Iran's Nuclear Program Has Not Been Destroyed! W/Dr. Theodore Postol

Hello everybody and welcome to Geopolitical Trends, where truth matters. Excited to be with you as always. I'm even more excited because of my guest, Dr. Ted Postol. You guys heard from him last time, but today we're gonna have a very sort of a treat of sort in an intellectual setting. Uh, uh, Dr. Postol is going to be sharing with us some very, very insights in his, uh, given his expertise in nuclear technology. But before I'll do this, uh, I want to quickly mention to you what's coming up. Uh, on the 18th, I will be having, uh, Einar Tengen and Owarik Powe. We will be here— they will be here on the 18th at 20:00 hours. And on the 20th, Melissa Park will be joining us for a conversation regarding nuclear disarmament. That will be interesting. On the 21st, Parveen Shawnee is going to be here. I just got a confirmation from him this morning. So, and on the 22nd, we will be having our monthly conversation with none other than Carl Zah. So he will be here on the 20th. Once again, 21st, that will be Parveen, and on the 18th, that will be Einar Tengen and Warwick Powell, and on the 20th, it will be Melissa Park. So, so let me go ahead and bring in my guest, and we're gonna launch in into our conversation. Hello, Ted.

Hi, good, nice to see you.

Nice to see you too. We are very excited you are here, and the community is very, very interested in what you have to say. First of all, to those who do not know who Dr. Ted Postol is, he is a professor emeritus of science, technology, and national security policy at MIT. He did his undergrad work in physics and his graduate work in nuclear engineering. So someone who knows what he's talking about. Maybe in addition— well, you know, you know, credentials that are very crucial. I respect everybody, but credentials have to be mentioned and stated so people know and get an idea. So in addition to that, uh, Dr. Postol also served as an advisor to the Pentagon, and he was also a scientific advisor to the Chief of Naval Operations. So let me, let me, first of all, Ted, I want to get your take on the summit that is going to— actually, the summit didn't start between Putin and Trump. It's scheduled for 11:30 Alaska time, which will be 3 hours from now. What, what do you— what is just your, your take on this? How it's gonna go? Where do you see it going?

Well, it's, uh, I hope it goes well. I don't rule out the possibility by any means. I'm hopeful. Uh, the, um, uh, the Russians— I've been following the Russian, uh, statements on the summit, and, and they have been extremely generous to President Trump. And, uh, uh, and it's pretty clear that they are doing everything they can to make him feel like they want to talk to him and they want to have a constructive exchange. Now, where I have concerns is, um, well, first of all, that Trump, uh, President Trump needs this, uh, summit, uh, rather badly. He has, uh, he has really failed at everything he's been trying to do in the sense of, um, you know, he's, uh, he's infuriated, uh, a very large number of countries particularly most recently, he's had a tremendously negative effect on the Indian population, and he's not trusted in the Russian population. And what it looks like Putin is trying to do, and I think he's right in doing this, is to try to smooth feathers so that they can carry on a constructive conversation. Now, having said that, um, one of the things that the American, uh, political leadership, uh, well, maybe I should say, uh, Mr. Trump in particular, does not appear to have understood. Hopefully he's, uh, better informed about that now. Is the Russian attitude, uh, toward, uh, their— with regard to their objectives for the Russo-Ukrainian War. Yeah, the, the Russians are not in it for money. There's been some stories saying that, which may not be true incidentally, uh, you know, uh, that Putin's going to try to offer I mean, Trump is going to try to offer Putin some lucrative financial economic deals, for example, access to mineral deposits in Alaska. I mean, that's been one of the things floated. I think it was a Wall Street Journal article. Other than being polite, I don't expect Putin will be at all interested in these things, because Putin's primary interest here is to create a stable security environment in Europe, which means that, which means that not only will the European, Western European states feel secure, but that Russia can feel secure from the arbitrary, uh, uh, attacks to undermine Russia's security from the United States and Western Europe. The, uh, the reasons for the current Russo-Ukrainian War are, um, are— if you read the regular newspapers in the West, you will be misinformed about the reasons. The reasons or simply that the West was pressing Ukraine to become an enemy state. Yeah, on the border of Russia. And when I mean an enemy state, I mean it would be a NATO enemy state. So by joining— so one of the things the Russians went to war over, I mean, they, they made it very very clear from at least 2008, so this is no surprise, that, um, uh, Ukraine— they will not accept Ukraine being part of NATO. Now, the reasons for that are, are quite simple. If Ukraine were part of NATO, uh, Ukraine would have, uh, Western military forces Yeah, uh, you know, actually on its own territory, it would pose a major military threat immediately on the southern border of, uh, of Russia. Um, it, uh, would, um, potentially be a nuclear-armed state because nuclear weapons could be put into Ukraine if they were part of NATO, and it would pose an absolute unacceptable security threat to Russia from their, from their perspective. Now, to understand why the Russians might feel this way, yeah, the easy way to— it's always good to have analogies that you can relate to. And so for those people, so let's imagine we're back in 1962 and the Russians have put nuclear weapons into Cuba. Most people, not all, but most people would, most Americans would agree that this was unacceptable. And of course this resulted in this confrontation between the United States and Russia, particularly John Kennedy, the president then, and Nikita Khrushchev, the premier of the Soviet Union at that time. And fortunately, these two men realized how dangerous the situation was and they backed away. And, uh, but the United States was going to invade Cuba If we, um, if the Russians had refused to remove the weapons that we had detected in Cuba, we were going to invade. There's no question about it. We were— the Marines, U.S. Marines were training for assaults, beach assaults on Cuba. And they were only— it was, it was only a matter of giving the order for them to go in. And the president didn't want to do that, but he would have done it if, if the Russians had not wisely chosen to back away from what they had done. Now, what we, we the Americans and NATO, of course, being led by the United States, told Russia in 2008 that we were going to do the same thing to them that they would— that they had tried— that the Russians had tried to do to us in Cuba. Because if you look at Ukraine, Ukraine is closer to critical Russian assets than, uh, than Cuba was. I mean, uh, it was still a few thousand kilometers between Cuba and, and Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It's, it's only hundreds of kilometers from, uh, um, uh, from Ukraine to, to Moscow, the capital of Russia. And if nuclear weapons were going to— are going— were go— We told— actually, Antony Blinken told Lavrov, that Sergei Lavrov, that we were— we reserved the right to put nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and it was none of Russia's business. Well, a month after that statement to Lavrov by by Blinken, the invasion occurred, Russian invasion into Ukraine occurred. There's no surprise here, there's all these rewriting of history that is now common. This had nothing to do with Russia wanting to take over Ukraine. In fact, Russia withdrew almost immediately from Ukraine when they had negotiated in Istanbul an agreement that Ukraine would not join NATO. That was agreed to within a few weeks of the beginning of the invasion, and the Russians were pulling troops out. I can show maps of that. So, But the Americans intervened through the Brits, and they went and they threatened Zelensky, and they said to him simply, if you agree to not join NATO, uh, you're on your own. You'll get no support at all from the West. So you either keep pursuing, uh, your objective of joining NATO, or, um or you, um, uh, you're on your own and you, you know, the Russians might do with you whatever they choose. So Zelensky reversed himself and, uh, and we have the war. You know, the war did not have to happen. So this is the background, and Trump, uh, seems to think at times, statements he's made suggests that he, uh, somehow got the idea that this war is about Russia taking over Ukraine. It's not. It's about Russia preventing Ukraine becoming a NATO-supported adversary on its southern border. That's what it's about. And if, um, now, uh, the reason I'm focusing on this is, uh, Trump has made some statements in the recent past suggesting that, uh, Putin is not cooperating with him. And, you know, he's trying to offer him these ideas, you know, I'll give you money, I'll give you access to— you know, Putin's not interested in that. He has no interest in that at all. His only interest, and he has been absolutely unwavering and clear on this. In fact, on June 14, 2024, he made a clear statement that's carried on the Kremlin website explaining what the objectives of the special military operation were. Yeah. And so, so if Trump, uh, allows Putin to make— to explain to him and he listens I mean, it's a big problem if he doesn't listen. Then hopefully there will be some form of initial agreement reached, and I'm hoping for that, but I just don't know what to expect.

