6 ms·

Nuclear scientists as assassination targets (2012)

44 points by ilamont 5y ago

andylynch 5y ago
Interesting. I’m currently reading The Three Body Problem, in which the antagonists pursue a somewhat similar strategy.
stefantalpalaru 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_assassinations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_assassinations
rootsudo 5y ago
I also remember reading in the same time period how microbiologists were also facing sudden, interesting deaths.
wudangmonk 5y ago
Makes more sense in the context of the war, where two sides are close and whoever gets there first wins. Here I do not understand the end game, stalling tactics until there is a U.S administration willing to goto war with Iran?
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Could just be buying more time to find a better endgame.
- flyinglizard 5y ago
  That, or perhaps until there’s an internal regime change; but there are other geopolitical implications for a nuclear Iran. It would allow Iran to operate its proxies (in Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, Syria and Iraq) with even greater impunity. Beyond that, a publicly nuclear Iran would push the region to a nuclear arms race (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, maybe Turkey).
- lostlogin 5y ago
  > until there is a U.S administration willing to goto war with Iran? US driven regime change has a rather poor track record. This week in particular.
willytonka 5y ago
Seems it would do better to "assassinate" nuclear installations (research facilities, reactors, i.e., places where weapons-grade material is accumulated/stored). This would remove undesirable nuclear infrastructure and, if done with tactical nuclear weapons, raise doubts in several entities about the wisdom of pursuing such research. It's one thing to learn of one's acquaintance being assassinated and quite another to find that, while you were on holiday, your company has had a nuclear accident and neither it nor the half-mile hole around it can be entered for another year, all the people are gone and your paycheck will likely be delayed for months at the very least.
howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
Utility: - Leverage in persuading scientists to become sources for foreign intelligence agencies, or to participate in sabotage. - Delays development. - Disincentivizes nuclear weapons research as career path. The US and Russia experienced something on the order of 15 known nuclear weapons accidents despite attempts a command & control designed to prevent such occurrences. This doesn't include the unknown amount of weapons grade materials lost/stolen; or the possibility a few finished weapons may have been sold. How many rolls of the dice, by how many additional actors, before the world's luck runs out? From a risk management perspective, if there must be nuclear weapons (realistically) then not every country is capable of stewardship and possession of such weapons. One need not take sides between, say, Iran and the US/Israel to make an ethical case for extreme efforts to prevent developing nations from obtaining nuclear weapons. The same ethical argument, however, strongly argues for open-sourcing nuclear stewardship technologies so that gaps in proliferation prevention are bridged.
- bequanna 5y ago
  > The same ethical argument, however, strongly argues for open-sourcing nuclear stewardship technologies so that gaps in proliferation prevention are bridged. I’ve wondered about this as well. It seems to be me that it would actually be a net benefit to leak what you believe to be solid command and control procedures even to your enemies to avoid an accidental attack.
  - rwallace 5y ago
    Yep. During the Cold War, the US actually shared its Permissive Action Link technology with the Soviets for exactly that reason.
- dyingworld 5y ago
  I disagree with selecting nuclear stewards. In as much as nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent to invasion and regime change, many countries will continue to pursue it and will support my political leaders on such a course myself. It’s either we all give it up or we all have it. Why are some countries better stewards ? Some USA’s elected leaders are close to crazy to us from outside. And they came close to a coup not long ago. It’s almost the same for climate change. The developed countries knew of the impact of their emissions decades ago but continued to burn fossil fuel. The developing countries don’t have a choice; either burn fossils or they will forever be poor. The alternative are currently too expensive. It’s either nuclear power is democratized or people keep burning fossils.
chasil 5y ago
I had no idea that the assassination of Werner Heisenberg nearly came to pass. 'In November 1944, the OSS learned that Heisenberg planned to visit Switzerland the next month. Former major league baseball catcher and then OSS officer Moe Berg was dispatched to Zurich with orders that “Heisenberg must be rendered hors de combat” (out of action) if Heisenberg gave evidence that the German bomb effort was close to completion. Apparently Berg alone was to decide whether or not to kill Heisenberg.'
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  I figured Moe Berg sounded like a Jewish name which made me curious so I went and read up on the guy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Berg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Berg I guess anyone likely to have a wikipedia page ,especially from that generation, is likely to have a more interesting life and profile than most people I know. on edit: curious because Jewish spy, even in Zurich, during WW2, sounds dangerous.
