Welcome to the Steady State Sentinel. I'm Lauren
Anderson. Today we're doing something different.
We're partnering with Mission Implausible, a
podcast that asks a question that many of us
can't answer. When is a conspiracy theory an
actual conspiracy? Hosted by former CIA officers
John Cipher and Jerry O'Shea, who spent their
careers creating conspiracies in the service
of U .S. intelligence goals, They're uniquely
equipped to separate manipulation from reality.
John is also one of my co -hosts here on the
Steady States Sentinel. In this episode, Hunting
Weapons of Mass Destruction, John sits down with
Andy Weber, former Assistant Secretary of Defense
for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense
Programs, and one of the foremost experts on
countering WMD threats. One of the more startling
arguments in this episode. is this. Biological
weapons may ultimately prove more dangerous than
nuclear ones, particularly now that AI enablement
is a real possibility. And Weber makes clear
exactly how much the U .S. knows about Iran's
nuclear capability. So please join us and enjoy
this episode. I'm John Seifert. And I'm Jerry
O'Shea. Between us, we have over 60 years of
experience as clandestine officers in the CIA.
Part of our job was creating conspiracies, like
being undercover, to deceive our adversaries.
Now, we're going to use that experience to investigate
the conspiracy theories everyone's talking about,
as well as some you may not have heard. Could
these be true, or are we being manipulated? Find
out now on Mission Implausible. So we at Mission
Implausible are doing something a little bit
different today. Our episode is a joint production
with the Steady State Sentinel podcast. The Steady
State's a nonpartisan nonprofit made up of former
U .S. national security officials created to
defend constitutional democracy, the rule of
law, and national security from threats at home
and abroad. And our guest today is perfect for
both the Steady State and Mission Plausible.
Today, we're joined by Andy Weber, one of the
most experienced American officials in the world
of nuclear, chemical, and biological threat reduction.
Andy spent decades in the U .S. national security,
including as an assistant secretary of defense.
He's been sought after in recent weeks as discussion
swirls around Iran's enriched uranium and whether
or not we can do anything about it. So before
the senior titles, Andy was a young American
diplomat in post -Soviet Kazakhstan at a moment
when the world was only beginning to understand
what the collapse of the Soviet Union had left
behind. Nuclear weapons, weapons usable, uranium,
biological weapons facilities. and lots of scientists
who had worked inside one of the most secretive
military industrial systems ever built. So we'll
chat about his role in a covert 1994 mission
to remove over 1 ,000 pounds of highly enriched
uranium, as well as anthrax and other biological
agents from Kazakhstan, which was later described
in David Hoffman's Pulitzer Prize -winning book,
The Dead Hand. So, Andy, welcome. Thank you.
So let's start with that story a little bit.
And then obviously we're going to talk about
Iran and we're going to talk about these bigger
issues. But take us back to Kazakhstan in the
early 90s. What did the collapse of the Soviet
Union look like from the ground? And what was
it like? What was the security like at these
former nuclear and bioweapon sites? It was incredible.
I mean, it was an amazing time to be there. I
volunteered to go, spent a year in Russian language
training. arrived in the summer of 1993. It was
still a relatively new country. The strategic
facilities were protected, but frankly, their
biggest protection had been during the Soviet
period, the fact that they were closed cities,
that nobody could go to them. They were completely
closed off to visitors. And then that system
all fell apart. They were accessible and they
just weren't designed with modern security the
way we think about it. Yeah, we talk a lot about
conspiracies and conspiracy theories on this
program. But this was an absolute lack of conspiracy,
right? I mean, this was just a factory, Operation
Sapphire, you could look it up, with incredible
amounts of... material that you can make a bomb
out of, right? I mean, it was just sitting there.
If you could maybe take us through just how vulnerable
this was or how vulnerable we all were to this.
Well, it was a huge process of discovery because
we didn't know it was there. I learned about
it initially through sort of my driver, mechanic,
you know, fixer. His name was Slava. And he asked
me shortly after I arrived if I'd be interested
in buying some uranium. History could have gone
a different way if you'd done your own bomb.
I could have just laughed it off. But it was
such a crazy time in history that you had to
pull the string on all these threads. And this
led to an introduction to a factory director
named Vitaly Mete. And then several months of
building trust with him, including on a moose
hunting trip and sharing a bottle of wild turkey
whiskey together in one sitting. And then eventually,
through a retired KGB border guard colonel named
Korbater, he did provide me with detailed information
how much material they had. It was 600 kilograms.