So, uh, well, let's hope it gets to that.

But it's important, it's important that people listen to what Putin has been saying. There is no— and I want— when people want to say there's ambiguity in what Putin is saying, they are simply misrepresenting the information. All they have to do is go to the Kremlin website and they will find nothing but, but consistent statements about the reasons for the special military operation. There's nothing to do with taking Ukraine back and expanding, you know, and it, it never did.

Well, thank you so much for sharing this, Ted. I, I'm gonna have to follow up with one thing before I turn it over for you regarding the Iran atomic bomb capabilities. And this one has to do, given that this upcoming summit that is going to be in 2 hours or so, one of the things that I am thinking about is what will be the fate of the START treaty, Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. How do you see it given that now the INF, it's already dead and we're gonna be looking now, Russians will not be renewing any treaty with the Americans. What, how do you see this playing out?

Well, first of all, I, I'd like to suggest that the INF does not have to be dead. Yeah, I mean, the Russians have recently announced that they will deploy short-range nuclear forces in response to any deployment made, uh, by the West, a nuclear deployment made by the West. The West is currently, is currently scheduled to put nuclear-armed missiles into Germany in 2026. This is a very bad decision, and, um, the Russians will comply with the terms of the INF Treaty. They have made this clear. They have stated this multiple times, that they will comply with the INF, and they are complying with the INF Treaty, even though the United States has withdrawn from the treaty. If the United States takes the next step of deploying nuclear forces, short-range nuclear forces in Germany, then the Russians have made it clear that they will respond in kind. Now, these short-range nuclear forces cause— pose a very short warning threat to, to the Russians. There is no reason to pose a short warning threat to the Russians. Posing a short warning threat to the Russians only increases the chances of a nuclear accident that could destroy the entire world. We, we the West, have the ability to attack Russia if, if we determine that we need to. Presumably it would be retaliation if we were attacked first, or hopefully that's what we— and, um, there's no reason to make the warning times shorter than they already are. They're already, uh, dangerously short. And there's no reason to move nuclear weapons closer to Russia, or for the Russians to move nuclear weapons closer to the United States. There's no reason for the Russians to put nuclear weapons in Cuba. There's no reasons for the Russians to put submarines off the American coast with short-range missiles like they did when they only had short-range submarine-launched missiles. They, when they, as soon as they developed longer-range missiles, the Russians, they stopped deploying missiles at short range off the US coast. Yeah, so they have shown that they understand the dangers posed by having short-range nuclear-armed missiles. We should simply— we, the United States, should simply stop its plans to deploy these short-range missiles in Germany. And I hope that will be negotiated between Trump and Putin. Yeah, in A series, it'll probably take a series of talks. This is a complex question. On the matter of START, it's in the interest of both countries to keep a lid on the very large number of nuclear weapons they still have. It's a dangerous thing to continue growing the size of these arsenals. The more weapons you have, the more chance there is for an unwanted nuclear accident that then leads to nuclear use. That's because people don't know what's happening. And, uh, it's imperative that there be, uh, arms, uh, strategic arms limitations. And I, I think when you look, when you look at statements made, uh, by Putin and his associates, yeah, it's very clear the Russians want arms control on the strategic level to continue, and it's equally clear that many American policy leaders, including many very conservative, politically conservative policy leaders, think the idea of arms limitations, strategic arms limitations, is a good idea. So I think both the INF or some form of INF constraints be kept in place, and that we have an extension of the START treaties and maybe an advance in reducing strategic weapons on both sides. And I think the chances— it's possible, especially if Trump succeeds and Putin succeed in in making the— in bringing a more normalized and constructive political relationship between the United States and Russia, which is what is something that I believe Trump is sincerely trying to do. But I don't think he's handling it very well up until now. And I hope things change in what happens.

Yeah, well, this will bring into history the same thing that Reagan achieved with Mikhail Gorbachev. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Because I remember those talks.

