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Two top American nuclear experts have said that India continues to modernise its atomic arsenal keeping China as a target.<br /> <br /> An article titled ‘Indian nuclear forces 2017,’ written by experts <keyword id="508359" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Hans-M-Kristensen">Hans M Kristensen</keyword> and <keyword id="3861438" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="robert-s-norris">Robert S Norris</keyword> was published in the July-August issue of the digital journal After Midnight, claiming that India is presently busy developing a missile which can target the entire China region from its bases located in South India.<br /><br /> As per the article, India has produced around 600 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium, which is sufficient for 150-200 nuclear warheads. However, out of these, only 120-130 weapons have actually been produced.<br /><br /> As per their estimates, New Delhi is operating seven nuclear-capable systems, including two aircraft, four land-based ballistic missiles, and one sea-based ballistic missile.<br /><br /> "At least four more systems are in development. The development program is in a dynamic phase, with long-range land- and sea-based missiles emerging for possible deployment within the next decade," the article said.<br /><br /> As per Kristensen and Norris, the two-stage, solid-fuel, rail-mobile Agni-2, the improvement variant of Agni-1, which can deliver a nuclear or conventional warhead more than 2,000 kilometres is probably targeted on western, central, and southern regions of China.<br /><br />(Image source WikiMedia)

India modernising nuclear arsenal to target China from southern bases: US experts

<br /><ul><li>India's nuclear power plant in Kudankulam was breached by North Korean hackers looking for information on thorium-based reactors — an alternative to using uranium. <br /></li><li>India is currently the leader in commercialising the use of thorium as a safer and more efficient alternative.<br /></li><li>Use of thorium-based reactors would make North Korea's use of nuclear power less threatening since, unlike uranium, it does not produce plutonium needed to make weapons.<br /></li></ul>India's nuclear power plant in Kudankulam — the largest nuclear power plant in the country — was <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/indian-nuclear-plant-hack-is-only-one-small-part-of-a-much-bigger-operation-according-to-a-cybersecurity-expert/articleshow/72033253.cms">recently infiltrated by North Korean hackers</a>. They were after the country's research and data on thorium-based reactors.<br /><br />The hackers had the ability to cause damage, but chose to retrieve data instead.<br /><br />The hackers, speculated to be the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/while-trump-was-meeting-with-kim-jong-un-in-vietnam-north-korean-hackers-reportedly-attacked-targets-in-the-us-and-elsewhere/amp_articleshow/68266372.cms">Lazarus Group</a> — a cyber arm of the North Korean government — were spying on the nuclear power plant to find out how India was developing its thorium technology, according to the Indian government and an analysis by cybersecurity firm Issue Makers Lab.<br /><br /><strong>India's lead on Thorium<br /></strong><br />Thorium can be used to fuel nuclear reactors, just like uranium. Only, it's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/A-forgotten-war-technology-could-safely-power-Earth-for-millions-of-years-Heres-why-we-arent-using-it/articleshow/57347151.cms">safer and more efficient</a> than its counterpart. And since it has a higher concentration than uranium — it also costs less and yields less damage to the environment.<br /><br />India <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/why-is-indiainvesting-in-nuclear-energy-when-the-whole-world-is-experiencing-a-nuclearmeltdown/articleshow/58094501.cms">leads the pack</a> when it comes to commercialising the use of thorium. It aims to fuel 30% of the country's electricity demand using thorium-based reactors by 2050.<br /><br />Even their point of access was an expert on thorium-based reactors, S.A. Bhardwaj — a former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB).<br /><br /><div type="twitter" handle="issuemakerslab" handlename="IssueMakersLab" image="http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1190542970988253185/2oKl0RiW_normal.jpg" favoritecount="87" retweetcount="61" status="North Korea has been interested in the thorium based nuclear power, which to replace the uranium nuclear power. Ind… https://t.co/g4dUBr3Mkn" createdat="1572680497000" id="1190534411231490049"></div>

<br /><strong>Thorium can't be used to build bombs<br /></strong><br />One of the key benefits of using thorium over uranium is that thorium reactors don't produce plutonium — the element needed to make a nuke. <br /><br />If North Korea were to use thorium instead of uranium, the world would no longer speculate that its use nuclear power is being used to develop weapons.<br /><br />It's also possible to use thorium to breed uranium. This type of reaction also will not create plutonium while making uranium more efficient for energy production.<br /><br />In the past, North Korean hackers have breached the Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) and the Belgium nuclear research center, SCK.CEN.<br /><br />They also attacked scholars around the world who published papers on <keyword id="8325278" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="thorium-energy">thorium energy</keyword>.<br /><br />As of today, there aren't any operational thorium reactors in the world, which makes the information all the more valuable since India is hoping to be the first.<br /><br /><strong>See also:<br /></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/indian-nuclear-plant-hack-is-only-one-small-part-of-a-much-bigger-operation-according-to-a-cybersecurity-expert/articleshow/72033253.cms">Indian nuclear plant hack is only one small part of a much 'bigger' operation, according to a cybersecurity expert</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/whatsapp-confirms-indian-activists-and-journalists-were-hacked-as-nso-claims-its-contractually-prohibited/articleshow/71831583.cms">WhatsApp confirms Indian activists and journalists were hacked as NSO claims it's 'contractually prohibited'</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/whatsapp-hacker-pegasus-spyware-attacked-100-others/articleshow/71851228.cms">The shadowy firm behind WhatsApp hack is involved in 100 other spyware attacks</a><br /><br /><br />