On the enrichment level, it was enriched to 90
% uranium -235, which is weapons usable. And
so I reported all that back to Washington. There
was a lot of skepticism that, you know, I think
they thought I was being scammed. There were
some many crazy stories about suitcase nukes
being sold at the time, et cetera. So it wasn't
actually until we got permission from the president
of Kazakhstan at the time, Nur -Sultan Nazarbayev,
for me and a technical expert from Oak Ridge
to visit the facility secretly and see for ourselves
the inventory. But Andy, there was a lock on
the door, wasn't there? Well, after that visit,
our inspection visit in March of 1994, we reported
back that It was protected by a good padlock.
The sort of padlock that you see in like an antique
shop, you know, Civil War era, imagine. I feel
safe. I remember, well, in the book, The Dead
Hand, which I talked about, David Hoffman talks
about this. I remember there's one story that
I want to ask you about. I recall from the book
it said when finally, you know, Washington eventually
figured this out and then created a whole effort
to come and get this stuff, right? And this massive
C -5 aircraft was sent. secretly to come take
away the material. And you were in the control
tower. And since nobody spoke English, right,
you had to like guide the planes in. It was a
frightening test of my Russian language skills.
They were telling me in Russian what to tell
the cockpit of this incoming C -5. But it landed
safely. I was very relieved to see it land. And
then we drove out to the cockpit and welcomed
them to Uzhgorod, Kazakhstan. So what was the
most shocking thing to you when you first encountered
this whole infrastructure? I also remember there
was a story about you guys on these rickety trucks
on sleet. It was sleet and ice and all kinds
of things. So it took almost six weeks to package
the material for transport. It was a huge operation.
Over 30 people came from the United States to
do that packaging work. And then we had it all
loaded up into trucks. these soviet uh gas trucks
and um we decided for tactical surprise to make
the movement from the factory to the airfield
uh in the middle of the night and we picked a
night we were sort of racing against winter to
get the stuff out you know before it was too
late for the c5 galaxy aircraft to even land
in that part of the world and uh the movement
was uh 3 o 'clock in the morning, I was in the
lead Volga sedan. We had some armed escorts,
and these trucks were sliding on this black ice.
It was a very cold night, and I was worried one
of them was going to slide off a bridge, and
I'd have to report to Washington that it was
floating down the Ertish River. But luckily,
they know how to drive in those parts in bad
weather, and we made it out to the airfield,
and then... At first light, the first of two
C -5 aircraft came to pick up the team and the
highly enriched uranium, where it was then flown
back without any landing, aerial refuelings en
route all the way to Dover, Delaware, and then
over and to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I guess it
was the longest C -5 flight ever, right? Yeah,
if you look at a globe, it's literally halfway
around. So Andy, you've said a couple of things
here and you have to help me out because I'm
a history major. So you've talked about the stuff,
right? And HEU up to 90%. So if you can maybe
help me out and maybe a couple of people in the
audience who aren't quite sure. So the stakes
here, the stuff is the stuff that you could make
X amount of nuclear bombs or radiological. What
were we dealing with here? Yeah, at the unclassified
level, about two dozen nuclear weapons. That's
nice. Much of it was in readily weaponizable
form. So it was 90 % enriched, which is weapons
grade. But a lot of it was just in the form of
pure uranium metal. So to fashion it into a gun
-type nuclear device would have been relatively
simple. So that you beat North Korea or Iran
or al -Qaeda and stuff, right? I mean, think
about it. You know, Iran went through all this
trouble to develop a nuclear program, build these
big enrichment facilities underground, you know,
30 years of work, huge billions of dollars of
investments. Had they acquired this material
from Kazakhstan in 1993 or 4? They would have
short -circuited that whole process and they
would have had enough material for about, you
know, two dozen nuclear weapons. So you're enemy
number one for the Iranian regime. That's good
to know. They were definitely seeking this material.
Yeah, they were trying to get it. What can you
say about that? Weren't they trying to, you know,
deal with scientists and buy their way into the
program? The Iranians were... scouring the former
Soviet Union, Russia, and the neighboring states
for expertise, for materials, for weapons. And
a lot of it was for sale. They would invite experts
to teach at universities in Tehran. And indeed,
the factory that had the HEU, when we visited,
they had a stack of crates, wooden crates, addressed
to... an address in Tehran. And it was, we were
told by the factory director that it was Iranians
who were seeking to buy beryllium metal, which
was also produced at this plant. But had they
known about the highly enriched uranium there,
I'm sure that would have been their next purchase.