I was watching them, literally, I was watching, keeping an eye out. All right, let's move on into addressing your area of expertise, nuclear technology. And with this, we wanted to know, Ted, there's a lot of, lot of, not, uh, you know, the hypes coming out of Washington, we bombed the nuclear sites of Iran and its nuclear program is no longer there and all that. And all this I found, it's nothing but hype, especially when it's coming from people who have no knowledge, no expertise, no understanding of where things are. And we turn it over to you because you've been on the ground, you've been in the field for so many decades, you know this inside out. Where do you think Iran's atomic bomb capabilities are as of today?

Well, I think, uh, Iran can have atomic weapons and might already have atomic weapons. We really don't know.

Yeah.

And, uh, the critical fact that, uh, that I'll emphasize for your audience and explain why it's important is the fact that, um, Iran has enriched 408 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride to 60% enriched uranium. Now, I'll explain very shortly why 60% enriched uranium is almost equal to weapons-grade uranium. It takes a very, very small amount of effort which is currently in the grasp of Iran. In other words, Iran does not have to build it, they already have it. That's my point. So, if I— let me just jump to some slides and I'll You know, I'll— we'll go from there. If I— can you see my slides? I'm not sure how.

I can't, but I can add this one here.

Okay, good. And I can— and so if I go—

there we go, you control it.

If I go to this slide, uh, here, um, uh, this shows the number of centrifuges that Iran has produced up until, you know, 2025. If you look at the rightmost side of this bar graph, you'll see a green column at the rightmost size, and that shows that Iran in 2025 would have had almost 18,000 centrifuges. To, you know, for its enrichment activities. Now, some significant amount of these centrifuges were destroyed in attacks, in the attacks on Stuxnet on July 13th by the United States and Israel before that. And we don't really know how many of these centrifuges are left, although there's good reason to believe many of them are left. However, if you look at the— there's a vertical arrow denoting roughly 13,000, with the text roughly 13,000 plus or minus question mark centrifuges. If you look at the bar at the bottom of that line, that's roughly the number of centrifuges, roughly, few x, that Iran would still need to have to produce 10 atomic bombs. In other words, destroying essentially all of the centrifuges would not leave Iran with so few centrifuges that it could not produce an atomic bomb with the remaining centrifuges and the 60% enriched, uh, uranium hexafluoride. All right, so destroying— the only possible outcome could have been if they destroyed everything down to close to zero. That's not possible because there are also 50,000 centrifuge components which have not yet been assembled into centrifuges that we know the Iranians have stored in various places. So there's no stopping, um, the number of centrifuges that Iran would need is 174, and I'll show I'll show what that means. So, Iran has its own gas centrifuges. I'll just tell you very— I'm going to go through a very simple, simple explanation of what a centrifuge is, just to give you a conceptual sense of what this thing is. It's an extraordinary piece of equipment, and it's extraordinarily difficult to build. This is a cartoon, obviously, of a centrifuge. If you notice, there's a red boundary in the cylinder, and outside that red boundary, there's a gray, gray boundary, and between the red and the gray boundary, there is a vacuum. So the red boundary shows, shows a, a cylinder which is inside another cylinder which is evacuated from— has no air in it. And the cylinder inside is spinning at a fantastic speed. Um, a reason— a rough guess, I don't know, we don't know the exact speed of the is 60,000 or 70,000 revolutions per minute. That's enormous speed. To give you a sense of the centrifugal forces on the outer wall of this spinning cylinder, if you had a flea on the outer wall of the cylinder, you know, literally a flea, um, It would cause a lateral vibrational force, 1 pound, perpendicular to the axis of the spinning. That, that inhomogeneity in mass and on the wall. So these, the walls of this cylinder have to be built of really perfectly uniform material, machined to very, very high precision. And the materials have to be extremely strong, and because the forces on the outer wall are 300,000 to 500,000 from spinning, 300,000 to 500,000 times the strength of gravity that, that we, you know, we experience by, you know, from the Earth. So, now the reason you are spinning this thing at such a high rate is you're trying to compress the uranium hexafluoride gas up against the walls of this cylinder. And you see a dot, if you look at the internal arrows in the cylinder, it shows you a circulating motion of uranium hexafluoride gas. That is both correct and misleading. The gas is actually all up against the wall of this cylinder in reality, a very, very thin layer of gas. And what, what happens at these very high rotation rates is the lighter gas, the gas that's uranium-235 relative to the gas that's uranium-238, The 235 floats at a slightly larger distance from the wall, and it skimmed off. And so, you have slightly higher enriched uranium hexafluoride being skimmed off, and slightly lower enriched uranium hexafluoride being skimmed off in this— extraordinarily difficult to build device. I just want to give you a sense of how complex it is. So now we need not concern ourselves with— the only point I want your audience to understand is that this is an extraordinarily high technology device to build. That's, that's the point I'm making. Now if you look at one of these devices, we can depict it with an icon. And if you look at the right, there's an arrow showing the input to this spinning cylinder. It's— and, and, and then there are outputs of enriched uranium hexafluoride and depleted uranium hexafluoride. Of course, I'm not giving you the whole technical details here. And. And basically, if you want to see what the— one of these, uh, um, uh, centrifuges look like, the leftmost of these three centrifuges is the most modern centrifuge that the Iranians have built. It's called an IR-6. It's the sixth generation. And you see two other, um, generations of centrifuges. The Iranians are now building IR-6 centrifuges. And, and they, they are con— they can— they put these centrifuges, which have a relatively low enrichment per unit, into what's called a cascade. Let me show you what a cascade is. This is a cascade. Now, it's very hard to understand what's going on here, so I'm going to go to a small Cascades, to just give you a sense. And if you look on the left side of this array of enrichment centrifuges, you'll see the word feed and an arrow. And that shows a line, a gas line, that is going into— going across multiple centrifuges where uranium hexafluoride gas is being fed into the centrifuge, into the centrifuge array. Now, if you want to see what this looks like, here, here are the centrifuges. You see, if you looked at the top of the centrifuges, you see these aluminum lines coming out of the centrifuge, and those lines are connected to other centrifuges in this cascade. Just to give you a sense. So you have a feed line going in, and if you look at the feed line for the primary row of, of, of centrifuges, you look immediately above the feed input feed line, you'll see in red an enriched, a line of enriched outputs from the centrifuges. And those enriched centrifuges, if you follow them all the way to the right, then up and back to the left to the next row of cascades, you see that enriched, enriched uranium hexafluoride is going into the feeds of the next stage of centrifuges, the next row of centrifuges. And then if you look immediately above that enriched, that input feed, you see another enriched feed coming out, and it goes vertically and up into the feed of the next row of centrifuges, which in this case has 2 centrifuges, and then finally up to an enriched feed into a final centrifuge, which, which which produces a product. And the, the total enrichment of the centrifuge is the most enriched material is coming out at the product stage. If we look, let's go back to the input feed again, and we look at the row where there are 4 centrifuges. If we look at the depleted output, In other words, there's an above, there's an enriched output, and in the line below there's a depleted. This is reduced amounts of, um, of uranium, uh, uranium-235 hexafluoride. This goes one stage down and it's put into the input. So this depleted is put into the input of a depletion stage. Notice that above this, this depleted input, there's enriched from the depleted uranium hexafluoride output from this stage that's going into, back into the initial feed stage, and it gets fed up. And then you see, going back to this depletion stage, you see there's ultimately a depleted output, and this— and to the right you see a label called tails. So you have— so, so if you, um, if you look at this big centrifuge, this is the actual cascade configuration that's used by the Iranians. We know what it looks like.. And, um, uh, all the, uh, I, I have this broad— if you look to the left, broad arrows marked enrichment, uh, and depletion. And this shows you all the different connected cascades for a 174-centrifuge cascade, which is, uh, currently demonstrated enrichment cascade that the Iranians could use to enrich the 60% uranium hexafluoride to weapons-grade uranium hexafluoride. So, so if we want to get a sense of how much floor space, uh, that the the centrifuge could take. If you recall, I showed you this picture where you have these lines coming out, and what I've shown here is the small cascade on the left, and I've just shown you how you could re— physically rearrange the four cascades in the input feed so that they're all roughly in a rectangular configuration. So you're not restrained, you're not constrained to this floor space geometry. You can essentially put the cascade by simply connecting all the differences. So this is the 174 the floor space taken up by a 100— by the 174 IR-6 centrifuge cascade, which has about 1,000 separative work units, uh, per year of— and I'm going to explain what that means very shortly. Yeah, but the important thing to keep in mind, the, the point of this diagram is to show you that the floor space taken up by this centrifuge cascade is only about 60 square meters. Okay, so that's a fairly small amount of space. Yes. Yeah. And the amount of energy you need to run those cascades are, uh, perhaps, um, perhaps, uh, 20 or 30 kilowatts of electric power. You could get 30— you could get 30 kilowatts. You can get 150 kilowatts of electric power out of a Prius, uh, gas motor with it, with a generator. So you could run 5 or 6 of these, uh, cascades with just a Prius. You know, my point is simply that it doesn't take, uh, a portable generator operated with a diesel motor or a gas motor can very— would take a very small space to provide the energy you need to operate this cascade. So the whole system could be 60 or 70 square meters of space. So putting this, um, this material, uh, you know, putting a, a unit like this under the ground where you can't find it— this is not a giant facility. You could have multiple such facilities if you were Iran, and you probably would. In fact, if I were Iranian, I I would. So, so the question is, uh, what do I need for, uh, a nuclear— an atomic weapon? And it turns out we, we, we know what, uh, the critical mass for an atomic weapon is. And this is a complicated slide, but it'll be easier to understand after. I, I can send Uh, I don't know, can you distribute these slides on a website to your people?