Here's why North Korean hackers attacked India's nuclear power plant

<keyword id="4741" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Tokyo">TOKYO</keyword>: <keyword id="6355311" type="COUNTRY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Japan">Japan</keyword> and India agreed on Monday to strengthen strategic ties as Asia's second and third biggest economies keep a wary eye on a rising China, and agreed to accelerate talks on the possible sale of an amphibious aircraft to India's navy.<br />
<br /> Japanese <keyword id="71" type="POSITION" weightage="80" keywordseo="Prime-Minister">Prime Minister</keyword> <keyword id="590894" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Shinzo-Abe">Shinzo Abe</keyword> and <keyword id="6354477" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Narendra-Modi">Narendra Modi</keyword> also agreed to speed up talks on a so-far elusive deal on nuclear energy cooperation.<br />
<br />
"The two prime ministers reaffirmed the importance of defence relations between Japan and India in their strategic partnership and decided to upgrade and strengthen them," Abe and Modi said in a statement after a summit in Tokyo.<br />
<br />
The two countries agreed to pursue comprehensive security and defence cooperation, including maritime security.<br />
<br />
"Concerning economic matters, we have agreed to move towards a common goal of dramatically increasing Japan's investment in India," Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on the occasion.<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-partner="tweetdeck">
	<p>
		Dawn of a new era in India-Japan relations. Special Strategic &amp; Global partnership launched. <a href="http://t.co/4QtN1qyBaw">http://t.co/4QtN1qyBaw</a></p>
	— Syed Akbaruddin (@MEAIndia) <a href="https://twitter.com/MEAIndia/statuses/506392698396237825">September 1, 2014</a></blockquote>
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi thanked Shinzo Abe for inviting him and said he was happy that within 100 days of becoming PM he got the opportunity to visit Japan.<br />
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<strong>READ ALSO: <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Tokyo-Declaration-for-India-Japan-Special-Strategic-and-Global-Partnership/articleshow/41433328.cms">Full text of Tokyo Declaration</a></strong><br />
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"The attention which Shinzo Abe accorded to me during this visit shows his love for India," Modi said adding, "the visit had raised hopes for the future."<br />
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Modi hailed Abe for announcing investment to the tune of $ 35 billion and said, " PM Abe has understood my vision and assured support in various sectors."<br />
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On the nuclear deal, Shinzo Abe said, "I had frank discussion on this issue, we are able to deepen our understanding on both sides."<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-partner="tweetdeck">
	<p>
		PM Modi : Japan &amp; India are the two most important democracies of India. Our ties will have an effect in Asia &amp; World <a href="http://t.co/A31tzSDuAJ">pic.twitter.com/A31tzSDuAJ</a></p>
	— ANI (@ANI_news) <a href="https://twitter.com/ANI_news/statuses/506395056740110336">September 1, 2014</a></blockquote>
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<em>(With inputs from Reuters)</em>

