have been said about it before pointing out how super boring it really is?

Aaron 1:27

I think the story starts in February.

Jeffrey 1:29

Yeah. So there are these characters at this place called the Institute for Research-Middle East Policy.

Aaron 1:38

Yeah. They describe themselves as having a Israel lobby archive that documents and provides citizen access to initiatives of one of the most harmful forces driving policy formulations in the U.S. political process. Wow. There's a strong whiff of something there, isn't there?

Jeffrey 1:55

I'm not going to go there. Okay. Right. They don't like the U.S.-Israel relationship very much. And they have a lawsuit against the United States government dating to late 2014. Looking for information on what they say are American affiliates of Israeli entities engaged in clandestine nuclear weapons research and development. And one of the things that they wanted Was this 1987 Ida report, which they got.

And when they got, Grant Smith, who I guess runs this institution, wrote something for Antiwar, antiwar.com, another website I don't routinely read, in which he claimed this showed that the U.S. government knew that Israel had developed nuclear weapons. It only spiraled from there. Right. Well, you know, a variety of disreputable news outlets. Courthouse News wrote a story where Roger Mattson, who is a new mech crank.

There's a whole other thing the Israelis get accused of. That's another podcast. That's another podcast. But yeah, he thinks the Israelis stole a bunch of HEU. Fine. Said, I am struck by the degree of cooperation on specialized war-making devices between Israel and the U.S., which cue the Russian and Iranian media.

Aaron 3:36

They're very reputable. RT and Press TV.

Jeffrey 3:39

Yeah. So RT says headlines that U.S. helped Israel with H-bomb and Press TV says U.S. helped Israel build hydrogen bomb. Right.

Aaron 3:49

I, by the way, tried to ignore this all. I read one of these pieces. I can't remember which one it was. I was like, oh, this is complete bull fecal material. And I'm just skipping over.

Jeffrey 4:00

Yeah. So then Bill Grider picks it up at The Nation, another publication I don't normally bother with. Anyways, keep going. So he picks up the U.S.-Israel cooperation angle and says the document reveals what he calls a technological marriage between the United States and Israel on defense systems. Okay. And at this point, I'm breaking down because this thing is showing up in my Facebook feed.

Aaron 4:29

And that's like hollowed ground. It's not the Twitter feed, but it's the Facebook feed.

Jeffrey 4:33

Yeah, because, you know, like I don't like I want to see pictures of my kid's friend. I mean, pictures of my kid's friend. I want to see pictures of my friend's kids. And then just so I've written a column for foreign policy. But then this morning after I've submitted, now I have to go back and revise it.

Tom Gross writes this just awful thing for the Weekly Standard. Go ahead. Well, it assumes that all of the things said about this document in anti-war and RT are true, which, you know, newsflash, they aren't. But, you know, instead of like questioning the factual premise of it and reading the document, which, you know, is like available online, he adopts his own conspiracy theory asking why is Obama releasing this information now?

And I'm just I'm just slapping my head because this is all fake.

Aaron 5:28

Yeah, it's linked to the ongoing political tensions between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government, starting with the invitation to Congress, which we've talked about in other podcasts, and then Netanyahu's subsequent reelection, and really some sniping back and forth. So now this is Obama's America leaks plans about Israel nuclear program for the first time.

Jeffrey 5:51

It's unclear to me if there is a single sentence in any of these articles, whether they are on the anti- or pro-Israeli camp. It's unclear to me if there's a single sentence in any of these articles that is in fact true.

Aaron 6:05

Well, none of them are true because the document is actually about something else.

Jeffrey 6:11

The document's about something else. It doesn't say what they say it says. It says the opposite of what they say it says, and it's super freaking boring.

Aaron 6:18

Okay. Well, you have the full document. Tell us about it.

Jeffrey 6:21

Yes. And in fact, I'm thinking about putting the – well, I did put a picture up. But if you look at the picture of the document that I have on my shelf, and I have a copy of the Israel portion of the document as well as the summary, which was redacted in the version that – That crazy people got you can tell that they're copies of different copies of the document, right?

So mine is like number three of five and there's this number. No, mine is two of five. I'm guessing it was from the defense department and there's is the IDA file copy. It's a three of 100. Okay. Well, first, how do these Ermet people get it? Yeah, right. Okay, well, so the point is this document has existed for a really long time.

