A confidential Central Intelligence Agency assessment of North Korea’s re-entry vehicles indicates the country has what it needs to carry out a nuclear strike on the continental U.S., sources knowledgable about the report told The Diplomat.
North Korea conducted its second test of the Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile in late July, and while the CIA assesses that the re-entry vehicle did not survive the lofted test, it assumes that the re-entry vehicle would perform properly if the missile were fired along a normal trajectory, the sources with direct knowledge of the assessment told The Diplomat.
The CIA assesses that the lofted trajectory put additional stress on the re-entry vehicle, causing it to fail during testing, but believes that the technology would probably not encounter performance problems on a minimum energy trajectory.
Amygdala constrains behavior among extreme rabbits based on what will affect them negatively. If Kim Jong-un is a hardcore rabbit, as I would assume, then all that is keeping him from nuking the United States is a fear of personal repercussions. There is no moral perception, or desire to protect innocents, as most Americans would exhibit. It is purely self-interest keeping his finger off the button.
That would be fine if he was a strapping young lad with perfect health, and a long lifespan ahead of him. But he appears unusually sickly and frail in his movements for his age, and is prone to periods where he disappears due to mysterious ailments. It would not surprise me if he has been prescribed painkillers, which can always spiral into addiction, further degrading mental function.
On top of all that, my guess is he views the United States with envy and anger, since he is not accustomed to being denied that which he wants or with being insulted freely.
What this means is, if he gets a terminal diagnosis, we will have a man of questionable morals, with nothing to lose, surrounded by terrified sycophants who will do whatever he tells them, who can launch Nuclear Weapons.
It is a tough call. I’d lean against military action, just given how priceless the lives of K-strategist servicemen are. Wait and see if he begins to look too sickly, and all the while look to have China take him out covertly, or find some way to do it ourselves.
But it is undoubtedly a risk to wait, and one I am happy I don’t have to assume responsibility for.
Spread r/K Theory, because things got so bad under Obama that California can now be nuked
[…] North Korea Can Probably Nuke The US Now […]
Trumps “trade war” with China is a good bargaining chip to coerce Chinese action. Failing that, a massive increase in missile defenses is the only way to maintain security without a conflict and the response of the Chinese or Russians to such a large missile shield would be to increase their arsenals significantly as well. North Korea is on track to possess 80 to 100 ICBMs by the middle of next decade, all nuclear tipped. The USA possesses only 44 interceptors so we had better get busy, seeing as the North Korean regime is guaranteed to end at some point, as all communist systems do.
None of these summaries ever mention our three layers of anti-ballistic missiles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_Defense
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Ballistic_Missile_Defense_System
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Midcourse_Defense
It would seem to me that a few first-generation ICBMs would have a difficult time penetrating a network that was constructed for just such a scenario as this, and that we would have a definite shootdown option if we reasonably believed that any launch in the direction of, say, Guam was the real deal.
Hey anonymous what are your thoughts on how the other two leaders die? both from heart attacks. The last one was suspicious. Thoughts. Bad health or other?
Tough to tell. They all have the sort of round face which could mean a weak heart. The young one now really appears to have what the Chinese call dampness, which is kind of like the appearance of inflammatory issues, which will probably indicate a heart attack is in the offing for him too. But tough tot say. Those positions have a lot more craziness than any of us would believe.
Yeah, it looks more and more like the norks are going to be the ones who kick off Armageddon. What a pointless stupid waste. All that was ever really needed was people acting with integrity and backing each other up. We could have easily had a paradise by now. Instead we had to rip each other to pieces like animals. Even now, even at this point, we should be turning to God and getting our souls right, and who knows? He might even decide to spare us from the worst of what we deserve. Its so frustrating. Yes, r/K explains the behavioral mechanism built into the human monkey, but the monkey can be traines, and whats more, if people know what is actually happening under the hood, they would know what to pray for.
I think on the one hand N Korea is the result of bad people acting badly. On the other hand, its a mercy, its God’s way of showing us we are not all powerful by giving humanity woth all its technology and all its political games an unsolveable dillema. There is simply no solution to the problem as it currently stands. This is actually a mercy because it gives us the means to humble ourselves and collectively turn to God in real, no kidding, we-realize-were-gonna-get-nuked prayer. That kind of real confrontation with God is in itself the only real good.
Any military action against North Korea will lead to an invasion of South Korea with active military supportl for the Nortrh by both China and Russia, just what happened the last time. This time the China-North Korea-Russia combine has absolute conventional and nuclear superiority in the region, and they would crush the US-South Korea-Japan combine. Everyone knows this, and we can expect both South Korea and Japan to prevent the US from using its bases in their countries to launch the attacks.
The reality is that we will learn to live with a nuclear North Korea just as we learned to live with Russian and Chinese nukes, or, for that matter, British, French, Israeli, Paki and Indian nukes. The downside is that the NPT will be a dead letter, and we will end up with 25 to 30 nuclear powers, with two or three on every continent.
My confidential assessment is that the CIA is lying. Deep state wants to start something. Some defense industry corp wants more contracts. Something.
We have not dealt with them since the armistice. They lie in the media, like we’ve been talking to them, but we don’t- we do this indirect crap, talking to their neighbors and never getting into a room with them and ending our differences. This are liquid fueled rockets- 70s tech. Haven’t seen evidence that they are capable of much in the way of nuclear. Maybe dirty bomb sort of thing, but an actual atomic bomb? Doubt it.
You let the media lead you around by your nose. The US was giving NK nuclear technology as recently as the Clinton administration. All this stuff with the Norks is total astroturf. If KJU disappear tomorrow, China or SK took over the North, literally nothing would change because the source of all tensions on the Korean peninsula is the fact that the US insists on keeping it garrisoned.