No Nuke Deal, But Japan And India Agree To Boost Strategic Ties At Tokyo Summit

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Pakistan's prime minister recently <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pakistan-india-threat-war-kashmir-2019-9">threatened to go to war</a> with India over the disputed Kashmir region. Both nations are armed with nuclear weapons.</li><li>A new paper simulates what would happen if India and Pakistan entered into a nuclear war. </li><li>The results suggest that scenario could lead 125 million people to die. Earth's global temperature could drop by 5 degrees Celsius, which would cause major agricultural challenges.</li><li>The researchers estimate that the disaster could trigger a global famine.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Businessinsider.com for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>Pakistan and India have fought three wars over Kashmir, a disputed territory to which both nations lay claim. Pakistan's prime minister, Imran Khan, recently suggested the countries could be headed toward another.</p><p>"There is a potential that two nuclear-armed countries will come face to face at some stage," Khan <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pakistan-india-threat-war-kashmir-2019-9">said at the United Nations annual summit</a> in September, referring to the Kashmir conflict.</p><p>Together, India and Pakistan possess 2% of the world's nuclear arsenal: India is estimated to have <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/global/2019/06/16/heres-how-many-nuclear-warheads-exist-and-which-countries-own-them/">around 140 nuclear warheads</a>, while Pakistan is estimated to have around 160. But they're <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-kashmir-pakistan-nuclear-factbo/factbox-india-and-pakistan-nuclear-arsenals-and-strategies-idUSKCN1QI4O5">in an arms race</a> to acquire more weapons.</p><p>By 2025, India and Pakistan could have expanded their arsenals to 250 warheads each, according to <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/10/eaay5478">a new paper</a> that predicts what might happen if the two nations entered into a nuclear war. </p><p>In that extreme scenario, the researchers write, a cloud of black soot could envelop the sky, causing temperatures to fall dramatically. Key agricultural hotspots would lose the ability to grow crops, triggering a global famine. </p><p>"It would be instant climate change," Alan Robock, an author of the study, told Business Insider. "Nothing like this in history, since civilization was developed, has happened."</p><p>His paper estimates that up to 125 million people could die. </p><h2>Nuclear weapons are becoming more powerful</h2><p>Robock said the situation outlined in the paper isn't likely, but it's possible. So to determine the hypothetical consequences of a nuclear war between Pakistan and India, the researchers sought the advice of military experts.</p><p>"We clearly don't want to burn cities and see what would happen," Robock said. "Most scientists have test tubes or accelerators. Nature is our laboratory, so we use models."</p><p><em><strong>Read more</strong>: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-disaster-dos-and-donts-2019-9">If a nuclear bomb is dropped on your city, here's what you should (and shouldn't) do to stay alive</a></em></p><p>The paper doesn't speculate as to which nation is more likely to initiate a conflict. But it estimates that if India wanted to destroy Pakistan's major cities, the nation would need to deploy around 150 nuclear weapons. The calculations assume that some of these weapons might miss their target or fail to explode, so the model is based on the explosion of 100 weapons in Pakistan.</p><p>If Pakistan attacked India's major cities, the researchers estimated, about 150 nuclear weapons would likely go off.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div></p><p>If all of those bombs were 15-kiloton weapons - the size of the "Little Boy" atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan - the researchers predict that 50 million people would die.</p><p>But Robock said the US' nuclear weapons today are around 100 to 500 kilotons, so it's likely that India and Pakistan will have acquired more powerful weapons by 2025, the year in which his simulation takes place. If the nations were to use 100-kiloton weapons, the study suggests, that conflict could kill about 125 million people. </p><h2>A nuclear war between India and Pakistan could wreck Earth's climate</h2><p>Nuclear explosions produce sweltering heat. Structures catch on fire, and then winds either spread those flames or the fire draws in the surrounding air, creating an even larger blaze known as a firestorm.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div></p><p>Either way, enormous amounts of smoke would enter the air, the researchers write. A small portion of this smoke would contain "black carbon," the sooty material that usually comes from the exhaust of a diesel engine. That substance would then get pumped through the troposphere (the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere) and into the stratosphere. Within weeks, black carbon particles could spread across the globe.</p><p>It would be "the biggest injection of smoke into the stratosphere that we've ever seen," Robock said.</p><p>Smoke particles can <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/india-pakistan-kashmir-nuclear-weapons-climate-cooling-2019-2">linger in the stratosphere</a> for about five years and block out sunlight. In Robock's simulation, that could cause Earth's average temperature to drop by up to 5 degrees Celsius. Temperatures could get "as cold as the Ice Age," he said. With less energy from the sun, the world could also experience up to 30% less rain. </p><p>The researchers estimate that it would take more than a decade for temperatures and precipitation to return to normal. In the meantime, farmers around the world - especially in India, China, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, tropical South America, and Africa - would struggle to grow food.</p><p>Entire marine ecosystems could also be devastated, which would destroy local fishing economies.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div></p><p>In sum, the authors write, a nuclear war could trigger mass starvation across the globe.</p><p>"As horrible as the direct effects of nuclear weapons would be, the indirect effects on our food supply would be much worse," Robock said. </p><p>This isn't the first time Robock has modeled this type of scenario: In 2014, he <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2013EF000205">contributed to a paper</a> that predicted what would happen if <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/india-pakistan-kashmir-nuclear-weapons-climate-cooling-2019-2">India and Pakistan deployed 50 weapons apiece</a>, each with the strength of a "Little Boy" atomic bomb.</p><p>Even that "limited" nuclear-war scenario, he found, would cripple the ozone layer, expose people to harmful amounts of ultraviolet radiation, and lower Earth's surface temperatures for more than 25 years. But those explosions wouldn't release nearly as much black carbon as the scenario in the newer model, so the cooling effect wouldn't be as severe. </p><h2>'We've been really lucky'</h2><p>Robock said this type of global climate catastrophe has happened before, but has never been created by humans. He compared the nuclear conflict modeled in the recent paper to the asteroid crash that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/timeline-consequences-of-dinosaur-killing-asteroid-2019-9">triggered the extinction of dinosaurs</a> 66 million years ago. That explosion released billions of tons of sulfur into the atmosphere, causing global temperatures to plummet.</p><p>Robock emphasized that unlike that disaster, nuclear war is preventable. </p><p>"There are all kinds of ways that something like this could happen, but if nuclear weapons didn't exist, then it wouldn't produce a nuclear war," he said.</p><p>A key takeaway of the paper, he said, is that when nations threaten to nuke one another, they threaten their own safety, too. A nuclear war between two countries would "affect everybody in the world, not just where the bombs were dropped," he added. </p><p>"We've been really lucky for the last 74 years" since Hiroshima, Robock said. "Our luck might run out sometime."</p>

If India and Pakistan have a nuclear war, scientists say it could trigger Ice-Age temperatures, cause global famine, and kill 125 million people