It's a 1987 document, and if you look, it's been cited a whole bunch. And I've always been interested in the Israeli nuclear weapons program, particularly this question of whether they have a thermonuclear weapon. And this document has a little bit of information that sheds a tiny bit of light on that question. And so because it's cited – People naturally like try to get a copy of it.

Well, these people at IRMEP, whatever we're calling them.

Aaron 7:33

Yeah, the holders of the Israel Lobby Archive.

Jeffrey 7:36

They have this lawsuit where what they're trying to do are surface documents that they can then use in precisely the way that they've used this. And they can show what they claim is this pattern of cooperation of – how did they phrase it? I just want to stick to their phrasing and you can decode it however you'd like.

American affiliates of Israeli entities engaged in clandestine nuclear weapons research and development. Yeah. Watch your donations, Aaron. So they know this document exists because it's cited, right? Yeah. And it's not classified. The document is not classified. That's why I have a copy of it. That's why – Other people have copies of it. And they sue to get it.

And obviously, you know, like, once you involve lawyers, things get super complicated. And Ida, I guess, didn't want to turn over the document to them. Gee, I can't imagine why. I feel bad for the people at Ida, right? They got to deal with this. But ultimately, the document gets released.

Aaron 8:53

Right. With the... With only the Israel section that's left completely open, the stuff on the European countries are redacted.

Jeffrey 9:02

So this – and this triggers this whole conspiracy theory. Why is the Israel section unredacted and the other sections are redacted? And the reason for that is even though the document is not classified, there is this – well, the lawyers say there is this provision in US law, which I have actually never run into before, but it does seem to exist, that says for old – Reports or reports of a certain age that have information provided by foreign governments, those foreign governments are given an opportunity to review the document before it is released.

So even though it's not classified, there is apparently a provision in U.S. law, which I had not previously known about, that said the Israelis and the Italians and the, you know, West Germans, now Germans, and all of the countries that provided information in the report, which is really long, several hundred pages long. 386? Yeah, according to one of the stories, although they're so bad about the facts, I feel like I need to fact check that one too, that they get to look and review it.

And so if you look at the court documents – If you actually read the documents, not that anybody in this debate feels like doing that, it's really clear what happens, which is the IRMEP people want the whole document. And the lawyers say, well, we have to let all of the countries that provided information see it first. And then the FOIA people, far from being evil – Say to the IRMEP people or IRMEP or whatever we're calling them, you know, it's clear, like, all you want is the Israel piece.

How about we just give you that? So that way we don't, you don't have to wait for everybody else to review it. And, you know, since their thing, right, is dealing with the, sorry, what's the code word? Harmful influence issue.

Aaron 11:07

Of American agents of Israeli persuasion?

Jeffrey 11:11

No, no. I mean – no, I want to read what they say. I'm not going to put words in their mouth. However they say it. Since that's their shtick, right, is the U.S.-Israel relationship, it seems like they say, yeah, OK, we'll just take the Israel part.

Aaron 11:26

This is assuming Israel has already given permission to release this part of the – the information that they gave for this study.

Jeffrey 11:36

Yeah. Yeah, you know, I don't know. What I believe happened is the – because this was a lawsuit, the judge gave the Israeli government a certain period of time to respond. They said, yes, you have to do the review. You have X amount of time. And I actually don't know. I don't know –

Aaron 12:04

No, that sounds plausible. It sounds plausible that the Israeli government was given a certain amount of time to respond and they probably – Well, no, no.

Jeffrey 12:10

I know the judge said, okay, they get to look at it, but they only have so much time. And then the document appeared. So what I don't know is – and maybe if I really dug through the court filings, which are colorful in their own way – If I dug through them, it might surface actually whether the Israeli government looked at it and signed off or whether they just didn't respond in time or whatever.

But the point is the Obama administration didn't do anything. Yeah, it's nothing to do with the Obama administration. It's a crazy guy who doesn't like the U.S.-Israel relationship is suing to get documents that he hopes will show this thing that he alleges and he – Gets the document which is not surprising because it's not classified there are no classification marks on it anywhere it's just that once they got lawyers involved this like provision of u.s law popped up and it delayed things well i mean there is some proprietary information there you could like theoretically say that you know like it gives a state of like a certain like

Aaron 13:18

I mean it gives a state of some technical capacity to the countries that were examined, wouldn't you say?

