Maduro is Taking Venezuela Where Castro Tells Him

The rogue countries across the globe are Russia, Iran, North Korea, China and Cuba. What is in common here is they have each other and they work their foreign policy agendas in locations that threaten the West at every turn including militarily.

Iran, China and Russia are running the influence operations in North Korea. Russia is running the influence operation in Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Syria. China and Pakistan is the enabler to North Korea. China is in Africa, Russia is in Africa, Iran is in Iraq and Afghanistan….they are all policy, money and oil opportunists….crazy right?

The Star

A video showing more than a dozen men dressed in military fatigues, some carrying rifles, began circulating widely on social media around that time. In the recording, a man who identified himself as Capt. Juan Caguaripano said the men were members of the military who oppose Maduro’s socialist government and called on military units to declare themselves in open rebellion.

“This is not a coup d’etat,” the man said. “This is a civic and military action to re-establish the constitutional order.” More from the Associated Press.

So, while Venezuela is in a full blown tailspin….who owns the chaos there via Maduro? Cuba…

2004, the agreement was signed.

To further help, the University of Miami has an archived summary here.

So, it goes like this and the burden belongs to Obama and John Kerry for the plight of Venezuelans.

Photo

The Guns of Venezuela

Castro is calling the shots in Caracas. Sanctions have to be aimed at him.

WSJ: In a video posted on the internet Sunday morning, former Venezuelan National Guard captain Juan Caguaripano, along with some 20 others, announced an uprising against the government of Nicolás Maduro to restore constitutional order. The rebels reportedly appropriated some 120 rifles, ammunition and grenades from the armory at Fort Paramacay in Valencia, the capital of Carabobo state. There were unconfirmed claims of similar raids at several other military installations including in Táchira.

The Cuba-controlled military regime put tanks in the streets and unleashed a hunt for the fleeing soldiers. It claims it put down the rebellion and it instructed all television to broadcast only news of calm. But Venezuelans were stirred by the rebels’ message. There were reports of civilians gathering in the streets to sing the national anthem in support of the uprising.

Note to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson: Venezuelans want to throw off the yoke of Cuban repression. They need your help.

Unfortunately Mr. Tillerson so far seems to be taking the bad advice of his State Department “experts.”

The same bureaucrats, it should be noted, ran Barack Obama’s Latin America policy. Those years gave us a rapprochement with Havana that culminated with the 44th president doing “the wave” with Raúl Castro at a baseball game in 2016. Team Obama also pushed for Colombia’s surrender to the drug-trafficking terrorist group FARC in a so-called peace deal last year. And it supported “dialogue” last year to restore free, fair and transparent elections in Venezuela. The result, in every case, was disaster.

Any U.S.-led international strategy to liberate Venezuela must begin with the explicit recognition that Cuba is calling the shots in Caracas, and that Havana’s control of the oil nation is part of its wider regional strategy.

Slapping Mr. Maduro’s wrist with sanctions, as the Trump administration did last week, won’t change Castro’s behavior. He cares only about his cut-rate Venezuelan oil and his take of profits from drug trafficking. To affect things in Venezuela, the U.S. has to press Cuba.

Burning Cuban flags, when they can be had, is now practically a national pastime in Venezuela because Venezuelans understand the link between their suffering and Havana. The Castro infiltration began over a decade ago when Fidel sent thousands of Cuban agents, designated as teachers and medical personnel, to spread propaganda and establish communist cells in the barrios.

As I noted in this column last week, since 2005 Cuba has controlled Venezuela’s citizen-identification and passport offices, keeping files on every “enemy” of the state—a k a political opponents. The Venezuelan military and National Guard answer to Cuban generals. The Venezuelan armed forces are part of a giant drug-trafficking operation working with the FARC, which is the hemisphere’s largest cartel and also has longstanding ties to Cuba.

These are the tactical realities of the Cuba-Venezuela-Colombia nexus. The broader strategic threat to U.S. interests, including Cuba’s cozy relationship with Middle East terrorists, cannot be ignored.

Elisabeth Burgos is the Venezuelan ex-wife of the French Marxist Regis Debray. She was born in Valencia, joined the Castro cause as a young woman, and worked for its ideals on the South American continent.

Ms. Burgos eventually broke free of the intellectual bonds of communism and has lived in Paris for many years. In a recent telephone interview—posted on the Venezuelan website Prodavinci—she warned of the risks of the “Cuban project” for the region. “Wherever the Cubans have been, everything ends in tragedy,” she told Venezuelan journalist Hugo Prieto. “Surely we have no idea what forces we face,” Mr. Prieto observed—reflecting as a Venezuelan on the words of Ms. Burgos—because, as she said, there is “a lot of naiveté, a lot of ignorance, about the apparatus that has fallen on [Venezuelans]: Castroism.”