I have to put a link for them, for the community to have access for that.

I can, I can, I can make you want to, otherwise I can do it.

But no, no, no, I'll take care of it. I'll take care of it. But before you move on, before you move on, I want to ask one question, please, especially on the slide before this regarding the cascades and the centrifuges. What did, what did the Stuxnet— you, you remember the, the virus Stuxnet— what did it do to the cascade or the centrifuge? What was the role of the Stuxnet?

Oh yeah, for those who do not know, the role of the Stuxnet was to take this device that you see here, okay, and to cause it to speed up and slow down, with, in an uncontrolled way. And the physical— notice that the forces on the wall are 300,000 to 500,000 times the, uh, the, uh, strength of gravity, of gravitational field. So if you take this device and you, you let it, you know, slow down and speed up and in, in, in uncontrolled ways, it will start to vibrate and it will shake itself apart. So the Stuxnet virus, computer virus, was injected into the control mechanisms, the electronic controls for rotating the the centrifuge, and it basically caused the centrifuges to rotate in a way that spun up and slowed down that would cause them to shatter. Because the walls are, you know, they're only so strong, you know, because, yeah, you know, you take a— imagine you take a thin piece of aluminum and you press on it with hundreds of thousands of pounds of force, it just disintegrates, it just cracks. Yeah. And, uh, and that's what was done with the Stuxnet. Does that help you understand? Yeah, yeah.

It's just, uh, I wanted, I wanted the community at least, because I thought about it and I wanted the community.

No, no, this is exactly, this is exactly what I asked you to do. Yeah. In other words, interrupt me with questions. Yeah.

By the way, to those who say that I interrupted Dr. Postol, no, I get the green light from him too.

No, no, I was I, I, I want to confirm that we had a discussion before this. I encourage you to do that. And I—

well, then I have a second question.

Go ahead.

And by the way, if you guys have a question, just put it in the chat box later on and I'll get it through it. So, uh, the, the other question that I have, Ted, is, is this the same process, let's say, North Korea did, or the Russians, or the Pakistanis, or Is this like a standard procedure for enriching uranium?