Jeffrey 13:22

Yeah, there's probably a lot of proprietary 1987 information in there. Sure.

Aaron 13:28

That's why it's so fascinating because that's where it becomes fascinating because there is some good stuff in there. It has very little to do with nuclear weapons. Well, it has stuff to do with nuclear weapons but not in the way that the reports say. Right. So wow, that's a whole other conversation.

Jeffrey 13:40

Right. Yeah. Right. So what happened? Why did Ida write this report? In 1986, the United States and Israel, well, first of all, in the mid-1980s, right, we had the Strategic Defense Initiative, Ronald Reagan's Star Wars. Star Wars. Right, which is missile defense today. And in 1986, the U.S. and Israel signed an MOU on cooperating on missile defense, which is the That ultimately resulted in Arrow and Iron Dome and all of these jointly developed missile defense capabilities.

Aaron 14:14

Right, which is a hallmark of Congress and should be supported by the right-wing people that are using press TV and RTV to make a point about the Obama administration.

Jeffrey 14:24

Well, it is that. So what happened was the – You know, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and I think it was the Undersecretary of Defense for International Programs and Technology – it's amazing how undersecretaryships change over time – paid for a study. And so they sent – A team from a contractor, right? Maybe Ida gets annoyed being called a contractor.

I guess they're an FFRDC. But there's also this company called LTI. They basically put together a team and they go do site visits in Israel to assess whether they have technologies that would form the basis of a fruitful collaboration on missile defense.

Aaron 15:13

Right, and I think people now are envisioning missile defenses as today. It was a little different back then.

Jeffrey 15:19

Right, so 99.9% of – well, I shouldn't do math because it's probably 90% or something, but the vast majority of the report is dedicated to conventional technologies. Which is fascinating. It's actually a fascinating read. It is really interesting what the state of missile defense technology looked like in the mid-1980s, right? Really the big – I don't know if I'd say the big question, but a major question was computing power.

Aaron 15:52

Yes. It's fascinating. The report is really valuable in that sense. But anyways, we're talking about a different missile defense in this case.

Jeffrey 16:01

Well, so, no, what we're talking about – so SDI looked at a whole range of options, right? They looked at hit-to-kill, which is what we ended up focusing on and selecting and building, and that's what most U.S. missile defense programs are today. That's what Arrow is. That's what Iron Dome is. But just like today, back then, there was a program on directed energy weapons, right?

Lasers and particle beams, and there was this – One nuclear piece, which is actually really important to the creation of missile defense, right? The whole reason that Edward Teller Who was a huge proponent of missile defense. The whole reason he was excited is he wanted to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons. So he had this crazy idea of something called the nuclear-pumped X-ray laser.

And it was a nuclear explosion in space that would create an X-ray laser that would intercept incoming Soviet ICBMs.

Aaron 16:58

Nuclear-pumped X-ray laser just sounds like something out of an Austin Powers movie.

Jeffrey 17:03

Yeah, it's hard to believe, right?

Aaron 17:05

Yeah, it's a crazy thing.

Jeffrey 17:07

So it's so hard to believe they couldn't convince Cap Weinberger, who was the secretary of defense, that it was actually a nuclear explosion in space. Really? Yeah, no. In fact, one of his advisors at one point got so frustrated with him because Weinberger couldn't get it through his head. He would keep saying, it's not nuclear, is it?

And they said, Cap, it go boom. Boom.

Aaron 17:33

That's funny. But this gets to the nuclear angle. You had to have a nuclear explosion in space for your nuclear-pumped X-ray laser to shoot down Soviet ICBM.

Jeffrey 17:44

Right. So even though this team goes to all kinds of locations that are involved in conventional defense and basic research – Right. So they go to like they go to Israeli aircraft industries. They go to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and they go to Elbit. You know, they go to Raphael. They have to stop by Sorek, which is where Israel designs its nuclear weapons because they allegedly allegedly.

Aaron 18:20

Right.

Jeffrey 18:21

I don't care. I don't have clearance where they have to make. Some observation about where the Israelis are on the technologies related to a nuclear pumped x-ray laser, which is a fancy kind of thermonuclear weapon.

Aaron 18:41

Right. And this is the three, I think it's like three pages in the Israeli section where this stuff comes from.