Cuban control of citizens is as important as control of the military. In Cuba this is the job of the Interior Ministry. For that level of control in Venezuela, Ms. Burgos said, Mr. Maduro must rely on an “elite of exceptional experts” Castro grooms at home.

Cuba, Ms. Burgos said, is not “simply a dictatorship.” For the regime it is a “historical political project” aiming for “the establishment of a Cuban-type regime throughout Latin America.” She noted that along with Venezuela the Cubans have taken Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, and are now going after Colombia. “The FARC, turned into a political party and with all the money of [the narcotics business], in an election can buy all the votes that it wants.”

Mr. Tillerson is forewarned. Castro won’t stop until someone stops him. To get results, any U.S.-led sanctions have to hit the resources that Havana relies on to maintain the repression.

Chicago Mayor Sues DoJ/Sessions, Sanctuary City Money

Primer:

Jamie Gorelick — a partner at Wilmer Hale who also represents Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner on non-Russia related legal issues, is one of the many attorneys who is listed as pro bono counsel on the suit. Last year Chicago received $2.3 million in JAG funds. Over the years, the city has purchased SWAT equipment, police vehicles, radios and Tasers with the money.

The suit revolves around specific conditions Sessions announced in July for a federal program, the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, or Bryne JAG, which provides federal funding to support local law enforcement efforts.
“(The executive branch) may not unilaterally concoct and import into the Byrne JAG program sweeping new policy conditions that were never approved (and indeed were considered and rejected) by Congress and that would federalize local jails and police stations, mandate warrantless detentions in order to investigate for federal civil infractions, sow fear in local immigrant communities, and ultimately make the people of Chicago less safe,” attorneys for the city wrote in Monday’s filing. More here.

‘Sanctuary city’ Chicago sues Trump administration

Chicago (AFP) – The city of Chicago filed suit Monday against the Donald Trump administration for withholding funds from so-called “sanctuary cities” that fail to cooperate with tougher federal efforts cracking down on undocumented immigrants.

The lawsuit, the first of its kind, challenges the Trump administration’s requirement that cities detain suspects for questioning by federal immigration authorities or see their grant funding for municipal police departments withheld.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Monday called the policy counterproductive.

“By forcing us, or the police department, to choose between the values of the city and the philosophy of the police department… I think it’s a false choice, and it undermines our actual safety agenda,” Emanuel told CNN.

“We will always be a welcoming city,” he continued, adding that local police departments rely on the cooperation of the immigrant community — both documented and undocumented.

“Our police department is part of a neighborhood, part of a community, built on the premise of trust,” the mayor said.

“We want you to come to Chicago if you believe in the American dream,” he added.

The federal grant at the center of the lawsuit provided $2.3 million to Chicago last year to purchase police equipment, such as cars, computers, radios and Tasers, Emanuel said.

The federal government’s new rules would tie the grant to requirements that, among other things, cities give federal immigration authorities unlimited access to local police stations to interrogate arrestees, Chicago officials said.

The city is asking a federal court to declare such requirements unlawful.

Trump has targeted sanctuary cities as part of his promised crackdown on illegal immigration, and the Department of Justice implemented the new funding requirement last month.

Supporters of “sanctuary city” policies say requiring local police to fully cooperate with immigration enforcement erodes with the communities they serve and frustrate law enforcement efforts.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) criticized the lawsuit in a statement that accused Emanuel of “protecting criminal aliens and putting Chicago’s law enforcement at greater risk.”

The head of the DOJ, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, last week said the policy would improve safety for immigration officers who now have to track down suspects who already had been detained and released by local police.

“By forcing police to go into more dangerous situations to re-arrest the same criminals, these policies endanger law enforcement officers more than anyone,” Sessions said.

Loretta Lynch used an Alias in Govt Emails

Using an alias was a common practice under the Obama administration when we first learned about Lisa Jackson doing so while at the EPA, calling herself Richard Windsor….weird huh? Eric Holder used an alias. Not to be forgotten, the top law enforcement officer, Eric Holder while heading the Department of Justice did the same thing, he was Lew Alcindor.

Not too be outdone….here comes Loretta Lynch doing the same thing on official government email communications, she was none other than Elizabeth Carlisle. Sheesh…

Loretta Lynch used the alias “Elizabeth Carlisle” for official emails as attorney general, including those related to her infamous tarmac meeting last summer with former President Clinton.

The emails were included in 413 pages of Justice Department documents provided to conservative watchdog groups Judicial Watch and American Center for Law and Justice.