<h2></h2><ul class="summary-list"><li>In a recent <keyword id="67741" type="TECHNOLOGY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Simulation">simulation</keyword>, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-simulated-asteroid-couldnt-stop-impact-europe-2021-5">a fictitious asteroid was approaching Earth</a> but experts couldn't stop it.</li><li><keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Nasa">NASA</keyword> has led seven such simulations, and the participants only fully stopped the asteroid once.</li><li>It shows <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">how challenging it would be</a> to stop an Earth-bound <keyword id="41531" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="space">space</keyword> rock, even with ample warning.</li></ul><p>An international group of space experts have been bested by a hypothetical asteroid. Again.</p><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-simulated-asteroid-couldnt-stop-impact-europe-2021-5">In a planetary-defense simulation that NASA led last month</a>, more than 200 participants from about two dozen countries learned that a fictitious space rock was set to strike Earth in six months. They put their heads together to investigate every possible way to avoid the impact. But in the end, the group determined that no existing technologies could stop the asteroid, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">given the limited warning time in the scenario</a>. The rock ended up razing eastern Europe.</p><p>Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, helped design and host the recent simulation, as well as five previous exercises like it that the agency has hosted since 2013. In total NASA has helped lead seven asteroid-impact scenarios in the last eight years.</p><p>"Every one of these has a little different bit of a twist on it," Chodas told Insider.</p><p>But the outcomes have, for the most part, had a worrisome similarity: In all but one, at least part of the incoming space rock has hit Earth.</p><p>"There is a certain, you know, morbid aspect to it," Matthew Holman, an astronomer from Harvard University who participated in NASA's 2015 and 2019 simulations, told Insider.</p><p>The simulations' grim outcomes reveal how challenging it would be to stop an Earth-bound asteroid in real life - even with years of warning. But the repeated failures in these exercises, experts say, still serve a crucial purpose: They help the world prepare for a crisis like this by teaching governments and scientists how to communicate and share information ahead of an impact. </p><p>"Practice makes perfect," Chodas said.</p><h2>The score - <keyword id="81841" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Asteroids">Asteroids</keyword>: 6 Humanity: 1</h2><p>Chodas said last month's simulation set the participants up for failure.</p><p>"It's what we call a short-warning scenario," he said. "It was, by design, very challenging."</p><p>But it wasn't the toughest scenario Chodas has helped to create, and not even the one with the shortest timeframe.</p><p>During NASA's first impact simulation, done in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, scientists and government officials had to determine what to do about an asteroid the size of the Statue of Liberty that was set to strike in just <a href="https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/ttx13/NASA.FEMA.Exercise.Report.2013.pdf">five weeks</a>. The participants, much like the group last month, found themselves with little recourse given the short lead-up time. They determined it would be impossible to stop that space rock from crashing into the Atlantic Ocean near Virginia.</p><p>The resulting tsunami, the participants estimated, would be 50 feet high and devastate a section of the US East Coast.</p><p>It was no coincidence that NASA led that first simulation in 2013. In February of that year, a house-sized asteroid entered the atmosphere above Chelyabinsk, Russia. It shattered windows, collapsed buildings, and injured more than 1,000 people. No one on Earth saw it coming. </p><div type="image" title="asteroid russia Chelyabinsk" height="3744" width="5616" msid="82800921" hostid="261"></div><p><a href="https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/ttx14/">The next year</a>, NASA and FEMA tried again - that time, the fictitious asteroid in the simulation was nearly three times bigger, but it was discovered about seven years before the expected impact.</p><p>The earlier a space rock is discovered, the higher the chances that scientists can stymie an impact. The best tools currently available are nuclear explosives that could be detonated near an asteroid to break it into less dangerous chunks, and spacecraft that could slam into an asteroid to knock it off its trajectory.</p><p>NASA is about to test that latter technology with its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. In the fall of 2022, a NASA probe is set to fly to the asteroid Dimorphos and purposefully hit it.</p><div type="image" title="DART nasa asteroid mission spacecraft" height="1406" width="2500" msid="82800926" hostid="261"></div><p>Chodas thinks <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">five years' warning</a> is the absolute minimum to successfully deploy one of these options, though other experts suggest we'd need <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">at least a decade</a> to plan, build, and launch an anti-asteroid mission from scratch.