See How Clever OSINT Lovers Can Be. Impressed? Not Me
September 11, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
See the dancing dinosaur. I am a dinobaby, and I have some precepts that are different from those younger than I. I was working on a PhD at the University of Illinois in Chambana and fiddling with my indexing software. The original professor with the big fat grant had died, but I kept talking to those with an interest in concordances about a machine approach to producing these “indexes.” No one cared. I was asked to give a talk at a conference called the Allerton House not far from the main campus. The “house” had a number of events going on week in and week out. I delivered my lecture about indexing medieval sermons in Latin to a small group. In 1972, my area of interest was not a particularly hot topic. After my lecture, a fellow named James K. Rice waited for me to pack up my view graphs and head to the exit. He looked me in the eye and asked, “How quickly can you be in Washington, DC?
An old-time secure system with a reminder appropriate today. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Good enough.
I will eliminate the intermediary steps and cut to the chase. I went to work for a company located in the Maryland technology corridor, a five minute drive from the Beltway, home of the Beltway bandits. The company operated under the three letter acronym NUS. After I started work, I learned that the “N” meant nuclear and that the firm’s special pal was Halliburton Industries. The little-known outfit was involved in some sensitive projects. In fact, when I arrived in 1972, there were more than 400 nuclear engineers on the payroll and more ring knockers than I had ever heard doing their weird bonding ritual at random times.
I learned three things:
- “Nuclear” was something one did not talk about… ever to anyone except those in the “business” like Admiral Craig Hosmer, then chair of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy
- “Nuclear” information was permanently secret
- Revealing information about anything “nuclear” was a one-way ticket to trouble.
I understood. That was in 1972 in my first day or two at NUS. I have never forgotten the rule because my friend Dr. James Terwilliger, a nuclear engineer originally trained at Virginia Tech said to me when we first met in the cafeteria: “I don’t know you. I can’t talk to you. Sit somewhere else.”
Jim and I became friends, but we knew the rules. The other NUS professionals did too. I stayed at the company for five years, learned a great deal, and never forgot the basic rule: Don’t talk nuclear to those not in the business. When I was recruited by Booz Allen & Hamilton, my boss and the fellow who hired me asked me, “What did you do at that little engineering firm?” I told him I worked on technical publications and some indexing projects. He bit on indexing and I distracted him by talking about medieval religious literature. In spite of that, I got hired, a fact other Booz Allen professionals in the soon-to-be-formed Technology Management Group could not believe. Imagine. Poetry and a shallow background at a little bitty, unknown engineering company with a meaningless name and zero profile in the Blue Chip Consulting world. Arrogance takes many forms.
Why this biographical background?
I read “Did Sandia Use a Thermonuclear Secondary in a Product Logo?” I have zero comment about the information in the write up. Read the document if you want. Most people will not understand it and be unable to judge its accuracy.
I do have some observations.
First, when the first index of US government servers was created using Inktomi and some old-fashioned manual labor, my team made sure certain information was not exposed to the public via the new portal designed to support citizen services. Even today, I worry that some information on public facing US government servers may have sensitive information exposed. This happens because of interns given jobs but not training, government professionals working with insufficient time to vet digital content, or the weird “flow” nature of digital information which allows a content object to be where it should not. Because I had worked at the little-known company with the meaningless acronym name, I was able to move some content from public-facing to inward-facing systems. When people present nuclear-related information, knowledge and good judgment are important. Acting like a jazzed up Google-type employee is not going to be something to which I relate.
Second, the open source information used to explain the seemingly meaningless graphic illustrates a problem with too much information in too many public facing places. Also, it underscores the importance of keeping interns, graphic artists, and people assembling reports from making decisions. The review process within the US government needs to be rethought and consequences applied to those who make really bad decisions. The role of intelligence is to obtain information, filter it, deconstruct it, analyze it, and then assemble the interesting items into a pattern. The process is okay, but nuclear information should not be open source in my opinion. Remember that I am a dinobaby. I have strong opinions about nuclear, and those opinions support my anti-open source stance for this technical field.
Third, the present technical and political environment frightens me. There is a reason that second- and third-tier nation states want nuclear technology. These entities may yip yap about green energy, but the intent, in my view, is to create kinetic devices. Therefore, this is the wrong time and the Internet is the wrong place to present information about “nuclear.” There are mechanisms in place to research, discuss, develop models, create snappy engineering drawings, and talk at the water cooler about certain topics. Period.
Net net: I know that I can do nothing about this penchant many have to yip yap about certain topics. If you read my blog posts, my articles which are still in print or online, or my monographs — you know that I never discuss nuclear anything. It is a shame that more people have not learned that certain topics are inappropriate for public disclosure. This dinobaby is really not happy. The “news” is all over a Russian guy. Therefore, “nuclear” is not a popular topic for the TikTok crowd. Believe me: Anything that offers nuclear related information is of keen interest to certain nation states. But some clever individuals are not happy unless they have something really intelligent to say and probably know they should not. Why not send a personal, informative email to someone at LANL, ORNL, or Argonne?
Stephen E Arnold, September 11, 2024
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