Top federal officials using email aliases is not illegal or new, considering others in the former Obama administration also used them, arguing security concerns and spam to their official email addresses swamping their in-boxes. More here.

So, when a Freedom of Information request comes in asking for documents relating to an event using government official’s real names, the reply from FOIA officers can then be: “no documents responsive to your request” that is until outside organizations and investigative journals are on to the plots. Such is the case regarding the tarmac meeting between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton. The FBI responded with ‘no documents to the request, but the now Trump Department of Justice responded with 400 pages of documents. Much blame is being placed on James Comey controlling the FBI FOIA requests, however, let us remember he reported to the Justice Department….remember that?

In ‘some’ fairness, Comey in congressional testimony stated he was angry and lost faith in the Justice investigation as it related to the Hillary Clinton affair(s).

The common posture of the people on the Trump team is to regarding Comey as a Hillary loyalist and compromised. This is especially true regarding the offered information on a meeting to his friend and law professor, who later called the New York Times and read the newspaper a personal journal entry of Comey’s at Comey’s behest. Now, this for sure sounds as it is a questionable tactic, and it is.

We cant know how much more background there is or all the facts and context, but we are in the core o a building government crisis, past and present.

So, let’s go a little deeper, shall we?

“No records responsive to your request were located,” FBI Chief of Record/Information David Hardy wrote a letter responding to ACLJ’s Freedom of Information Act request.

“For your information, Congress excluded three discrete categories of law enforcement and national security records from the requirements of the FOIA.”

(Exemptions may apply in cases of classified information relating to foreign policy or national defense, trade secrets, and personnel and medical files.)

The released emails include several exchanges between FBI media official Richard Quinn and DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs Director Melanie Newman.

The video is here.

One of those emails, sent by Newman under the subject line “FLAG”, said she wanted to “flag a story that is gaining some traction” about the “casual, unscheduled meeting” between Lynch and President Clinton.

She instructed Quinn to “let me know if you get any questions about this.”

Newman in the email also provide Quinn with some talking points. Although they are supposedly public statements – and separate emails indicate that they had been sent to reporters of major media outlets – the talking points, as well as many other parts of the release, were redacted.

An email sent by Newman to another staff member on July 1, titled “FBI just called,” shows that the agency was “asking for guidance” in responding to media questions about reports stating FBI agents had ordered ‘No photos, no picture, no cell phones’ at the Clinton-Lynch meeting.

ABC Breaking News | Latest News Videos

The conversation then continued via phone calls. One hour later, Carolyn Pokomy from the Office of the Attorney General said in an email reply, “I will let Rybicki know.” Jim Rybicki was then the FBI’s chief of staff and senior counselor to Comey.

The information she sent to Rybicki was also redacted. Read more here.

 

We Know the Locations of N Korea Nuclear Sites

Within a measure of feet…..

The United States has likely deployed the Global Hawk. An RQ-4 Global Hawk soars through the sky to record intelligence, surveillence and reconnaissance data. Air Force and Navy officials met to discuss joint training with the RQ-4. (Courtesy photo)

Mission 
The RQ-4 Global Hawk is a high-altitude, long-endurance, remotely piloted aircraft with an integrated sensor suite that provides global all-weather, day or night intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capability. Global Hawk’s mission is to provide a broad spectrum of ISR collection capability to support joint combatant forces in worldwide peacetime, contingency and wartime operations. The Global Hawk provides persistent near-real-time coverage using imagery intelligence (IMINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT) and moving target indicator (MTI) sensors.

Features 
Global Hawk is currently fielded in three distinct blocks. Seven Block 10 aircraft were procured, but were retired from the Air Force inventory in 2011. Block 20s were initially fielded with IMINT-only capabilities, but three Block 20s have been converted to an EQ-4 communication relay configuration, carrying the Battlefield Airborne Communication Node (BACN) payload. Block 30 is a multi-intelligence platform that simultaneously carries electro-optical, infrared, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), and high and low band SIGINT sensors. Block 30 Initial Operating Capability (IOC) was declared in August 2011. Eighteen Block 30s are currently fielded, supporting every geographic combatant command as well as combat missions in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom/ New Dawn. Block 30s also supported Operation Odyssey Dawn in Libya and humanitarian relief efforts during Operation Tomodachi in Japan. Block 40 carries the Radar Technology Insertion Program (RTIP) active electronically scanned array radar which provides MTI and SAR data. Block 40 Early Operating Capability (EOC) was declared in Sep 2013 and eleven Block 40s are currently fielded, supporting operations in four combatant commands.