Well, this is a standard procedure for enriching uranium. Plutonium is different. We— let's not get into it for the moment because— okay, but, uh, for enriching uranium, this is now the standard procedure that is used. And there's a long story here, uh, which we might actually go through at some other time, how this centrifuge technology became available to states that were not supposed to have it, where it first became available in Pakistan because a Pakistan immigrated, uh, uh, worked in, in, in, in Holland where this technology was very highly developed, and he provided, uh, the, uh, plans for the Pakistani government and led a program in Pakistan. And, uh, that technology was spread by Pakistan to North Korea and also to Iran itself. And so there's a long story about how this technology— that doesn't mean that the North Koreans, Iranians, and Pakistanis did not demonstrate a tremendous amount of their own ingenuity in developing this technology for their own purposes. But the initial technology came from the Netherlands, and it was unauthorized transfer of technology to Pakistan. So this, this is also shows An important point that is now causing a transformation globally, and that global transformation is the development, is the influx of high technology across the world. Once one gets an initial level of high technology, If the country promotes education in its people, and provides them with the resources to develop the technology further, the acceleration in the growth of the wealth of these countries will be fantastic, relative to what historically has occurred in the past. The, the introduction of high technology, uh, has, for example, transformed China from an absolutely primitive country where the actual poverty of the average person was as low as anywhere in the world in 1980, to a country that is now a competitor, with the United States. China is now superior to the United States in its manufacturing capabilities and in its ability to produce high technology, uh, you know, systems, whether it's chips for computers, missiles, uh, nuclear reactors, or whatever. China is now a vast high-technology industrial state, absolutely competitor, absolutely a competitor of the United States and Western Europe combined.

Wow.

This is also true of many rising industrial powers now: India, Iran, um Malaysia. All these countries now have enough of a base of technology that we are now seeing a transformation in the global wealth of nations that is taking away— is, is taking away the 500 years of, of European, uh, domination in the area of technology and economy and wealth and economies is now replacing it. I— in, in, in the next 20 or 30 years, the West will just be another center of techno— technology and wealth relative to other parts of the world. And I think that's a good thing in general, but But I'm gonna—

Ted, I'm gonna push back against one statement. And again, that's—

please do.

Yeah, you know, you are one of those intellectuals that, uh, you are— you welcome a sort of disagreements and so forth. I will respectfully disagree with you regarding India's developments because I do not see, and I do not put India at that category. Yes, they might have acquired the nuclear weapon But at the same time, and I know some other scholars in the West are mentioning about the rise of India on the global ladder, but I just do not see because it does not reflect from its infrastructure to economic vision to its even foreign policy and even its military capabilities, given what it just experienced against Pakistan. And this is where, again, I will— I be wrong in this assessment, and I respect your opinion.

I, I, I think India is in a state of technology development, okay, that is probably— I, I, I'm just talking off the top of my head, uh, probably, uh, like, uh, uh, Russia was in the 1980s or China in the 1990s. In other words, the level of, uh, of technology development in India is considerably lower than, uh, than what— than certainly China and the, of course, the United States and the West. However, however, if you ask the question, uh, does India have the intellectual resources to build an economy as advanced as China's and the United States It absolutely does have that. I say this personally because I, I, I, I have known many, many, many Indian scientists over my career. And when I work— was working in the United States, my group was led by an Indian scholar, and there were many other Indian scholars in my department.

Yeah.

And these people are absolutely first-class scientists, and I met many Indians you know, who were back in India. India is poised, if it treats its scientific community correctly, to burst into the highest tiers of technology development. It's decades away from it because it takes time, takes time and money and effort. But, uh, I think it would be a grave mistake to assume that India is not poised to be a competitor, a first-line competitor in technology in the next decades to come. India does have serious problems. I don't want to offend my Indian friends, but India is still a class-ridden society. Yeah. You know, I say this not You know, trying to be. And this class-ridden society, and it also has got serious problems with suppression, religious suppression and conflict, particularly with the suppression of Muslim minorities in India. And this is a very destabilizing factor that will, does, and will inhibit the economic development of India. You have to have a playing field for your own people, for your domestic people, that treats everybody with talent. You know, anybody who has talent needs to have the opportunity to develop that talent, because they contribute. Every talented person, whether they're Black in America or Asian— I'll speak about the United States where we have similar problems, you know— every time we have a woman who's intellectually talented who's not allowed to develop, you know, a Black person, any minority, the country, the whole society loses, along with, of course, the lack of opportunity and frustration the individual who has talent faces. And to make a society free of these kinds of prejudices is a very important goal if you want a truly advanced industrial society.

Yeah, well, I think, I think China will be a good example for this, Ted. Will I be wrong?

No, China is a great example for this. I mean, in China, if you show talent and you show— and you come from a poor family, the, the educational apparatus is set up to identify talent everywhere And, uh, and to move that talent into circumstances where that talent can develop. Exactly. One of my former students at MIT, I'm very proud of him, uh, is a professor at Tsinghua University now. And actually, two of them are. And, uh, and Tsinghua is the MIT of, uh, of China. And, and, uh, I have two, and both of these young, enormously talented men, uh, one came from a family where his parents were teachers, so he had exposure to education. But the other, the other one came from a family where his mother was a seamstress. You know, she was, you know, operated— she was sewing. And yet he was identified by the state as talented and, and allowed to go to a first-line university and, uh, developed into a fantastically capable scholar who's now contributing to the well— to the well-being and advance of, of China, because he's a professor at one of their great universities, educating other people, uh, leading a good life himself, which he's earned. And if you don't do that in your society, you will be held back. And India has big problems in this area. I don't say this with any hostility. No, no, of course I say it with sympathy, but It really needs to do something about these, this caste system, which it claims it has solved, but it has not. I mean, I have eyes and ears. I see what is going on.