</p><p>Brent Barbee, an aerospace engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told Insider that no spacecraft that could serve this purpose is just sitting "ready to go and dance."</p><p>"It has to be built on demand," Barbee said.</p><p>The advanced notice in NASA's 2014 simulation enabled the participants to do just that. They sent a spacecraft to ram into the asteroid and deflect it away two years before it hit. </p><p>But even then, a 164-foot chunk of the asteroid broke off because of the spacecraft's force, and the rock started heading for Texas' Gulf Coast. Two years wasn't enough time to launch another deflection mission, so once again, Earth took a hit.</p><h2>In one simulation, an asteroid fragment wrecked New York City</h2><p>By <a href="https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc15/">2015</a>, NASA had looped in space agencies from several other countries to participate in its exercises. The first simulation with this international group was similar to the prior year's: After successfully deflecting an asteroid spotted seven years in advance, the participants found they couldn't stop a fragment of the rock from hitting India. It exploded with the force of a small bomb.</p><div type="image" title="asteroid broken up" height="2250" width="3000" msid="82800930" hostid="261"></div><p>Chodas calls this outcome "asteroid splitting." It's no accident splitting has appeared in multiple exercises, he said, because he thinks "it's very conceivable something like that happens."</p><p>Ideally, Chodas added, asteroid-deflection missions would be adaptable and able to retarget any unpredictable pieces that break off. </p><p>By now, you're seeing the pattern: In a <a href="https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/ttx16/ttx3_final_report_1may2017_final_3.pdf">2016 NASA simulation</a>, the group was also unable to stop an asteroid, even though it was spotted four years in advance. The 400-foot space rock would, the participants estimated, impact a 325-square-mile area near Pasadena, California.</p><p>During the <a href="https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc19/">2019 exercise</a>, experts decided to try to stop a hypothetical asteroid from hitting Denver, Colorado, by crashing into it with several spacecraft. That wound up changing the asteroid's path, but in the process, a 262-foot chunk of rock broke off and struck New York City.</p><p>Chodas described that exercise as "a worst-case scenario" - it ended with Central Park decimated by a fireball that released as much energy as an atomic bomb.</p><div type="image" title="central park tower nyc" height="1667" width="2500" msid="82800935" hostid="261"></div><p>In last month's simulation, the Czech Republic and Austria didn't fare much better.</p><p>Humanity's big - and only - win in these exercises came during the <a style="font-size: 15px;" href="https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc17/">2017</a> one, in which the participants spotted an Eiffel Tower-sized asteroid 10 years in advance. After sending a scouting mission into space, scientists discovered that it was actually two space rocks orbiting each other. This is known as a binary asteroid. NASA gave the simulation that curveball, Chodas said, because one-third of asteroids tend to be binary. </p><p>Rather than ramming a spacecraft into that asteroid pair, the experts chose to blow them up with nukes - and succeeded. </p><h2>Despite repeated failures, experts are learning valuable lessons</h2><div type="image" title="hypothetical impact" height="915" width="1120" msid="82800936" hostid="261"></div><p>Since 2013, these simulations have enabled experts to practice how they'd communicate with one another and with the public ahead of an impact. They think through how they'd facilitate evacuations, what they'd say to keep the public calm and informed, and how to responsibly share information between governments. </p><p>Holman said that each successive NASA exercise has improved on its predecessor.</p><p>"People have absolutely gotten better over the years," he said, adding that more and more countries participate every time. </p><p>In particular, scientists have refined their ability to use a hypothetical asteroid's size, rotation, and orbital path to predict where it will hit and how much damage it will do. Those assessments can help governments decide how to best reduce the severity of an impact and move the right people out of harm's way.</p><p>The simulations have also revealed that such assessments change quickly as scientists learn about an incoming asteroid. During the earliest stages of an exercise, the possible impact location could be anywhere on the globe, Barbee said. That estimate shifts as the simulation progresses, so data might then suggest an asteroid will crash into Africa, only to point to Europe as the most likely target soon thereafter.</p><p>"I'm glad we're discovering those sorts of things now by working through the details of simulated scenarios before being confronted with an actual scenario," Barbee said.</p><p><em>Morgan McFall-Johnsen contributed reporting.</em></p>