But that deal was stopped. Boy, it's rare, except
in Hollywood, that like a lone you know, U S
official saves the world kind of sort of, but
it's, you know, it's, it's good. You must feel
really good sort of being on part of the team
and leading the team that actually did. Well,
I mean, like anything in government, it's always
a team sport. Right. But you mentioned Hollywood.
I do have a life rights agreement that was just
extended today. As a matter of fact. All right.
We'll get you. Cause we have a company that's
trying to make movies. We'll see what we can
do. That's great. Any help would be fantastic
because it's been hot and cold for about 10 years
now. Except, you know, in the movie, you're not
going to be able to shoot a moose, right? I'm
just, people won't go for that. No, that's right.
That's not it. Talk a little bit about just,
you know, we'll get off of this story in a minute
and talk about other things, but talk a little
bit about Banya diplomacy. Sounds like personal
relationships, your Russian language, the fact
that you would be able to drink with these guys,
probably did more to help to close down those
evil Soviet programs and all the treaties in
the world. How important were personal trust
and language skills? I mean, it was just an incredible
time. You know, almost, you know, at least every
week, sometimes several times a week, I would
meet people who had never in their lives met
an American. it had been a pretty isolated part
of the Soviet Union. And, you know, they always
looked up to us. We were their enemies, but they
admired us. And then they had the chance to meet
somebody. I'm not exactly out of central casting,
but the fact that I spoke Russian really helped
a lot in terms of building trust and then, you
know, doing what they did, what they enjoyed,
whether it was... going hunting or fishing or
drinking or, you know, taking off your clothes
and beating each other with birch branches in
a Russian banya, you know, sauna. It was really
the personal trust and those relationships that
I developed in doing this work over a period
of 20 years. We did a lot of work with Russian
scientists also. Yeah. So, Professor, I need
a little help with HEU and percentages. So I've
actually got sort of a little cheat sheet. So
to take uranium to go from 0 % to 20 % is like
90 % of the work. But 20 % only gets you on the
threshold of making a weapon, right? And then
when you get it up to 60%, which takes a lot
less work. Right. Then then you're on sort of
a dangerous threshold. And 90 percent is like
weapons grade. Right. You can build a bomb from
it. And Hiroshima, little boy, was 80 percent.
So so, you know, for the for talking about Iran
later and for this here, you know, what more
can you sort of let us know about like. HEU,
highly enriched uranium percentages. How important
is that? And what do people need to know? Certainly
to talk about what's going on in Iran, what they
have or may not have, or, you know, the Russians
and this story and other things. What do people
need to keep in their heads? Well, I mean, the
most worrisome, so Kazakhstan had 600 kilograms
of 90 % enriched. So, you know, think about ivory
grade weapons usable material. Iran has about
450 kilograms, 970 pounds of 60 % enriched HEU.
If they had a, you know, a remaining enrichment
capacity, they could enrich that to 90 % in a
matter of weeks. And then they would have to
convert it to metal to make it bomb usable. They're
pretty close. And they have, you know, about
10 to 12 nuclear weapons worth of material. It's
currently in the form of uranium hexafluoride
gas. But they have about 11 tons of uranium that's
enriched to a lesser degree, right? To 60 % or
50%. And another key figure that everybody sort
of glosses over. is that when in 2015, when the
Obama administration signed the JCPOA agreement
with Iran, they had zero highly enriched uranium.
They had uranium only enriched to 3 .67%. And
then before that agreement even entered into
force, they allowed 97 % of that low enriched
uranium to be transported out of the country.
with help from Kazakhstan to Russia. So it was
only in 2018 after Trump pulled out of the agreement
because he was going to negotiate a better agreement
that they built up this inventory of highly enriched
uranium, which is extremely dangerous and it's
still there. Well, we're going to go into Iran
in a second. I want to ask one more because the
part I guess we forget too was the Soviet Union's
biological weapons program too, right? How much
of that did Soviet officials hide? And tell us
a little bit about the Sverdlovsk incident and
some of the stuff that you guys did to get rid
of some of the weaponized anthrax and other things.
So the Soviet bioweapons program, we pretty much
missed it from an intelligence perspective during
the Cold War. The scope of that program. And
I was able to visit many, not all, but many of
the facilities that were part of that and met
and worked with hundreds of scientists and engineers
who were part of that program. It was enormous.