  - Keyframe 5y ago
    Switzerland during ww2 was a very interesting place!
  - reidjs 5y ago
    Now that was an interesting read. He seems like quite a character. I wish we could have more insight into his perspective but: “Berg received many requests to write his memoirs, but turned them down. He almost began work on them in 1960, but he quit after the co-writer assigned to work with him confused him with Moe Howard of the Three Stooges.”
  - chasil 5y ago
    It's a shame that he had no real career after leaving the OSS. Knowledge like that should be engaged.
- squiffsquiff 5y ago
  So Berg became a literal embodiment of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle?
unity1001 5y ago
Attacks against a sovereign nation's scientists and facilities are rogue acts illegal per international law. There are no two ways about it.
- leephillips 5y ago
  If the choice is between obeying international law and making damn sure that Iran doesn’t get the bomb—I don’t see that as a choice at all.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    That kind of thinking is exactly why Iran wants nuclear weapons so bad they're willing to sacrifice their economy for a chance at having them. Why would they want to rely on a structure of treaties and international laws for their own protection when the justification for violating those laws and treaties can be as simple as "it seemed like it was worth it?"
    - leephillips 5y ago
      International law is a nice idea, but it only applies to countries that agree it applies to them. The only thing I want Iran to rely on is the certain knowledge that they will be prevented, by literally any means necessary, from developing nuclear weapons. EDIT: I guess there are those who disapprove of Stuxnet because it probably violated some laws. I think it was awesome.
      - whatshisface 5y ago
        There's definitely no chance of a country agreeing to follow international law or even norms when the other signatories would take "any means necessary" to achieve their policy goals WRT them. The problem with your plan, even from an amoral realpolitik perspective, is that the Iranian program cannot be prevented forever with 100% certainty. There's a possible future world where they end up with nuclear weapons after 30 years of assassinations, and that's the world where they'd be the most likely to make use of them. There are a lot of ways it could happen - maybe they build two plants and the west only gets one of them, maybe North Korea makes a donation to the cause. Maybe they set up a bunch of innocent scientists in the secret but not secret nuclear theory department and let their enemies waste time clandestinely assassinating their theory group while they manufacture the real weapon based on plans obtained elsewhere. When you're killing civilians, you're in a state of war, and although being in a state of war has had very indirect consequences for the US over the past 50 years, that's not guaranteed to go on forever.
nivertech 5y ago
I think they are eliminated by time traveling assassins disguised as Mossad agents. Soon they will switch from nuclear scientists to virologists and microbiologists.
- trhway 5y ago
  With autonomous drones and cyberwar being the future of military power my bet in on AI experts. While the OP is about nuclear scientists, i think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull#Death assassinated by Israel for building the space gun for Saddam fits the story too. I think also somewhat related - i.e. it isn't only enemies who target strategic scientists - after having developed hypersonic missile (Mach 6) in the recent years, Russia put several top scientists and engineers who worked directly either on the project or its key technologies in prison on charges of spying. As the charges are outright bogus - one guy for example was convicted for publishing a scientific article describing results of his unclassified research funded by a European grant (and nobody said a word nor when he received the grant and was doing the work, nor later when the article was making its way through peer-review/publishing/etc. and for quite some time afterward) - it looks to me like they are preventatively making sure that the tech would have no chances to leak by putting those key people in prison once the tech got done in such a wrong way while also sending clear message to the rest.
crossroadsguy 5y ago
There’s been suspicion that India has been losing them too on the similar lines. https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2021/01/06/from-the-archives-when-several-indian-nuclear-scientists-died-mysteriously.html https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2021/01/06/from-the-archiv... This article says hundreds of deaths https://asiatimes.com/2019/07/indias-vanishing-nuclear-scientists/ https://asiatimes.com/2019/07/indias-vanishing-nuclear-scien...
sharikone 5y ago
The article is from 2012 and today in 2021 Iran still has no nuclear weapons. So it did, after all, slow them down. This tactic has been successful for the Israelis against the Egyptian missile program in the '50s, after significant setbacks. So I understand why it appears to be a last sort extreme measure. Risky, difficult to get right but sometimes successful. I personally think that next batches of new weapons - killer drones, biological warfare, etc... could easily get more "effective" than nuclear weapons. So it's not like it's a static world where the atomic bomb is the ultimate one. It's nations fighting to keep an edge over others in a dynamic setting where older weapons will eventually lose their relevance.