Add other resources already in theater including the THAAD systems and we can determine the locations at least within a differential of feet and we can likely predict the location of the next launch. When it comes to cyber activity and the NSA, be assured those systems are in full use as well.

THAAD Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence

Thanks to dedicated scientists in the United States in key locations, they work wonders by reading waves and ripples and testing air.

How earthquake scientists eavesdrop on North Korea’s nuclear blasts

Waves and ripples in the Earth can reveal the location and depth of an explosion

illustration of seismic waves under a mountain

NUCLEAR SHAKEDOWN  Rumblings of seismic waves reveal clues about North Korea’s nuclear weapons tests, detonated in a mountain. Nicolle Rager Fuller

On September 9 of last year, in the middle of the morning, seismometers began lighting up around East Asia. From South Korea to Russia to Japan, geophysical instruments recorded squiggles as seismic waves passed through and shook the ground. It looked as if an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.2 had just happened. But the ground shaking had originated at North Korea’s nuclear weapons test site.

It was the fifth confirmed nuclear test in North Korea, and it opened the latest chapter in a long-running geologic detective story. Like a police examiner scrutinizing skid marks to figure out who was at fault in a car crash, researchers analyze seismic waves to determine if they come from a natural earthquake or an artificial explosion. If the latter, then scientists can also tease out details such as whether the blast was nuclear and how big it was. Test after test, seismologists are improving their understanding of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

The work feeds into international efforts to monitor the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which since 1996 has banned nuclear weapons testing. More than 180 countries have signed the treaty. But 44 countries that hold nuclear technology must both sign and ratify the treaty for it to have the force of law. Eight, including the United States and North Korea, have not.

To track potential violations, the treaty calls for a four-pronged international monitoring system, which is currently about 90 percent complete. Hydroacoustic stations can detect sound waves from underwater explosions. Infrasound stations listen for low-frequency sound waves rumbling through the atmosphere. Radio­nuclide stations sniff the air for the radioactive by-products of an atmospheric test. And seismic stations pick up the ground shaking, which is usually the fastest and most reliable method for confirming an underground explosion.

Seismic waves offer extra information about an explosion, new studies show. One research group is exploring how local topography, like the rugged mountain where the North Korean government conducts its tests, puts its imprint on the seismic signals. Knowing that, scientists can better pinpoint where the explosions are happening within the mountain — thus improving understanding of how deep and powerful the blasts are. A deep explosion is more likely to mask the power of the bomb.

Story continues after map

map of North Korea

EARS TO THE GROUND Using seismic wave data, researchers calculated the likely locations of five nuclear tests in North Korea’s Mount Mantap (satellite image shown).

  S.J. GIBBONS ET AL/GEOPHYS. J. INT. 2017, GOOGLE EARTH

Separately, physicists have conducted an unprecedented set of six explosions at the U.S. nuclear test site in Nevada. The aim was to mimic the physics of a nuclear explosion by detonating chemical explosives and watching how the seismic waves radiate outward. It’s like a miniature, nonnuclear version of a nuclear weapons test. Already, the scientists have made some key discoveries, such as understanding how a deeply buried blast shows up in the seismic detectors.

The more researchers can learn about the seismic calling card of each blast, the more they can understand international developments. That’s particularly true for North Korea, where leaders have been ramping up the pace of military testing since the first nuclear detonation in 2006. On July 4, the country launched its first confirmed ballistic missile — with no nuclear payload — that could reach as far as Alaska.

“There’s this building of knowledge that helps you understand the capabilities of a country like North Korea,” says Delaine Reiter, a geophysicist with Weston Geophysical Corp. in Lexington, Mass. “They’re not shy about broadcasting their testing, but they claim things Western scientists aren’t sure about. Was it as big as they claimed? We’re really interested in understanding that.”

Natural or not

Seismometers detect ground shaking from all sorts of events. In a typical year, anywhere from 1,200 to 2,200 earthquakes of magnitude 5 and greater set off the machines worldwide. On top of that is the unnatural shaking: from quarry blasts, mine collapses and other causes. The art of using seismic waves to tell one type of event from the others is known as forensic seismology.

Forensic seismologists work to distinguish a natural earthquake from what could be a clandestine nuclear test. In March 2003, for instance, seismometers detected a disturbance coming from near Lop Nor, a dried-up lake in western China that the Chinese government, which signed but hasn’t ratified the test ban treaty, has used for nuclear tests. Seismologists needed to figure out immediately what had happened.

One test for telling the difference between an earthquake and an explosion is how deep it is. Anything deeper than about 10 kilometers is almost certain to be natural. In the case of Lop Nor, the source of the waves seemed to be located about six kilometers down — difficult to tunnel to, but not impossible. Researchers also used a second test, which compares the amplitudes of two different kinds of seismic waves.