Thank you so much for sharing this, Ted, because your perspective is very important. And this is, again, I think what is lacking is not having— yeah, wait, just here is the thing, Ted. You know, there are some scholars that they get a offensive when you offended, when you kind of challenged the arguments and—

No, no, no, no. I think your observation was accurate. I don't dispute your observation. I'm just explaining to you why my judgment is somewhat different. But your observation about the current state of India is certainly correct. I mean, it is not a challenger of China by any means in terms of its technology level, but there's no reason why China can't be at that level of technological achievement and wealth. Yeah, but the problem is not intellectual resources in India. It's got a fantastic tradition of high-level education. The problem is the caste system. And we have this problem in the United States too. We don't educate all of the good people. All of the talent exists everywhere. That's my experience. My father was a welder. He had no education. My mother had no education. But I got lucky and was able to go to a good, a great university, because the system was far from perfect in the United States, but it's— but I got lucky, and other people I knew who were also talented were not so lucky. I know many talented people were not lucky. So I think the emphasis for development of a country has to be on creating opportunities for people who have talent and are willing to work hard. I, I, I happen to have the privilege of having a vacation in, uh, in, in Vietnam, uh, took a vacation in a few months ago, and, and, uh, I met a lot of Vietnamese, and the thing that impressed me about Vietnamese society is that it's structured so that talented, hardworking people can advance themselves. And the society is much richer than it was, and it's getting richer at a fantastic rate, because if people work hard and they show talent, there are mechanisms for them to advance themselves. It's not perfect. Yeah, not perfect at all, but No system can be perfect. And any society where the leadership of the country structures the society to stop prejudice and create educational opportunity for everyone who works hard and shows talent is a society that's going to become very advanced and very rich. Because we now have— once the technology is in place and we— it's, it's available all over the place. I mean, Indonesia is not a rich place in the same sense, you know, as China, but it's getting there fast.

Yeah.

And once you have a base of technology and educated people who can then educate more people and further develop the technology base of your country, you are going to exponentially become wealthy. And that's what we're seeing in the world. The world is developing at a fantastic rate. A large portion of the world has passed this minimal threshold that is needed for the dramatic development of technology and wealth to follow. And I think it's good. I think it's a good thing.

As long as we are willing to— we, the United States, willing to recognize our limits into when the world changes. You know, we're going to have to accept that reality and cooperate. So it's almost like that concept, Ted, of live and let live. Yeah, but it seems we are struggling in Washington accepting this reality of the shift of the global order from a unipolar to a multipolar. We seem not to even want to admit that it is happening before our own eyes.

Well, I'm in a position— I'm lucky, yeah, to come from multiple classes. So I'm, you know, I know people from lower class environments as well as the privileged environment in which I live. And when I meet talented people from lower-class environments, who are less privileged, who show talent and who are— who work hard, I do everything I can. I can't always do something, but I do everything I can to help them advance. I consider that my duty as a human being first and as an educator next. So I don't care if you're a talented graduate student who comes into my, uh, you know, into my world where I owe it to you to help you advance as a professional or a postdoctoral fellow, or someone I met who, uh, who, who comes into my apartment and fixes my plumbing. I don't care. Talent exists everywhere. And, and if there's— and it's important to make sure It has opportunities to advance when you can. That's my view. And we all should take that as a responsibility, not only to the individuals who will benefit with a better life, but also to the society in general, because they will contribute to the overall wealth and well-being of the society. This is a social issue, you know. Anyway, yeah. You are absolutely correct. Sorry to get on my soapbox.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's to me where the conversation is. And as a matter of fact, I do have a question from one of the viewers, Terry, if that's okay with you. It's right here from Samir Karim. It's a professor. I'm sure it's referring to you. Can AI— Yes.

Well, I think AI is a very powerful technology. But I think it has been overstated in terms of what it, what it can do. It, yeah, it, it doesn't mean it can't— it— let me give you an example. I performed an experiment with a friend of mine, uh, who's also— who's very educated himself, as it turns out. And we asked an AI engine about a particular physical phenomenon that is popularly not understood. So it's not understood. I'll actually say it it'll shock a lot of people, climate change, was what they asked about. And the utility came up with a completely technically inaccurate statement about the causes of climate change. Now, there is climate change, I'm not a climate change denier, all right, so let's get that out of the way. But the causes of climate change are not simply carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, like almost everybody listening to this, listening to us, probably believes, because that's what you've been told. But if you look at the scientific literature, you will find that there are other sources of climate change that are affecting us right now. So for example, the Sun has sunspots on it. Those sunspots cause, through a set of mechanisms, changes in the cloud cover of the Earth. So when the sunspots— when there are more sunspots, it turns out that, uh, the cloud cover in the Earth is, is, is lower. In other words, it's an inverse relationship between the— and, and so, uh, so when— so the cloud cover, uh, when there's a very small number of sunspots, the cloud cover on the Earth actually increases because of this inverse relationship, and this then causes the Earth to be cooler. And, and this is an effect you can see over billions of years, not hundreds of millions or millions. I mean, and, and this, this phenomenon occurs over decades, even days. And by not including this in your attempt to understand climate, you get the wrong answer. And that's why all these climate models get— well, it's not the only reason the climate models, they're not accurate. So here's an example where the artificial intelligence did a very detailed search, but it has no judgment. It has no ability to look into the scientific literature into— so, Artificial intelligence can be very, very, very useful if you carefully utilize it. In, for example, I'm using, utilizing it now to find scientific articles on climate change involving— yeah, but I'm finding that I'm looking, I'm using the scientific, I'm searching the scientific literature, not the popular literature.

Yeah.

So the— so the— if, if you do a regular search, you find that the, uh, the, the, the popular literature overwhelms the scientific literature and you get the wrong answers. So artificial intelligence is very powerful, but, uh, you have to be extremely cautious in, uh, in, in understanding what it does. I, I realize I No, it's a whole subject of great—

I know, it's like, yeah, oh, we can, we can talk about one day.

Yeah, we can talk about it more. Anyway, um, shall we get back to the, uh, yeah, I don't know how long we can go, but—

oh, I got time if you have time. All right, so because I'm still gonna have to ask you one question later on after you—

oh, okay, okay. So, uh, if you look at the chart, uh, the graph on the left, that's for uranium. The graph on the right is for plutonium, which is an important material for weapons, but, um, but not, um, um, not the, uh, oh, actually, the, the one on the graph, the left, is, is uranium. Okay, let's, let's focus on that. There's a mistake on the right, I just caught it. And you see this yellow column with the red dots, and that shows you the enrichment of 83% of uranium. And if you look at the bottom, you see 3 curves, the bottom curve, you, if you look at the intersection of the vertical line with the bottom curve, you see that, uh, that occurs at about 15 kilograms of uranium-235. Well, that's a critical mass of uranium-235 if If the uranium is surrounded by a reflector— let me show you what I mean by that. Sorry.