Jeffrey 18:48

Well, it's, you know, what it is is it's only It's really just like a page and a half of a summary of the visit to Sorak. Yeah. And then a paragraph in the executive summary where they summarize the page and a half.

Aaron 19:08

Right. And they make some assumptions based upon their site visit.

Jeffrey 19:16

Right, so they have to assess whether or not Sorek – actually, it's one page for Sorek and then some bullet points. They have to – basically, they have to ask the question whether or not the Israelis would be capable of developing a super fancy third-generation nuclear weapon, which is what Edward Teller called the X-ray laser.

Aaron 19:36

And you know what the answer is?

Jeffrey 19:38

No. Exactly. They conclude no. What they do is they look around – And they say that the Israelis are still hampered in being able to design and produce fusion weapons or other more complicated devices utilizing fusion and fission in the same configuration. As far as nuclear technology is concerned, the Israelis are roughly where the U.S. was in the fission weapon field in about 55 or 60.

It should be noted that the Israelis are developing the kind of codes that will enable them to make hydrogen bombs, that is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level. However, it is doubtful they have the codes to completely design such devices as these involve more exotic radiation transport and are multidimensional. The Israelis do not yet have the capability to carry out these kinds of calculations.

Aaron 20:25

And that's it. There's nothing else to be said except for the fact that… That statement is fascinating because it gives you a glimpse into what types of codes that the Israelis had in 1987, not what type of weapons they have. That's completely missing the point. It's the state of their codes in 87. Right.

Jeffrey 20:45

Right. So to close out, what this is, this is a trip report to look at missile defense technologies. And the vast majority are conventional, but they did stop by SOARAC and they did get some access to the computer codes, which is really cool. And what they concluded is that the computer codes were not good enough for the Israelis to be able to make a thermonuclear device, let alone a nuclear-pumped X-ray laser.

And so what they conclude, totally in contrast to Bill Greider talking about some kind of technological marriage, Is they conclude that the Israelis would not be a good partner purely from a technological standpoint on a project like this. And so you see that in their summary, they say that the Israelis aren't going to be able to build a nuclear-pumped X-ray laser.

And on the little chart where they have tick marks for like which entities would be good for cooperation on which missile defense program, SOAREC is not checked for directed energy weapons.

Aaron 21:48

It's actually a glimpse into the future because it's our future partners on what was then called tactical anti-ballistic missile defense.

Jeffrey 21:58

Anti-tactical ballistic missile defense. Yeah. And it's exactly right. You can actually look at the chart. And see that, hey, look, they said Israeli aircraft industries would be good for that. And guess what? We did Aero with them. And then they said Rafael would be good for that. And guess what? We did Iron Dome with them. And so the trip report in that way is really accurate.

And so it's crazy because at some level, the people who look at this say, first of all, it shows that Israel was building thermonuclear weapons. Well, actually, no, it doesn't. Whether or not we agree with their assessment, No, this little bit of data says the Israelis couldn't build thermonuclear weapons. So, you know, the first story is wrong.

And then the claim that like this shows that we're somehow going to cooperate with them to build nuclear weapons. It's just totally not supported by the document, right? It's about missile defense. And there's this one little piece of missile defense that's nuclear. And they look at it and they're like, yeah, the Israelis stink. We couldn't do this with them.

Aaron 22:58

Well, it actually shows that we were cooperating because their codes were so out of date.

Jeffrey 23:02

Right, right. And then finally, you know, when like the like, you know, crazy weekly standard people come around. They just assume that what the crazy RT people said was right, that it showed Israel had a thermonuclear bomb and that we helped them. And they're like, why is Obama leaking this brilliant plan to help the Israelis build thermonuclear weapons?

It's like he's not leaking it. It's a FOIA process for a 30-year-old document that says the opposite. Like all of this debate, there's this entire debate, right, between IRMEP and RT and Press TV IR and The Nation and the Weekly Standard Amps, all fake. It's just all fake.

Aaron 23:49

It's just based upon nobody has actually read the documents. It's actually not hard to understand if you just read the document. You don't need a PhD in physics. Despite what Bill Greider says.

Jeffrey 24:00

He's wrong. He totally exoticizes this document, right? Like he makes it sound like so complicated and complex and, you know, I mean, yeah, it's got technical words in it, but.

Aaron 24:14

The processes are actually documented on Wikipedia.