Earthquakes and explosions generate several types of seismic waves, starting with P, or primary, waves. These waves are the first to arrive at a distant station. Next come S, or secondary, waves, which travel through the ground in a shearing motion, taking longer to arrive. Finally come waves that ripple across the surface, including those called Rayleigh waves.

In an explosion as compared with an earthquake, the amplitudes of Rayleigh waves are smaller than those of the P waves. By looking at those two types of waves, scientists determined the Lop Nor incident was a natural earthquake, not a secretive explosion. (Seismology cannot reveal the entire picture. Had the Lop Nor event actually been an explosion, researchers would have needed data from the radionuclide monitoring network to confirm the blast came from nuclear and not chemical explosives.)

For North Korea, the question is not so much whether the government is setting off nuclear tests, but how powerful and destructive those blasts might be. In 2003, the country withdrew from the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, an international agreement distinct from the testing ban that aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and related technology. Three years later, North Korea announced it had conducted an underground nuclear test in Mount Mantap at a site called Punggye-ri, in the northeastern part of the country. It was the first nuclear weapons test since India and Pakistan each set one off in 1998.

By analyzing seismic wave data from monitoring stations around the region, seismologists concluded the North Korean blast had come from shallow depths, no more than a few kilometers within the mountain. That supported the North Korean government’s claim of an intentional test. Two weeks later, a radionuclide monitoring station in Yellowknife, Canada, detected increases in radioactive xenon, which presumably had leaked out of the underground test site and drifted eastward. The blast was nuclear.

But the 2006 test raised fresh questions for seismologists. The ratio of amplitudes of the Rayleigh and P waves was not as distinctive as it usually is for an explosion. And other aspects of the seismic signature were also not as clear-cut as scientists had expected.

Researchers got some answers as North Korea’s testing continued. In 2009, 2013 and twice in 2016, the government set off more underground nuclear explosions at Punggye-ri. Each time, researchers outside the country compared the seismic data with the record of past nuclear blasts. Automated computer programs “compare the wiggles you see on the screen ripple for ripple,” says Steven Gibbons, a seismologist with the NORSAR monitoring organization in Kjeller, Norway. When the patterns match, scientists know it is another test. “A seismic signal generated by an explosion is like a fingerprint for that particular region,” he says.

With each test, researchers learned more about North Korea’s capabilities. By analyzing the magnitude of the ground shaking, experts could roughly calculate the power of each test. The 2006 explosion was relatively small, releasing energy equivalent to about 1,000 tons of TNT — a fraction of the 15-kiloton bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. But the yield of North Korea’s nuclear tests crept up each time, and the most recent test, in September 2016, may have exceeded the size of the Hiroshima bomb.

This U.S. atmospheric nuclear test took place in April 1953 in Nevada. No surprise, North Korea’s buried tests are harder to spot.

CTBTO/FLICKR (CC BY 2.0)

Digging deep

For an event of a particular seismic magnitude, the deeper the explosion, the more energetic the blast. A shallow, less energetic test can look a lot like a deeply buried, powerful blast. Scientists need to figure out precisely where each explosion occurred.

Mount Mantap is a rugged granite mountain with geology that complicates the physics of how seismic waves spread. Western experts do not know exactly how the nuclear bombs are placed inside the mountain before being detonated. But satellite imagery shows activity that looks like tunnels being dug into the mountainside. The tunnels could be dug two ways: straight into the granite or spiraled around in a fishhook pattern to collapse and seal the site after a test, Frank Pabian, a nonproliferation expert at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said in April in Denver at a meeting of the Seismological Society of America.

Researchers have been trying to figure out the relative locations of each of the five tests. By comparing the amplitudes of the P, S and Rayleigh waves, and calculating how long each would have taken to travel through the ground, researchers can plot the likely sites of the five blasts. That allows them to better tie the explosions to the infrastructure on the surface, like the tunnels spotted in satellite imagery.

One big puzzle arose after the 2009 test. Analyzing the times that seismic waves arrived at various measuring stations, one group calculated that the test occurred 2.2 kilometers west of the first blast. Another scientist found it only 1.8 kilometers away. The difference may not sound like a lot, Gibbons says, but it “is huge if you’re trying to place these relative locations within the terrain.” Move a couple of hundred meters to the east or west, and the explosion could have happened beneath a valley as opposed to a ridge — radically changing the depth estimates, along with estimates of the blast’s power.