It's always, uh, yeah, science can be very complicated.

Yeah, well, it's just, it's not that science finding what you're looking for is coming. So, so on the, there you see three red, uh, circles which have crosshairs in them. And the leftmost shows you a sphere of uranium that if you, if you put that sphere together, you would get an atomic bomb. You get an atomic yield, uh, very— that's 55 kilograms. If you look at the next, the next sphere, red sphere, you see it's slightly smaller. This uranium is very dense, and, and that sphere is 20 kilograms of uranium-235, and that's surrounded by a spherical shell of uranium-238. The purpose of that spherical shell is to reflect neutrons from, uh, the uranium-235 sphere back into the U-235. And on the rightmost section here, I— the uranium-235 is only 14 kilograms because it's surrounded by— a beryllium neutron reflector, sometimes called a tamper. And the beryllium is more efficient reflecting neutrons back into the uranium-235. So, you need a smaller critical mass. So, 14 kilograms is all you need of uranium-235. In order to get an atomic bomb that works. And, and so the overall weight of this assembly of uranium and beryllium is about 40 kilograms. So that's those— so the nuclear components you need to build a, a uranium bomb that does not have to be compressed. I want to underscore, this is not a spherical compression bomb. All you have to do is insert a component in it. Here's an example of uranium. This bomb is— this configuration, first of all, it would have a much thicker shell around it. If you depict it properly, 10-centimeter shell, and it could have these two slugs that are explosively driven into the center of it, and you would— you could get a working nuclear weapon. This diagram is— so, so this is what I call a low-technology atomic bomb because you don't have to have a spherical implosion lens that requires exotic technologies to build an atomic weapon. So this is the weapon I'm postulating that the Iranians would build. So now, why is the 60% enriched uranium so— such a bring— why does this 60% enriched uranium bring Iran so close to having a nuclear weapon? Well, this slide shows, if you look at the matrix of boxes above the graph, what I've depicted here is is 10% enriched uranium. 10% is 10% uranium-235 relative to 90%, uh, uranium-238. And I've postulated an enrichment process. So let me— let's— so instead of centrifuges, let's think of a frying pan that has 10% sugar dissolved in it. It's water with 10% sugar. So, if I boil the water for a certain amount, I get a certain amount of water boiled off and the sugar staying behind. So I go from 10% to 11% enriched, you know, sugar. Enrichment. In the next interval of boiling, same interval of boiling, same amount of water boils off, but the fraction of water left with sugar in it gets lower, so I get 14% enrichment in sugar. In the next step I go to 17% enriched, 20%, 25%, 33%, 50%. So I'm looking at the, the, the next to last stage of enrichment before 100%. So what this conceptual diagram shows, it shows how as the enrichment process proceeds, you get a higher and higher level of enrichment with the same amount of work. The same amount of energy in this case. So the graph below shows the steps on the x-axis, shows the steps of enrichment. So if we look at 9, the number 9 step, we see we're at 50% enrichment, and number 10 goes to 100%. We just get— notice also that if I have If I enrich to 50% sugar, and I just store the sugar away, I have jars of 50% enriched, you know, water with sugar. If I take those jars out at some point, and I just start boiling the water, I only need a small amount of work to get pure sugar, 100% enriched. So, this depicts a technically accurate situation. There's a unit called separative work units. It's called SWS. Let's not worry about what a SWS is. If people want the graphs, you'll get a sense of it. The number of SWS you need to enrich natural uranium to 3% or 3.5%, which you would use in a nuclear reactor, Uh, is 3,500 SWS to produce 600 kilograms of 3.5% enriched uranium from 3,000 kilograms of natural uranium. So now if I want to produce fuel for a nuclear reactor, it turns out I need 27 kilograms of fuel, 3.5% fuel per year to keep that reactor moving, operating. So this is only 645, so it's 1/50th amount of the uranium I need to enrich to 3.5% in order to operate a nuclear reactor. But it's just about right. 1/50th of the fuel I need to keep the reactor operating is all I need to enrich to a nuclear weapon. So, if I have the ability to enrich nuclear fuel to run a reactor at 3.5% enrichment for a full year, keep it running for a year, I have the ability to produce 50 atomic bombs per year if I choose to use that enrichment capacity to build atomic bombs. This is the dirty little secret of enrichment. Wow. That's why the nations that have enrichment capability have tried to guard the promulgation, the propagation of this technology. So, so I need 3,500 SWS to get the 3.5% enrichment, another 1,500 SWS to get to 20% enrichment, which the Iranians were enriching. So they, they had to use the SWS that add up just like the sugar.

Yeah.

And so I need 5,000 of separative work units. To get from 3,000 kilograms of, of natural uranium to 100 kilograms of 20% enriched uranium. I only need 100— 380 spools to get to 60% enriched. All right, so now to get to 100— to get to 90% enriched, I only need 120 SWS. So if, if all of this other capability were destroyed, but I still had 120 SWS of enrichment capacity, yeah, I could build atomic bombs.

So in this case, Ted, in this case, Iran now only needs a political will It's not a matter of scientific knowledge or technology.

It's simply a political decision to go ahead and build and put together the centrifuges, which they already have, I'm sure. And put together a cascade of centrifuges in a location that would, you know, maybe 80, 100 square meters. So it's not a, you know, it's not a Not a giant facility underground, hidden, God knows where. You know, finding such a facility, you know, you could have— you could build dozens of facilities that you would never find.

What about the testing?

You would not need to test this bomb because you would only need to test a prototype of the bomb. Okay, for assembly.

Got it.

So, so we did not test the Little Boy for— we did not do a nuclear test on the Little Boy. What we did is we constructed Little Boy out of uranium-238, which is, from the point of view of Little Boy, is no different from uranium-235. And we, we just made sure the plug went together when we, you know, when we fire the plug into the main mass of uranium. Once we knew that mechanism worked, we didn't need to test the bomb. So we just had the U-235 that we used in Little Boy, and the bomb was never tested. The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was never tested. The bomb that destroyed Nagasaki was tested because it was a much more sophisticated device. It had to have an implosive lens explosive arranged in a lens-like structure to compress the structure fast. But that was not needed for the Hiroshima bomb, and it would not be needed for the Iranian atomic bombs. They only need a low-technology bomb. So, what does this mean? Well, from a policy point of view, this is profound. It's a simple— so what I'm telling you is a very simple technical fact. Yeah, simple technical fact is Iran has the capacity to do this if they choose to.