NASA has led 7 asteroid-impact simulations. Only once did experts figure out how to stop the space rock from hitting Earth.

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="13473" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="North-Korea">North Korea</keyword> has a cyber army of about 7,000, trained to find secrets, disrupt critical infrastructure, and steal money to circumvent sanctions.</li><li>These cyberattacks are often difficult to pin on North Korea because they originate in countries like China and Russia, and a counterattack is almost impossible because of North Korea's rudimentary internet.</li><li>North Korea's likely next targets are critical US infrastructure like power plants, dams, and electrical grids.</li></ul><p>North Korea's state-sponsored <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/world/asia/north-korea-hacking-cyber-sony.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hack of Sony Pictures</a> in 2014 over the movie "The Interview" was highly embarrassing for Sony. But it was just the tip of the iceberg, according to Daniel Russel, vice president for <keyword id="6356001" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="international">international</keyword> security and diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute.</p><p>Russel, a former assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, spoke with Insider recently about the threat of North Korea's hacker army, how it supports North Korea's nuclear program, and what the future holds if the US doesn't take this threat seriously.</p><p><strong>Insider: When did this cyber army start?</strong></p><p><div type="image" title="north korea" height="893" width="1500" msid="76427506" hostid="261"></div></p><p><strong>Daniel Russel</strong>: The North Korean cyber operation documented by a lot of cybersecurity firms lists this principal group as starting circa 2010. But that gives the impression that we know a lot more about North Korea's cyber activity than I think we really do.</p><p>North Korea has been cultivating and has been investing in an elite cyber force under the control of its military, the Korean People's Army and the Reconnaissance General Bureau — <keyword id="182233" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Kim-Jong-Un">Kim Jong Un</keyword>'s clandestine security apparatus. It's estimated to comprise about 7,000 people who are trained pretty extensively, both in specialized domestic programs in North Korea, including in parts of their universities.</p><p>In other cases, they then seem to receive training in China or in Russia. Quite a few of them are dispersed through China, Russia, and some in India. They use other countries as a platform and for conducting their various cyber activities because North Korea has pretty much air-gapped its own internal internet or intranet system, both to prevent North Koreans accessing information from the rest of the world, but more importantly to prevent the rest of the world from getting in.</p><p>That makes it very hard to get a definitive attribution that the attack originated in North Korea and raises the risk that China or Russia will get the blame. It also makes it harder for services in countries like the US to retaliate because you're running the risk of retaliating against China or Russia for something that's actually masterminded and executed by the North Koreans.</p><p><strong>Insider: How do we figure out that these attacks are actually performed by North Korean actors?</strong></p><p><div type="image" title="Wannacry cyberattack North Korea" height="1567" width="2500" msid="76427509" hostid="261"></div></p><p><strong>Russel</strong>: You're digging into technical areas for which I'm spectacularly unqualified because I'm not a digital or a cyber expert. But the people who are real experts, Mandiant, FireEye, or CrowdStrike, or for that matter the CIA or the NIS, South Korea's intelligence service, have a very sophisticated ability to conduct forensic detective work in the cyber realm. In many cases, they can identify patterns, code, servers and the like to trace things back to North Korea.</p><p>These companies issue an annual worldwide cyber-threat report. They track all of these various major hacking operations and rank them. They call them advanced persistent threats, APT. North Korea is the host of something they call <a href="https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2018/10/apt38-details-on-new-north-korean-regime-backed-threat-group.html">APT38</a> — or the Lazarus Group, Guardians of Peace, or Hidden Cobra. These are sort of code names. APT38 is number one on their list of worldwide cyber threats.</p><p>In some cases North Korea directly claimed credit for a <keyword id="6361937" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="cyberattack">cyberattack</keyword>. Beyond that, Kim Jong Un and the Korean Workers' Party have been speaking increasingly in a very open and direct way about its cyber capability.</p><p>They use the same vocabulary now for cyber as for their nuclear weapons. They call it "an all-purpose sword that guarantees our capability to strike relentlessly."</p><p><strong>Insider: You called the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/world/asia/north-korea-hacking-cyber-sony.html">Sony hack</a> "<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mercenaries-invade-venezuela/id1200016351?i=1000473738505">chickenshit</a>." Can you tell me what kinds of bigger projects are out there?</strong></p><p><div type="image" title="Interview Seth Rogin James Franco" height="1791" width="2500" msid="76427512" hostid="261"></div></p><p><strong>Russel</strong>: You could break it down into three categories: spying; sanctions circumvention through cyber theft; and harassment, disruption, and retaliation — the Sony hack was an example of that.</p><p>One important use of cyber for North Korea is to steal secrets. CrowdStrike has done a lot of documenting this, but it's the US government and foreign governments that are paying super-close attention to this.</p><p>In 2016, APT38 stole about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/world/asia/north-korea-hack-war-plans.html">40,000 defense documents</a> from South Korean contractors with information on F-16 fighters and drones. North Korea is also believed to have stolen a PowerPoint summary of the US military's top-secret operation plan, called Op Plan 5027, which is the war plan for the United States.</p><p>Second is the cyber theft category. In March, the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-chinese-nationals-charged-laundering-over-100-million-cryptocurrency-exchange-hack">Department of Justice</a> unsealed indictments accusing some Chinese and North Korean nationals of laundering $100 million for North Korean nuclear activities. This indictment makes clear that the money these people laundered was part of a $250 million theft by North Korea in a cyberattack on a global cryptocurrency exchange. So this isn't just imaginary stuff.</p><p>Cyber theft effectively neutralizes UN and US sanctions against North Korea. If North Korea is denied a billion dollars in the sale of coal and iron and mushrooms, but it can go out and steal a billion dollars, then sanctions are not going to have the intended effect.