Gibbons and colleagues think they may be able to reconcile these different location estimates. The answer lies in which station the seismic data come from. Studies that rely on data from stations within about 1,500 kilometers of Punggye-ri — as in eastern China — tend to estimate bigger distances between the locations of the five tests when compared with studies that use data from more distant seismic stations in Europe and elsewhere. Seismic waves must be leaving the test site in a more complicated way than scientists had thought, or else all the measurements would agree.

When Gibbons’ team corrected for the varying distances of the seismic data, the scientists came up with a distance of 1.9 kilometers between the 2006 and 2009 blasts. The team also pinpointed the other explosions as well. The September 2016 test turned out to be almost directly beneath the 2,205-meter summit of Mount Mantap, the group reported in January in Geophysical Journal International. That means the blast was, indeed, deeply buried and hence probably at least as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb for it to register as a magnitude 5.2 earthquake.

Other seismologists have been squeezing information out of the seismic data in a different way — not in how far the signals are from the test blast, but what they traveled through before being detected. Reiter and Seung-Hoon Yoo, also of Weston Geophysical, recently analyzed data from two seismic stations, one 370 kilometers to the north in China and the other 306 kilometers to the south in South Korea.

The scientists scrutinized the moments when the seismic waves arrived at the stations, in the first second of the initial P waves, and found slight differences between the wiggles recorded in China and South Korea, Reiter reported at the Denver conference. Those in the north showed a more energetic pulse rising from the wiggles in the first second; the southern seismic records did not. Reiter and Yoo think this pattern represents an imprint of the topography at Mount Mantap.

“One side of the mountain is much steeper,” Reiter explains. “The station in China was sampling the signal coming through the steep side of the mountain, while the southern station was seeing the more shallowly dipping face.” This difference may also help explain why data from seismic stations spanning the breadth of Japan show a slight difference from north to south. Those differences may reflect the changing topography as the seismic waves exited Mount Mantap during the test.

Four ways to verify a nuclear weapons test

Seismic: 170 stations worldwide monitor ground shaking to identify the location, strength and nature of a seismic event.

Hydroacoustic: 11 stations listen in the oceans, where sound waves can propagate far.

Infrasound: 60 stations detect low-frequency sound waves inaudible to humans.

Radionuclide: 80 stations sniff for radioactive particles dispersed in the wind after a test.

Learning from simulations

But there is only so much scientists can do to understand explosions they can’t get near. That’s where the test blasts in Nevada come in.

The tests were part of phase one of the Source Physics Experiment, a $40-million project run by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. The goal was to set off a series of chemical explosions of different sizes and at different depths in the same borehole and then record the seismic signals on a battery of instruments. The detonations took place at the nuclear test site in southern Nevada, where between 1951 and 1992 the U.S. government set off 828 underground nuclear tests and 100 atmospheric ones, whose mushroom clouds were seen from Las Vegas, 100 kilometers away.

For the Source Physics Experiment, six chemical explosions were set off between 2011 and 2016, ranging up to 5,000 kilograms of TNT equivalent and down to 87 meters deep. The biggest required high-energy–density explosives packed into a cylinder nearly a meter across and 6.7 meters long, says Beth Dzenitis, an engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California who oversaw part of the field campaign. Yet for all that firepower, the detonation barely registered on anything other than the instruments peppering the ground. “I wish I could tell you all these cool fireworks go off, but you don’t even know it’s happening,” she says.

The explosives were set inside granite rock, a material very similar to the granite at Mount Mantap. So the seismic waves racing outward behaved very much as they might at the North Korean nuclear test site, says William Walter, head of geophysical monitoring at Livermore. The underlying physics, describing how seismic energy travels through the ground, is virtually the same for both chemical and nuclear blasts.

Technicians lower an enormous canister of explosives into the ground in southern Nevada for a chemical explosion — part of the Source Physics Experiment series — to mimic the physics of nuclear blasts.

GARY STRIKER/LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LAB

The results revealed flaws in the models that researchers have been using for decades to describe how seismic waves travel outward from explosions. These models were developed to describe how the P waves compress rock as they propagate from large nuclear blasts like those set off starting in the 1950s by the United States and the Soviet Union. “That worked very well in the days when the tests were large,” Walter says. But for much smaller blasts, like those North Korea has been detonating, “the models didn’t work that well at all.”

Walter and Livermore colleague Sean Ford have started to develop new models that better capture the physics involved in small explosions. Those models should be able to describe the depth and energy release of North Korea’s tests more accurately, Walter reported at the Denver meeting.

A second phase of the Source Physics Experiment is set to begin next year at the test site, in a much more rubbly type of rock called alluvium. Scientists will use that series of tests to see how seismic waves are affected when they travel through fragmented rock as opposed to more coherent granite. That information could be useful if North Korea begins testing in another location, or if another country detonates an atomic bomb in fragmented rock.