44 points by ilamont 5y ago

Interesting. I’m currently reading The Three Body Problem, in which the antagonists pursue a somewhat similar strategy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_assassinations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_assassinations

rootsudo 5y ago

I also remember reading in the same time period how microbiologists were also facing sudden, interesting deaths.

wudangmonk 5y ago

Makes more sense in the context of the war, where two sides are close and whoever gets there first wins. Here I do not understand the end game, stalling tactics until there is a U.S administration willing to goto war with Iran?

MattGaiser 5y ago
Could just be buying more time to find a better endgame.
flyinglizard 5y ago
That, or perhaps until there’s an internal regime change; but there are other geopolitical implications for a nuclear Iran. It would allow Iran to operate its proxies (in Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, Syria and Iraq) with even greater impunity. Beyond that, a publicly nuclear Iran would push the region to a nuclear arms race (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, maybe Turkey).
lostlogin 5y ago
> until there is a U.S administration willing to goto war with Iran? US driven regime change has a rather poor track record. This week in particular.

willytonka 5y ago

Seems it would do better to "assassinate" nuclear installations (research facilities, reactors, i.e., places where weapons-grade material is accumulated/stored). This would remove undesirable nuclear infrastructure and, if done with tactical nuclear weapons, raise doubts in several entities about the wisdom of pursuing such research. It's one thing to learn of one's acquaintance being assassinated and quite another to find that, while you were on holiday, your company has had a nuclear accident and neither it nor the half-mile hole around it can be entered for another year, all the people are gone and your paycheck will likely be delayed for months at the very least.

howmayiannoyyou 5y ago

Utility: - Leverage in persuading scientists to become sources for foreign intelligence agencies, or to participate in sabotage. - Delays development. - Disincentivizes nuclear weapons research as career path. The US and Russia experienced something on the order of 15 known nuclear weapons accidents despite attempts a command & control designed to prevent such occurrences. This doesn't include the unknown amount of weapons grade materials lost/stolen; or the possibility a few finished weapons may have been sold. How many rolls of the dice, by how many additional actors, before the world's luck runs out? From a risk management perspective, if there must be nuclear weapons (realistically) then not every country is capable of stewardship and possession of such weapons. One need not take sides between, say, Iran and the US/Israel to make an ethical case for extreme efforts to prevent developing nations from obtaining nuclear weapons. The same ethical argument, however, strongly argues for open-sourcing nuclear stewardship technologies so that gaps in proliferation prevention are bridged.

bequanna 5y ago
> The same ethical argument, however, strongly argues for open-sourcing nuclear stewardship technologies so that gaps in proliferation prevention are bridged. I’ve wondered about this as well. It seems to be me that it would actually be a net benefit to leak what you believe to be solid command and control procedures even to your enemies to avoid an accidental attack.
- rwallace 5y ago
  Yep. During the Cold War, the US actually shared its Permissive Action Link technology with the Soviets for exactly that reason.
dyingworld 5y ago
I disagree with selecting nuclear stewards. In as much as nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent to invasion and regime change, many countries will continue to pursue it and will support my political leaders on such a course myself. It’s either we all give it up or we all have it. Why are some countries better stewards ? Some USA’s elected leaders are close to crazy to us from outside. And they came close to a coup not long ago. It’s almost the same for climate change. The developed countries knew of the impact of their emissions decades ago but continued to burn fossil fuel. The developing countries don’t have a choice; either burn fossils or they will forever be poor. The alternative are currently too expensive. It’s either nuclear power is democratized or people keep burning fossils.

chasil 5y ago

I had no idea that the assassination of Werner Heisenberg nearly came to pass. 'In November 1944, the OSS learned that Heisenberg planned to visit Switzerland the next month. Former major league baseball catcher and then OSS officer Moe Berg was dispatched to Zurich with orders that “Heisenberg must be rendered hors de combat” (out of action) if Heisenberg gave evidence that the German bomb effort was close to completion. Apparently Berg alone was to decide whether or not to kill Heisenberg.'