If they choose to.

The, the profound political fact is that if you are in a confrontation with Iran, you cannot assume that if you attack them with nuclear weapons, they could not strike back at you with nuclear weapons. You cannot assume that. Now, the weapon that they could build would weigh maybe 150 kilograms. They have been routinely attacking Israel with, uh, ballistic missiles that are carrying 450 or more kilograms of payload. So Iran already has the missiles to attack Israel with atomic weapons that they can build. It's not a problem. The atomic weapons are not super heavy. No, they would have to reconfigure the missile, which they know how to do. I mean, no problem at all. To reconfigure the missile. They can even reconfigure and test the missile in Iran and test the implosion mechanism in, in Iran, non-nuclear.

Yeah.

And be ready to go when they decide to do so. So, um, so they— you would have to treat them as a nuclear weapons state.

Very interesting.

Yeah, so my bottom line is Iran is the second undeclared nuclear weapon state in the Middle East now, Israel being the first.

Yeah, it's a, it's a, as they say, fait accompli, whether the West—

now this does not mean, uh, we didn't have a chance to discuss this, I, uh, you brought it up last time, this does not mean that Israel might not attack Iran again. Yeah, because the question that the Iranians would have to deal with is, would a, would a second, uh, unprovoked conventional attack on Iran justify responding with a nuclear weapon against Israel? Because a nuclear weapon against Israel would almost certainly result in an Israeli use of nuclear weapons against Iran. So, Iran does not have a— in my view, does not have a deterrent against Israel's continuing attacks, conventional attacks. I think it's unwise of Israel to continue doing that. I think that's a bad choice. But What Iran does have is it does have an absolute deterrent against Israel attacking Iran with nuclear weapons. And that's important because nuclear weapons are on a different scale.

So this leads me to my last question, Ted, which I want to keep briefly, if you could please.

Oh, this is working. This works well. You interrupting me.

Yeah. Well, I'm glad.

Yeah.

Good. This one has to do with the really, I've been thinking about, okay, for us in the US, and I, of course, it's our country, I have to think in these terms, but also have to think on the, on the level of global security, uh, regarding the— I would say, I would include Israel into this— the US and Israel's defense capabilities regarding missiles, especially when you consider, for example, the RS-24 of the Russians or the RS-26 and so forth. Do we have— or the hypersonics for the Chinese and so forth— do we have the capabilities to defend against this kind of type of missile?

That's another discussion. We can have it.

Okay.

But, but we, the United States, has no ability. I want to underscore this, no ability in spite of this silly system, technically silly system we, we have put enormous amounts of national treasure into, uh, either the Aegis sea-based system or the ground-based missile defense system. Neither of those systems have any ability to even stop a limited attack from North Korea, which is very close to having an ICBM. North Korea is very close. It doesn't yet have an ICBM because they've never tested on a full ICBM trajectory, but they are very close. They are very near ICBM capability, and they could have it on short notice. And if they go— they make that extra step, the United States will have no capability at all to, uh, to defend against the North Koreans, yet alone, you know, China or Russia or anybody else who has ballistic missiles that could reach the United States. We have no capability, and the Israelis also have no capability as well.

But that would be great for another discussion. Discussion, yeah, we'll focus only on this because I really would like to community to really acquire the necessary basic understanding, at least.

Yes, yes.

Because we're just hearing— we are, uh, we are bombarded by information and so forth. And, uh, to me personally, I like to break down that information so the community have a better understanding of where things are and how this might move. Now it's almost— with your explanation, Ted, uh, to me, I'm now convinced that It's just a matter of political—

yeah, I can give you enough information to— yeah, for you to make your independent judgment. That's my objective here, to educate you far enough to get— if, if you, if you have further questions, you know what questions to ask. Yeah, you know, you know what info— you know, you can go to someone else who's an expert in that and ask them, what does it take to go from 60% enriched to weapons-grade uranium?

You know, well, certainly don't need me. I'm gonna still reach out to you, Ted. Okay. All right. I consider you a friend, so I'm gonna reach out to you.

Well, I consider you a friend.

Yeah, we certainly—

and your colleagues.

Yeah, truly, we truly, truly appreciate you, appreciate you sharing your knowledge with us here.

So that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to help people understand the technical situation that has those technical issues that have importance for the security of the world and their country and the countries. I don't care if you're Chinese or American or whatever, we all need to have a sound common understanding or we're going to get ourselves killed. Yeah, because these weapons are too dangerous, uh, to let political decision makers who are often ignorant make these decisions without the public understanding what's behind them.

Indeed. Well, I look forward to our next conversation. Absolutely. Before I let you go, I want to say on behalf of the entire community, we say thank you so much and look forward to having you next time.

Thanks for the opportunity to talk with you.

My pleasure, Ted. Well, I hope you enjoyed listening to Ted's explanation here. It's, it's an eye-opening. Now we know. Now you know. You can reach your own conclusion in understanding, at least when it comes down to Iran capabilities. It has the means. It's just a matter of political will. The question for you guys, and I hope you can answer this one, will Iran go ahead and officially declare that? In other words, will they give the green light to go ahead and develop the bomb. So now you, you got the information, and, uh, hope you enjoyed it. And I, by the way, I need to say thank you to, uh, Energy Wise for becoming a channel member. Uh, good to have you here in the community, and I look forward to you being part of interacting with the community here. Remember to join me on Monday for my conversation with my two friends, Einar Tengen and Warwick Pauw. So I will be on Monday. I might do live for you, live stream. If not, we'll just meet for the interview with them. So wishing you a good weekend, uh, be safe wherever you are, and look forward to seeing you next time. As always, remember, geopolitics impacts your daily life in more ways than one. Till next time, bye-bye.