Jeffrey 24:17

You know, yeah. You know, like, I don't know, like.

Aaron 24:20

But there's – I mean moving away from the craziness of the debate, there's some really good stuff in there. Like if you are – if you know what you're talking about, it gives you a state of what we all know was the State of the Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program in 1987 and raises questions about like did they have a two-stage nuclear weapon?

Do they have a two-stage nuclear weapon now? What was that – there's so many things that you can – it's another data point that you can pull out about what the Israelis were up to.

Jeffrey 24:53

Yes. So there – well, first of all, there's a reason that I have a copy of this document, which is I collect stuff like this, right? The Ermet people get really angry at me all the time and accuse me of never writing about Israel's nuclear arsenal, which is not true. I actually wrote a column in Foreign Policy a couple of months ago about Israel's nuclear arsenal, arguing that the U.S. should declassify the fact of it.

But one of the reasons I don't write too much about it is I don't know the answer to a series of really interesting questions that I've spent the last several years doggedly following. And basically it all boils down to this question of, Whether in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Israelis developed a thermonuclear weapon. And this document is one little data point, right?

It's two dudes went to SOARAC, got to see some computer codes and concluded the Israelis couldn't build thermonuclear weapons. I'm not sure I believe them, actually. It doesn't settle the debate for me. But yeah, there's this fascinating debate, which we should definitely talk about.

Aaron 25:57

We'll start. I mean I know this is a big passion of yours more than it is mine. Starting with the flash in the – the flash. Let's just – let's start there. Right.

Jeffrey 26:05

So in 1979, a very old – Decrepit. Well, so there were two bang meters on Vela satellites, and bang meters looked for optical flashes. And one of these satellites, the bang meters saw a flash in the South Atlantic that looked a little bit, I would just say a little bit, like a nuclear explosion.

Aaron 26:35

This was down by Antarctica. Yeah.

Jeffrey 26:37

Well, yeah, you know, the way a bang meter works is it just detects a flash. So all you really have is the field of vision of the satellite. So it was actually a pretty big area kind of around the South Atlantic, Antarctica, Southern Africa. But we had other satellites in orbit and those satellites didn't see the flash.

And so that narrowed the area where it might have occurred. Right. So there's this flash, and there is the initial judgment of the U.S. intelligence community is that it's a nuclear test because it looks kind of like a nuclear test. And ultimately, the Carter administration creates this panel led by Jack Rowena at MIT and Dick Garwin's on it.

And Dick is someone who I know well and really respect and admire. And it had Louis Alvarez and Wolfgang Panofsky.

Aaron 27:30

I mean, it was a really like impressive panel. That's a high power panel.

Jeffrey 27:33

Yeah. And they looked at the data and they ended up concluding that it wasn't a nuclear event. But because Israel's involved, the response to that was it's a cover up.

Aaron 27:44

Right. So the allegation is that this was a joint Israeli South African nuclear test.

Jeffrey 27:49

Right. Or an Israeli test with South African support. And let me say, I actually don't know if there was a test. Like I'm always – like I am never going to accuse Dick Garwin of engaging in a cover-up, first of all, because I know Dick Garwin. He's a really ethical guy. But also because if you know Dick's personality, like if I had to cover up a technical matter, like I would not want Dick on the panel.

Aaron 28:13

No, I've seen him speak. I don't know him personally, but your assessment is correct with high confidence.

Jeffrey 28:19

Like Dick's not the guy you want for the cover-up. No. That's – no, no. You don't want to do that. What I always say is, Avner Cohen makes a really compelling circumstantial case for a thermonuclear test, well, a test of a primary of a thermonuclear device, and I don't find the technical information compelling. So I treat what happened in 1979 as still kind of a mystery.

But that leads to this really interesting question, right? Like, If they had conducted a test, it would have been for a thermonuclear primary because of its yield, right? The flash brightness was only so much. And there's a whole bunch of other stuff, and someday we should do a podcast on the flash in the South Atlantic. But then Mordecai Venunu, right, this technician at Demona, takes his camera to work.

Yeah. Yes, he does. Yeah, and he takes pictures of a mock-up. Of a thermonuclear – well, pictures of a mock-up of an Israeli nuclear weapon.

Aaron 29:21

It's one of the most clear pictures of what the inside of a nuclear weapon looks like. It is the most clear picture, wouldn't you say? Yeah, I think so.