For now, the world’s seismologists continue to watch and wait, to see what the North Korean government might do next. Some experts think the next nuclear test will come at a different location within Mount Mantap, to the south of the most recent tests. If so, that will provide a fresh challenge to the researchers waiting to unravel the story the seismic waves will tell.

“It’s a little creepy what we do,” Reiter admits. “We wait for these explosions to happen, and then we race each other to find the location, see how big it was, that kind of thing. But it has really given us a good look as to how [North Korea’s] nuclear program is progressing.” Useful information as the world’s nations decide what to do about North Korea’s rogue testing.

2 Congressmen Watched Voting Machines Being Hacked

Primer

33 states accepted DHS aid to secure elections

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provided cybersecurity assistance to 33 state election offices and 36 local election offices leading up to the 2016 presidential election, according to information released by Democratic congressional staff.

During the final weeks of the Obama administration, the DHS announced that it would designate election infrastructure as critical, following revelations about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Since January, two states and six local governments have requested cyber hygiene scanning from the DHS, according to a memo and DHS correspondence disclosed Wednesday by the Democratic staff of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The information is related to the committee’s ongoing oversight of the DHS decision to designate election infrastructure.

The intelligence community said back in January that in addition to directing cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee and top Democratic officials, Russia also targeted state and local electoral systems not involved in vote tabulating.

In June, DHS officials told senators investigating Russian interference that there was evidence that Russia targeted election-related systems in 21 states, none of them involved in vote tallying.

Officials have previously confirmed breaches in Arizona and Illinois, though it remains unclear whether other systems were successfully breached. Lawmakers such as Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) have demanded more information on the specific states targeted.

Homeland Security and Government Affairs ranking member Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) wrote then-Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly back in March, asking for more information on his plans for the critical infrastructure designation. The information released Wednesday is drawn from his response on June 13. Kelly has since left his post to serve as President Trump’s chief of staff.

“Prior to the election, DHS offered voluntary, no-cost cybersecurity services and assistance to election officials across all 50 states. By Election Day, 33 state election offices and 36 local election offices requested and received these cyber hygiene assessments of their internet-facing infrastructure,” Kelly wrote.

“In addition, one state election office requested and received a more in-depth risk and vulnerability assessment of their election infrastructure.”

Given the critical infrastructure designation, the DHS is providing cyber hygiene assessments, which include vulnerability scanning of election-related systems excluding voting machines and tallying systems, which the department recommends being disconnected from the internet.

The department also offers risk and vulnerability assessments, which include penetration testing, social engineering, wireless discovery and identification, and database and operating systems scanning. The DHS is also responsible for sharing threat information with owners and operators of critical infrastructure, which now include state and local election officials.

“Following the establishment of election infrastructure as critical infrastructure, several state and local governments requested new or expanded cybersecurity services from DHS,” Kelly disclosed in June, according to the letter. “Specifically, an additional two states and six local governments requested to begin cyber hygiene scanning (one state has, however, ended its service agreement). DHS also received one request for the risk and vulnerability assessment service.”

Many state and local election officials have opposed the designation, saying that the DHS has not offered enough information about what it means. The department has insisted that assistance will be given only to states that request it.

In the letter, Kelly, who has acknowledged objections, said there are “no plans to make any changes to the designation of election infrastructure as a critical infrastructure subsector.”

All of the Democratic members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee have called for a full investigation into Russian election interference. The matter is already under investigation by the House and Senate Intelligence committees. The memo issued by Democratic staff on Wednesday was sent to the full committee.

Background at a Las Vegas Convention:

LAS VEGAS—For the first time in the 25 years of the world’s largest hacker convention, DefCon, two sitting U.S. Congressmen trekked here from Washington, D.C., to discuss their cybersecurity expertise on stage.

Rep. Will Hurd, a Texas Republican, and Rep. Jim Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat, visited hacking villages investigating vulnerabilities in cars, medical devices, and voting machines; learned about how security researchers plan to defend quantum computers from hacks; and met children learning how to hack for good.

On Sunday, the last day of the conference, Hurd and Langevin delivered their own message: We come in peace. Please help us.

During a fireside chat-style conversation moderated by Joshua Corman, director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, Hurd, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Information Technology, and Langevin, co-founder and co-chair of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, called for the more than 2,000 hackers in the audience to “develop a dialogue” with their local representative in Congress.

“Never underestimate the value that you can bring to the table in helping to educate members and staff of what the best policies are, what’s going to work, and what’s not going to work,” Langevin said, pointing to Luta Security CEO and bug bounty expert Katie Moussouris’ ongoing advocacy for changes to the Wassenaar Arrangement, a decades-old international accord on how countries can transport “intrusion software” and other weapons across international borders.