</p><p>While the administration takes a lot of pride in its efforts to maintain sanctions against North Korea, this is an immense loophole, and it's not just going to buy those <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mercedes-limo-kim-jong-un-north-korea-2019-7">fancy Mercedes</a> that we saw Kim Jong Un driving around in when he was hobnobbing with Donald Trump in Singapore and in Hanoi. This money is going to fund North Korea's nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile program. We're paying for the threat against ourselves.</p><p><div type="image" title="north korea" height="1994" width="3000" msid="76427517" hostid="261"></div></p><p>At the high end, it's potentially a devastating destruction of critical infrastructure in the United States and Japan and South Korea.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-northkorea-sony/u-s-charges-north-korean-hacker-in-sony-wannacry-cyberattacks-idUSKCN1LM20W">WannaCry virus</a>, on the one hand, was ransomware; you could argue that it's aimed at getting money, but it caused a huge disruption of hospitals in the UK and, potentially, in something like 100-plus other countries where they had disseminated the ransomware. This was software that brought the operation of critical facilities to a standstill.</p><p>This is not hacking; this is cyber warfare.</p><p>Cyber weapons kind of level the playing field for North Korea in a way that nukes can't. Not only do the United States, China, Russia, have vastly more nuclear weapons than North Korea, but a nuclear weapon is an all-or-nothing proposition.</p><p>Cyber warfare has a very different risk-return calculation. it's a low-cost, asymmetric, relatively speaking, low-risk weapon system. And the US is the most vulnerable country on planet Earth to disruptive cyberattacks.</p><p>Most American infrastructure facilities were built in the pre-digital era — energy grids and the Hoover Dam. They get retrofitted with makeshift, MacGyver-style internet linkages, as opposed to new infrastructure that has digital safeguards built into it. So you have somebody firing up their router, like with one of those old "you got mail" connections.</p><p>The US has a lot of that stuff, number one. And <a href="https://www.fema.gov/pdf/about/programs/oppa/critical_infrastructure_paper.pdf">something like 80% </a>of America's critical infrastructure is privately owned. Who's going to pay to upgrade the power plant? Who's going to pay to upgrade the air traffic control systems? Who's going to pay to upgrade the rail systems, the cellphone network? Good luck getting these private companies to sell their shareholders on investing billions of dollars in upgrades.</p><p>If it's bad now, just imagine what it's going to look like with 5G and the internet of things. New interconnectivity is going to provide new opportunities for malicious cyberattacks, and you're going to wake up one morning and find that your toaster oven is getting ready to kill you, thanks to Kim Jong Un.</p><p><strong>Insider: Are there other ways that this cyber army is innovating?</strong></p><p><div type="image" title="north korea" height="2336" width="3500" msid="76427522" hostid="261"></div></p><p><strong>Russel</strong>: I think the new threat for which we are woefully unprepared isn't so much a technical innovation as a strategic innovation. We can see that North Korea is practicing its ability to shut down and to hold at risk an entire American city or a facility in the US that is critical to our economy, our safety, and our national security.</p><p>This cyber capability, the ability to hold not just a bank hostage but a nation hostage, is going to be North Korea's next generation weapon of mass destruction.</p><p>There isn't a big bang. There's not a missile that can be taken out on the launchpad, and because North Korea's own internet or intranet system is so difficult to access, direct retaliation or preemptive cyber defense may not be possible. We've got to sprint now to get ready because we can see what very likely is coming at us.</p><p><strong>Insider: What are we doing on a national level, and to support our allies against these kinds of attacks?</strong></p><p><div type="image" title="north korea cyber terror kim jong-un kim jong-il" height="2136" width="3000" msid="76427525" hostid="261"></div></p><p><strong>Russel</strong>: I'm sure there are a lot of cyber-defense initiatives and programs underway through the Department of Defense, the FBI, the Department of Homeland, and National Security, the CIA, etc. — some with the Five Eyes intelligence partners, some with various allies, and then NATO has a program. US, Japan, South Korea have programs. But I'm not all that current on where it is now and how well developed they are, and that's only one piece of it.</p><p>I am strongly convinced that this is not a priority for the Trump administration.</p><p>Donald Trump was prepared to accept the word of his best friend, Kim Jong Un, that North Korea had no intention of threatening the US. He's turned a blind eye when North Korea has violated UN sanctions by launching mid-range ballistic missiles into the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50246065">Sea of Japan</a>.</p><p>Because North Korea depends so heavily on China, not just for cyber, but in the case of cyber, for access to servers, its pipelines, and so on, it would be critical for the United States to develop some degree of cooperation with China to limit North Korea's offensive cyber threat.</p><p>Obviously, there's much more on the diplomatic side that we would have to do to present North Korea with an international unified front that would make it difficult for it to find these cyber platforms to use against us.</p><p><div type="image" title="North Korea Kim Jong Un cyberattack youtube" height="1789" width="2500" msid="76427529" hostid="261"></div></p><p>The United States needs to launch a crash campaign to up the level of our defense of critical infrastructure. This is not a secret. There's plenty of warnings out from the US intelligence community and from the cybersecurity companies. But the United States, as far as I know, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-s-decision-eliminate-role-cybersecurity-czar-rattles-experts-here-n874731">doesn't have a cyber czar</a>.</p><p>Most importantly I think, is deterrence. Deterrence means convincing the other side that the consequences of an attack are sufficiently certain and the capability of the United States is so well demonstrated that it's too high a risk to take.</p><p>And the fact is that North Korea is succeeding in so many of these cyberattacks, and it's getting a pass from the Trump administration, so it's continuing to build intercontinental ballistic missiles. It's continuing to develop other weapons.</p><p>The US has <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/17/us-postpones-military-exercises-with-south-korea-in-nod-toward-north-korea-071301">stood down</a> on joint military exercises with South Korea. The US is in the middle of a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-southkorea-trump-defense-exclusiv/exclusive-inside-trumps-standoff-with-south-korea-over-defense-costs-idUSKCN21S1W7">grudge match</a> with South Korea over the cost of American troop deployment there. The US is in the middle of a demolition derby with China. It's at odds with so many of the countries that have historically been American partners.</p><p>What North Korea sees when it looks at the US does not deter it.</p><p><em>This interview has been edited and condensed.</em></p>