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
I figured Moe Berg sounded like a Jewish name which made me curious so I went and read up on the guy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Berg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Berg I guess anyone likely to have a wikipedia page ,especially from that generation, is likely to have a more interesting life and profile than most people I know. on edit: curious because Jewish spy, even in Zurich, during WW2, sounds dangerous.
- Keyframe 5y ago
  Switzerland during ww2 was a very interesting place!
- reidjs 5y ago
  Now that was an interesting read. He seems like quite a character. I wish we could have more insight into his perspective but: “Berg received many requests to write his memoirs, but turned them down. He almost began work on them in 1960, but he quit after the co-writer assigned to work with him confused him with Moe Howard of the Three Stooges.”
- chasil 5y ago
  It's a shame that he had no real career after leaving the OSS. Knowledge like that should be engaged.
squiffsquiff 5y ago
So Berg became a literal embodiment of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle?

unity1001 5y ago

Attacks against a sovereign nation's scientists and facilities are rogue acts illegal per international law. There are no two ways about it.

leephillips 5y ago
If the choice is between obeying international law and making damn sure that Iran doesn’t get the bomb—I don’t see that as a choice at all.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  That kind of thinking is exactly why Iran wants nuclear weapons so bad they're willing to sacrifice their economy for a chance at having them. Why would they want to rely on a structure of treaties and international laws for their own protection when the justification for violating those laws and treaties can be as simple as "it seemed like it was worth it?"
  - leephillips 5y ago
    International law is a nice idea, but it only applies to countries that agree it applies to them. The only thing I want Iran to rely on is the certain knowledge that they will be prevented, by literally any means necessary, from developing nuclear weapons. EDIT: I guess there are those who disapprove of Stuxnet because it probably violated some laws. I think it was awesome.
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      There's definitely no chance of a country agreeing to follow international law or even norms when the other signatories would take "any means necessary" to achieve their policy goals WRT them. The problem with your plan, even from an amoral realpolitik perspective, is that the Iranian program cannot be prevented forever with 100% certainty. There's a possible future world where they end up with nuclear weapons after 30 years of assassinations, and that's the world where they'd be the most likely to make use of them. There are a lot of ways it could happen - maybe they build two plants and the west only gets one of them, maybe North Korea makes a donation to the cause. Maybe they set up a bunch of innocent scientists in the secret but not secret nuclear theory department and let their enemies waste time clandestinely assassinating their theory group while they manufacture the real weapon based on plans obtained elsewhere. When you're killing civilians, you're in a state of war, and although being in a state of war has had very indirect consequences for the US over the past 50 years, that's not guaranteed to go on forever.

nivertech 5y ago

I think they are eliminated by time traveling assassins disguised as Mossad agents. Soon they will switch from nuclear scientists to virologists and microbiologists.

trhway 5y ago
With autonomous drones and cyberwar being the future of military power my bet in on AI experts. While the OP is about nuclear scientists, i think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull#Death assassinated by Israel for building the space gun for Saddam fits the story too. I think also somewhat related - i.e. it isn't only enemies who target strategic scientists - after having developed hypersonic missile (Mach 6) in the recent years, Russia put several top scientists and engineers who worked directly either on the project or its key technologies in prison on charges of spying. As the charges are outright bogus - one guy for example was convicted for publishing a scientific article describing results of his unclassified research funded by a European grant (and nobody said a word nor when he received the grant and was doing the work, nor later when the article was making its way through peer-review/publishing/etc. and for quite some time afterward) - it looks to me like they are preventatively making sure that the tech would have no chances to leak by putting those key people in prison once the tech got done in such a wrong way while also sending clear message to the rest.

crossroadsguy 5y ago

There’s been suspicion that India has been losing them too on the similar lines. https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2021/01/06/from-the-archives-when-several-indian-nuclear-scientists-died-mysteriously.html https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2021/01/06/from-the-archiv... This article says hundreds of deaths https://asiatimes.com/2019/07/indias-vanishing-nuclear-scientists/ https://asiatimes.com/2019/07/indias-vanishing-nuclear-scien...

sharikone 5y ago

The article is from 2012 and today in 2021 Iran still has no nuclear weapons. So it did, after all, slow them down. This tactic has been successful for the Israelis against the Egyptian missile program in the '50s, after significant setbacks. So I understand why it appears to be a last sort extreme measure. Risky, difficult to get right but sometimes successful. I personally think that next batches of new weapons - killer drones, biological warfare, etc... could easily get more "effective" than nuclear weapons. So it's not like it's a static world where the atomic bomb is the ultimate one. It's nations fighting to keep an edge over others in a dynamic setting where older weapons will eventually lose their relevance.