Moussouris and Iain Mulholland of VMware have effectively convinced Wassenaar member countries to delay their adoption of proposed revisions to the agreement, as they’ve pushed for new language to better protect security researchers’ work.

The conversation between hackers and Congress has never been monosyllabic. But it has been frosty for decades, as federal prosecutors have used American antihacking laws such as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and Electronic Communication Privacy Act to punish people conducting legitimate security research.

As many security researchers continue to worry about how these laws might affect them, some have begun to use their expertise to influence the laws—and the lawmakers behind them.

Langevin and Hurd’s plea for hacker-legislator collaboration follows calls by hackers at last year’s DefCon for greater government regulation of software security.

“We don’t have voluntary minimum safety standards for cars; we have a mandatory minimum,” Corman told The Parallax at the time. “What tips the equation [for software] is the Internet of Things, because we now have bits and bytes meeting flesh and blood.”

Hurd said security researchers could play an important role in addressing increasingly alarming vulnerabilities in the nation’s voting apparatus. DefCon’s first voting machine-hacking village this weekend hosted a voting machine from Shelby County, Tenn., that unexpectedly contained personal information related to more than 600,000 voters. Village visitors managed to hack the machine, along with 29 others.

“We have to ensure that the American people can trust the vote-tabulating process,” Hurd said, acknowledging that DefCon attendees were able to hack each machine in the village. “The work that has been done out here is important in educating the secretaries of state all around the country, as well as the election administrators,” about secure technologies and practices.

Langevin and Hurd’s comments seemed to strike the right notes with hackers in attendance. Following Edward Snowden’s leaking of NSA documents and Apple’s refusal to create an encryption backdoor for law enforcement to the iPhone, relations between the hacking community and Washington have been strained at best, notes Herb Lin, a computer security policy expert and research fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. But markedly improving the relationship will require more than a plea for collaboration, he warns.

“It’s better than what’s happened in the past, which is both nothing and active hostility,” he says. “One act by itself is not a game changer.”

The chat ended with assurances of more action from both sides. Corman said he’d like to see members of Congress attend more hacker conferences, such as ShmooCon in Washington, and Hurd promised that he wouldn’t let his experiences this past weekend go to waste.

“These conversations are going to lead me to hold hearings on many of these topics in the subcommittee that I chair,” Hurd said.

***  More details that were recorded at the convention:

DEF CON 2017 –  Are voting systems secure? In August 2016, the FBI issued a “flash” alert to election officials across the country confirming that foreign hackers have compromised state election systems in two states.

Although the US largely invested in electronic voting systems their level of security appears still not sufficient against a wide range of cyber attacks.

During an interesting session at the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas, experts set up 30 computer-powered ballot boxes used in American elections simulating the Presidential election.  Welcome in the DEF CON Voting Village!

At the 1st ever Voting Village at , attendees tinker w/ election systems to find vulnerabilities. I’m told they found some new flaws

The organization asked the participant to physically compromise the system and hack into them, and the results were disconcerting.

“We encourage you to do stuff that if you did on election day they would probably arrest you.” John Hopkins computer scientist Matt Blaze said,

Most of the voting machines in the DEF CON Voting Village were purchased via eBay (Diebold, Sequoia and Winvote equipment), others were bought from government auctions.

voting machines hacking

In less than 90 minutes hackers succeeded in compromising the voting machines, one of them was hacker wirelessly.

“Without question, our voting systems are weak and susceptible. Thanks to the contributions of the hacker community today, we’ve uncovered even more about exactly how,” said Jake Braun, cybersecurity lecturer at the University of Chicago.

The analysis of the voting machines revealed that some of them were running outdated OS like Windows XP and Windows CE and flawed software such as unpatched versions of OpenSSL.

Some of them had physical ports open that could be used by attackers to install malicious applications to tamper with votes.

Even if physical attacks are easy to spot and stop, some voting machines were using poorly secured Wi-Fi connectivity.

The experts Carsten Schurmann at the DEF CON Voting Village hacked a WinVote system used in previous county elections via Wi-Fi, he exploited the MS03-026 vulnerability in Windows XP to access the voting machine using RDP.

Greetings from the Defcon voting village where it took 1:40 for Carsten Schurmann to get remote access to this WinVote machine.

Another system could be potentially cracked remotely via OpenSSL bug CVE-2011-4109, it is claimed.

huge cheer just went up in @votingvilllagedc as hackers managed to load Rick Astley video onto a voting machine

The good news is that most of the hacked equipment is no longer used in today’s election.