Jeffrey 29:28

And so now we have this debate because Ted Taylor, who was a nuclear weapons designer, looked at it and concluded that it was a layer cake design. Explain that. So it's a fission device with a layer of fusion fuel rather than a traditional – Or fancy schmancy two-stage thermonuclear weapon, or I guess I should say staged thermonuclear weapon.

What I have been trying to do is hunt down these documents. So I've got the Venunu photographs, and I've got the original Sunday Times story, and I have, this is so frustrating, Ted Taylor wrote a two-page summary of the photographs and what he as a weapons designer saw. I could only get the first page.

Aaron 30:13

Oh, really? Maybe he's just a sick ermep on a...

Jeffrey 30:18

Well, it was something he wrote privately and distributed to people.

Aaron 30:22

Yeah.

Jeffrey 30:23

And so it's not classified. It's not a government document. It's incredible. But the second page is missing, and I have spent years trying to find the second page. I spent years finding just the first page.

Aaron 30:34

Well, this is a call to anybody on the podcast who has a lead. Shoot us an email or tweet at us.

Jeffrey 30:39

I tried everybody. I tried – I try – anyway, I'll spare you. But so there's this one view that says, no, Israel does not have thermonuclear weapons. The flash in the South Atlantic was an artifact of something that happened in space near the satellite. It was misinterpreted. And when we look at the pictures, we don't see a weapon that would have been tested, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. But Seymour Hersh reported, and I know... Caveats. I know. But I've heard this kind of, let's say, around... That Los Alamos and Livermore took the pictures and did a mock-up and concluded that, yeah, it was a thermonuclear weapon. It was a low-yield thermonuclear weapon, maybe a neutron bomb, right, which is a fancy-schmancy thermonuclear weapon that has a primary and then kind of a tricked-out secondary that throws neutrons.

Aaron 31:31

Yeah, it's a nasty weapon. Even more nasty than, well, they're all nasty.

Jeffrey 31:35

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Like, yeah, it's nasty, but they're all nasty. Yeah, they're all nasty. But the point is, Hirsch reports, no, no, 79 was a test, and the Venunu pictures show a thermonuclear weapon, right? And this might be a spherical secondary for a neutron bomb.

Aaron 31:51

Mm-hmm. Hirsch. Caveats.

Jeffrey 31:55

Right. Well, that's a really interesting question, right? Like, what are we looking at?

Aaron 31:59

Yeah, and so that's when the report comes back in.

Jeffrey 32:02

Right, and I'm not in any position to tell what – like that's a level of weapons design information that I am not capable of talking about. And all I can say is I can tell there's still a debate. Like it doesn't seem like the weapons designers themselves have settled on the issue. And so this obscure little report where these guys go and get to look at the computer codes and say, yeah, the codes stink.

You know, that is a tiny data point that Suggests it's a little less likely that the flash in 79 was a test and that the new news pictures show a staged thermonuclear weapon. But it doesn't settle the debate for me.

Aaron 32:50

No. Hence why I haven't written anything about it. No, no. I think you're just part of the cover-up.

Jeffrey 32:55

But like – Conspiracy. You know, if I'm part of a global conspiracy – How come I don't get more Giants tickets? That would be nice.

Aaron 33:07

One thing I – just – when I read the report for the first time, the – one thing that came away is if – we all know the timeline of Israel's alleged nuclear weapons program. Rush program in 65 more to prepare for – by 67, excuse me. Rush program by 67 to prepare for the war. And if you take that timeline as being true, if you – by 1987, what you see is that their level of sophistication allegedly is only of US bomb designs from the 1950s, maybe the 1960s.

It says something about the pace of vertical proliferation. I mean the idea of not just horizontal proliferation but vertical proliferation. Wouldn't you say? Yeah.

Jeffrey 33:55

Right. Well, with no testing. With no testing, yes. You know, I mean, to me, that's the interesting thing. And it's hard to extrapolate to the present, but I mean, it's one of the things we care about is can new states develop either compact fission weapons that are reliable or thermonuclear weapons without testing?

Aaron 34:24

Right. Yeah, go ahead.

Jeffrey 34:26

Well, there are two questions is how important is testing and how much has the progress of computing allowed one to do away with testing, right? Like on the one hand, you need the tests and the data to inform the codes. But, you know, on the other hand, maybe there are some things you can do. Maybe there are some reliability issues that you're willing to tolerate, right?