At one point, it probably employed about 50 ,000
people, included over 50 facilities and the largest
facility of all. So go back. You asked about
Sverdlovsk, which is now the city of Ekaterinburg.
In 1979. There was a military biological weapons
facility that accidentally released anthrax into
the environment and killed over 100 people who
were out early in the morning waiting at bus
stops, you know, innocent civilians. That was
covered up by the KGB. But after that, they decided
maybe it's not such a great idea to build anthrax
facilities in major cities. So they built this
new place in the 1980s at a place called, it
was then a secret city in Kazakhstan called Stepnogorsk.
And this was the world's largest anthrax factory.
It was capable of producing and loading onto
weapons 300 metric tons of anthrax and other
bacterial agents during about an eight -month
mobilization period. I was able to visit that
facility also in the early 90s, mid -90s. In
June of 1995, we made a secret visit with some
American experts. And eventually, we negotiated
with the government of Kazakhstan to completely
destroy that facility. And if you were to go
there today, you would just find a field of grass
growing. You must have had lots of vaccinations
at the time. My father -in -law worked at Fort
Detrick with some of those things, and Ken Allaback
and those kind of people. Yeah, so I got to know
Ken pretty well. I was part of the special vaccination
program, so I had vaccines for things that are
generally not available, like for tularemia and
plague. and other very, very rare diseases that
were used. So you may be the one person left
after the biological war that's coming. I've
got pretty good immunity. And then I add about
eight different COVID vaccines since then. I'm
a big fan of the mRNA vaccine. Andy, so if this
is what's going on then in the Soviet Union,
What was going on in the West as far as offensive
capabilities? Was that totally forbidden? Did
we have our own capabilities? Just to put that
into perspective. Yeah, it's a very good question
because most people don't study this history.
We had a significant program, very successful.
Our Joint Chiefs of Staff really thought it was
on a par with nuclear weapons in terms of the
strategic. effects that it could have. We almost
scared ourselves with some major tests in the
late 1960s. And President Nixon, with help from
Henry Kissinger and a wonderful scientist who
I became friends with named Matt Messelson, who's
still teaching at Harvard in his 90s, they decided
to get rid of America's offensive biological
weapons program. It was outlawed by Nixon in
1969. And then they negotiated the Biological
Weapons Convention in 1972 that went into force
in 1975, which completely prohibits the development
and stockpiling of biological weapons. So that
entire type of weapon is banned globally. After
the ink was drying, or as the ink was drying
on that agreement, is when the Soviet Union expanded
its biological weapons program. And that horrible
facility at Stepnogorsk, Kazakhstan, that anthrax
factory, was built in the 1980s. And did the
two questions, you know, on design intelligence,
if you can answer, did we know? that they had
these programs to this extent? And did they know
that we didn't have these programs? Because their
propaganda was NATO is offensive. NATO is an
offensive alliance. We're going to be attacked.
Did they know that we were disarmed and that
they were building? And did we know that they
were? Yes. They knew for sure that we had stopped
our biological weapons program. They may have
believed internally some of their own propaganda,
but the people who had the highest security clearances,
they knew for sure that we were no longer engaged.
And they visited our facilities. And we started
a process called the trilateral process where
they visited our facilities. Ken Alibek, Kandachan
Alibekov at the time, was part of that inspection
team, as was someone I became very good friends
with after, Lev Sandakchiev, who... who ran the
vector facility in Siberia, they were absolutely
convinced that we didn't have a program. And
they were, you know, lied to. A lot of the scientists
were lied to by their government and told that
we're only doing this because the U .S. does
have a program. But the leadership level knew
that we didn't. Even Gorbachev, who at the time
was seen as someone who was against the hardcore
KGB and military. supported this program? Well,
Gorbachev signed a decree expanding the biological
weapons program in the mid -1980s. So this led
to the Nunn -Lugar Agreement, and it's often
described as one of the great post -Cold War
successes. Why hasn't that become a model that
we've used more in the future and more in the
past than we have? Well, it's a great model,
and I had the privilege of being involved in
the Nunn -Lugar Program. started in 1991 as the
Soviet Union had just collapsed for decades.