Kim Jong Un has quietly built a 7,000-man cyber army that gives North Korea an edge nuclear weapons don't

It's time for Trump to come to his senses on nuclear weapons

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro </span></p><p class="caption">A Pakistani flag flies on a mast as paramilitary Frontier Corps soldiers talk while guarding at Karachi's District Malir prison, August 23, 2013.</p></div><p></p></div></div>The year ahead will bring no shortage of international issues that will keep the US and its partners occupied, ranging from the fight against ISIS to the implementation of the Iran nuclear agreement.</p><p>But there's been another serious impending crisis building in the background - one involving terrorism, nuclear weapons, interstate power <keyword id="6358883" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Politics">politics</keyword>, and an important US ally.</p><p>The crisis isn't likely to explode in 2016. Its eruption is currently far from inevitable. But there's a good chance, depending on what happens in 2016, that it could become more likely.</p><p>As Georgetown University associate professor C. Christine Fair <a href="http://qz.com/579334/pakistans-army-is-building-an-arsenal-of-tiny-nuclear-weapons-and-its-going-to-backfire/">explained in a December 21 article for Quartz</a>, Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is growing at an alarming clip, with Islamabad acquiring some 20 additional nuclear warheads a year. Worse, the country is developing weapons for "tactical" or battlefield use, believing that it can use low-yield nukes to turn back any potential blitz through the country's territory. </p><p>Pakistan, which has an estimated 120 warheads, is now on pace to have the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal by number of warheads within the next five to 10 years. It could place them third only to the US and Russia, <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/files/NormalNuclearPakistan.pdf">according to an August 2015 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analysis</a>.</p><p>Fair's article builds off the Carnegie analysis, in which arms-control scholars Toby Dalton and Michael Krepon argue that Pakistan has oriented its nuclear program around maximizing warhead production and expanding its arsenal's range of potential real-world uses.</p><p>As Krepon <a href="http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/404739/a-normal-nuclear-pakistan-2/">explained in an article for Arms Control Wonk</a>, Pakistani military thinkers are leaning toward a doctrine of "full-spectrum deterrence." In such a doctrine nuclear weapons are thought of as a way of preventing or neutralizing tactical threats, as well as a way of deterring an Indian nuclear or conventional attack large enough to threaten Pakistan's survival as a state.</p><p>But the real measure of the country's dedication to developing its nuclear arsenal can be seen through the opportunity costs of the weapons program: As Krepon writes, Pakistan, which is relatively poor and undeveloped, decided to construct four plutonium production reactors for its nuclear weapons program, instead of investing in civilian nuclear energy, as India has. According to Krepon, India is only producing about five warheads a year.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Mohsin Raza/Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">A Pakistani Ranger gestures during a daily parade at the Pakistan-India joint checkpost at Wagah border, on the outskirts of Lahore on October 23, 2011.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>It's inherently dangerous for just about any country to grow out its nuclear arsenal, but Pakistan represents a unique case.</p><p>Pakistan has a powerful and shadowy security and intelligence apparatus that's had a historically vague and often downright hostile relationship with the country's civilian leadership. There have been longstanding concerns over Pakistani nuclear command and control. In 2011, journalists Jeffrey Goldberg and Mark Ambinder <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/the-atlantic-cover-story-pakistan-the-ally-from-hell/247886/">reported</a> that the Pakistani military often transported warheads in unmarked and lightly guarded civilian-style trucks.</p><p>India and Pakistan are no closer to resolving their dispute over the status of Kashmir - and if anything, the rivalry between the countries has actually gotten worse.</p><p>As Krepon wrote, "<span>We pay attention when firing across the [de-militarized zone] on the Korean peninsula occurs for a day or two - and rightly so. Firing across the Kashmir divide now occurs every week."</span></p><p>There's also a terrorism angle to Pakistan's weapons program. As Fair recounted, one major effect of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal has been to restrain India's options in countering Pakistani-sponsored jihadist attacks inside of India.</p><p>In December 2001, three years after Pakistan's first test of a nuclear weapon and two years after its defeat in the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/387702.stm">Kargil War with India</a>, Pakistani-sponsored terrorists from the jihadist group Lashkar-e-Taiba <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/13/newsid_3695000/3695057.stm">killed 9 people in an attack on the Lok Saba</a>, India's parliament building in Delhi. </p><p>Sponsoring an attack on an enemy's parliament is one of the most heinous possible breaches of international order. As Fair recalls, India mobilized its military but did not retaliate, partly because of its fear sparking a potential escalation with an unpredictable nuclear-armed state.</p><p>More recently, Lakshar-e-Taiba carried out a <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/mumbai-massacre-background-information/502/">November 2008 attack in Mumbai in which 172 people were killed</a> - a state-sponsored assault on an enemy city that still didn't result in continued armed conflict between India and Pakistan.</p><p>Pakistan's nuclear arsenal provides the country with a strategic umbrella needed to continue aiding terrorist groups, including ones <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26isi.html?pagewanted=all">fighting the Afghan government and its NATO partners</a>. Command and control concerns, along with the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands in a chaotic region, have turned the relationship between the US and Pakistan into something of a protection racket. The US is <a href="http://www.cgdev.org/page/aid-pakistan-numbers">funding and supporting</a> an opaque and intransigent government simply to maintain the currently unstable nuclear-security baseline.</p><p>The growing Pakistani stockpile also feeds into a hazardous regional dynamic. As Fair explains, Pakistani battlefield nuclear weapons are meant to counter a new Indian strategic doctrine that calls for nimble offensive operations on a compressed timescale in the event of a future provocation. </p><p>Pakistan is in possession of a nuclear arsenal and the means to create warheads at a rapid clip - at the same time the country's military leaders are seriously thinking about the weapons' applicability in combat.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Reuters</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Pakistan has already proven to be a proliferation danger, as nuclear expertise from the country was <a href="http://iis-db.stanford.edu/evnts/3889/Khan_network-paper.pdf">crucial in advancing the programs of Iran and North Korea</a>. The country's nuclear weapons raise the stakes of Pakistan's ongoing and <a href="http://www.stimson.org/spotlight/growing-violence-along-the-kashmir-divide/">perhaps worsening confrontation with India</a>, while the growth of its arsenal might make it likelier that the weapons will be used - and likelier that they'll fall into the wrong hands.</p><p>In the coming year, policymakers the world over should think about how this problem can be reigned in. Kerpen and Dalton argue for international recognition of Pakistan as "a normal state that possesses nuclear weapons," as long as it "pulls back from full-spectrum <keyword id="6354810" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="Defense">defense</keyword>," separates its civilian and military nuclear facilities, submits to certain stockpile controls, and signs the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.</p><p><a href="http://qz.com/579334/pakistans-army-is-building-an-arsenal-of-tiny-nuclear-weapons-and-its-going-to-backfire/">As Fair noted</a>, some in the Obama administration have floated the idea of a nuclear deal with Pakistan that would slow the growth of the Pakistani arsenal in exchange for some degree of official US recognition of the country's nuclear rights. (The US <a href="http://www.cfr.org/india/us-india-nuclear-deal/p9663">finalized a similar agreement with India</a> in 2008.)</p><p>Getting Pakistan to agree to any nuclear concessions might prove difficult, particularly in light of the <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/6-major-u.s.-concessions-in-iran-nuke-deal/article/2568247">concessions that Iran won from the international community</a> in the July 2015 nuclear deal - gains that Tehran achieved without possessing even a single warhead. Given this precedent, a nuclear breakthrough with Pakistan might have to come as the consequence of some unforeseen event - like another Kashmir escalation, or a political transformation inside of Pakistan.</p><p>But the Pakistani nuclear arsenal should still be high on the world's agenda in 2016 - even if it remains a challenge that doesn't get a lot of public attention.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-most-dangerous-roads-khardung-la-india-motorbike-motorcycle-2015-9">Here's what it's like to drive on one of 'the world's most dangerous roads'</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="pycWFvdzq-Tih18eF6xItYnqhToi8sMu" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

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