And so like we all have this traditional idea, which I think is right, that says if you don't test, it's really hard to develop a reliable thermonuclear weapon. And then obviously Israel with a single alleged event is kind of the test of that hypothesis.

Aaron 35:13

Another reason why I actually find the report really fascinating is because it actually links to the conventional side. So if you look at the discussion about missile defense issues at the time, the problem was computing power, as you said earlier. Yeah. I almost feel like there's a link to weapons. I think this gets into weapons designs that's above my pay grade, okay?

But like if you take computing power as sort of like a corollary and you look at what we've done with missile defense, assuming it's not perfect, we all know the debate, and then you take the nuclear codes beside it, Do you think that suggests anything?

Jeffrey 35:47

Well, yeah. I mean I – well, I don't know. I mean it goes to the fundamental question of what's the problem. There are – there has been a change in the way the US has thought about stockpile stewardship of nuclear weapons. I think we used to have these things that weapons designers would call knobs in the codes, and those were areas where they basically had just – They sort of thought they understood how a thermonuclear reaction worked, theoretically.

But then we did all these tests, and they could see that How it's supposed to work on paper isn't exactly how it works in the real world. And so you have to have these knobs and you just have to kind of adjust for the observed phenomenon. And one of the big challenges that the U.S. has had has been can we do more science so that we understand thermonuclear weapons from first principles better so that we don't need the knobs, right?

And part of that is data-driven and diagnostic, right? But part of it is also having the computing power to take advantage of that data. So, you know, that's the kind of interesting thing. I think in 1987, computer power, computing is not all that impressive. And so, yeah, they're struggling with computing on the side of... Of missile defense.

But you're right, it does seem much worse on the nuclear side. And I just have to guess that that's a function of not having the test data.

Aaron 37:25

Right. But I don't know.

Jeffrey 37:26

Like, that's why it's an interesting document, because we can start that speculation, but we're never going to... At least, I don't think, with the information I have at this point, I don't think I'm ever going to be able to answer that question. No.

Aaron 37:37

So, of course, I'm obsessed. No, and it's just... I guess one of the reasons maybe we'll just start to wrap up here is that the Israeli nuclear program is so fascinating is that because it is opaque and we actually don't know very much about it. And this little document is just a little data point that gives us a hint into what their codes look like in 1987.

And by the way, the codes that they showed the two researchers.

Jeffrey 38:02

Yeah. I, you know, it's very vague. I'm presuming that they openly showed the researchers the codes and so why they would conclude on the basis of what they were shown that that must be the only and the best. I don't, I don't know. But you know, then again, they were at the meeting and they got to talk to the people and, and, and they formed their impressions on, on, on whatever basis they did.

And so I, no, I, I think it's probably a good faith effort, but

Aaron 38:31

But yeah, all it is is a hint. Well, I'm still waiting for the nuclear-pumped X-ray laser. It go boom, Aaron. It go boom. It go boom. Well, I think we went boom on these stupid reports about Israel's nuclear program. Yeah, we were fired up about this.

Jeffrey 38:50

That made me so mad. Well, you know, it just makes me crazy. It's this thing I can't stand about D.C. is that there's this entire fake little debate between people who hate Israel and people who love Israel. And it's not really a debate. It's just people screaming at each other. And the actual document that they're screaming at each other about doesn't say anything remotely close to what they think it says.

And so this thing that I care deeply about, like did Israel develop thermonuclear weapons in the early 1980s? My question gets shoved aside so these idiots can scream at each other.

Aaron 39:24

Well, this time it was a meeting of the minds. RT, Press TV, Weekly Standard, The Nation, and Antiwar.com all coalesced around a single talking point that's not true. About that, that'll blow your mind. I guess there's hope for the, hope for peace in the Middle East yet, right? That's right. Well, I, I thank everybody for listening. I certainly enjoyed this conversation, and we have to do a follow-up on the, on the flash in the South Pacific.

South Atlantic, South Atlantic. Oh, South Atlantic. We got to do a follow-up on a flash of the South Atlantic. That was the Japanese, Aaron. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's been a long day. Thanks, everybody, for listening.

Jeffrey 40:01

And as always, if you don't hate the podcast, write us a positive review on iTunes. It helps get the word out that we exist. Thank you.