It still continues to this day. We do great work
all over the world now. It is the model. And
I think an example of how that model was used
successfully was when Syria, when the Assad regime
used chemical weapons on a large scale. and killed
over a thousand men, women, and children in August
of 2013. By threatening the use of military force,
we were able to get Syria to join the Chemical
Weapons Convention. We negotiated an agreement
to remove from Syria and destroy 1 ,300 tons
of chemical weapons. And that's described in
a great book by Pulitzer Prize -winning author
Joby Warrick. The book was called Red Line. And
the people in government at the time who made
that happen, people like Ash Carter, Liz Sherwood
Randall, Laura Holgate, had all been involved
in some way or another in the early non -Lugar
years. Just because I can't help myself, the
rhetoric coming out of Russia today and Putin
is that the great humiliation, the Soviet Union
collapsed, and then we humiliated them. But what
you're sort of saying is we actually helped.
We went in and we spent enormous amounts of money
to clean up the mess that the Soviet Union had
created to kill us. We employed their nuclear
scientists to keep them busy, to keep North Korea
from poaching them. And they know that NATO is
not a, you know, an alliance that's looking to
capitalize on this. And yet their propaganda
is that, you know, they're coming back because
of the humiliation. And, you know, for folks
out there who buy that, including in, you know.
one of our political parties, you know, who buy
into Russia, this Russian propaganda on, on NATO
and the West. I just don't know. I don't know
what to say, but you, you were, you were there
for it. And this is really good for that in the
sort of, you know, the broader horizon sort of
perspective. It's, it's the big lie, right? I
mean, this program helped Russia tremendously.
And we spent hundreds of millions of dollars
in Russia. including, you know, improving the
security at their nuclear facilities, even at
their biological research centers, upgrading
laboratories, engaging in peaceful research,
employing scientists. This was a program that
was, yes, it was in our national security interest,
but it also made the world safer. And it was
really Putin himself who... took the lead in
shutting down this program. He claimed that it
was just being used to spy on their sensitive
facilities, which was not true. I mean, it did
give us transparency at their sensitive facilities
because that's where the work was done. These
were their formerly very secret weapons of mass
destruction facilities. And they weren't all,
you know, near Moscow or Petersburg. They were
way out in the, you know. farthest regions of
Russia across all 11 time zones. So, you know,
our teams did spend a lot of time working in
those remote facilities. And then Putin really
shut it down. My last visit to Russia was with
Senator Lugar in August of 2012. And that's pretty
much when Putin had made the decision that he
was going to end the program. early 2014, and
that was it for our cooperation with Russia.
Well, I think we've learned a lot about how to
create fake narratives that get people worked
up from Putin's use of that. In fact, I often
say that, you know, NATO threatens Russia like
a lock threatens a thief, right? I mean, you
know, they know that it's a de facto alliance.
Well, you know, one example, you guys are into
conspiracy theories, so this big Russian lie
about the Ukraine biolabs. That's right. Tulsi
Gabbard is pushing, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's a
complete fabrication. We actually started a program
working with Ukraine to strengthen their public
health laboratories, to make them safer, more
modern. And it was all so they would have a better
ability to detect and respond to infectious disease
outbreaks in their country. you know, to isolate
them from spreading around the world and becoming
a pandemic. And I was directly involved in those
programs. The Ukraine effort started after 9
-11. The agreement was signed when Senator Lugar
and Senator Obama visited Kiev. I was part of
that trip in August of 2005. And the Russian
disinformation, you know, just like with the
HIV -AIDS story. which we know to be a well -documented
fabrication by the KGB, they started using the
same playbook, using a female journalist in Bulgaria
to plant these ridiculous stories. And the same
with the National Center for Disease Control
that we built in Tbilisi, Georgia. And those
sort of unofficial... press plants and disinformation
campaign, then it just elevated to the point
where Putin himself was talking about it. He
had a three -star general, Igor Kirillov, who
was actually one of the leaders of their illegal
chemical and biological weapons programs, which...
continue to this day in violation of the BWC
treaty. He actually was guilty and found guilty
in a Ukrainian secret court case of using chemical
weapons in Syria, or I'm sorry, using chemical
weapons inside Ukraine, which continues to this
day. And he was leaving his apartment one morning
And there was a scooter next to the doorway.
And General Igor Kirillov is no longer with us.
But it's perverse that the general who was in
charge of their illegal programs, who's using
chemical weapons in Ukraine. Is the same person
going on TV and spouting these lies about the
Ukraine biolabs? They do it all around the world.
I remember being in Indonesia, the Russians had
spread disinformation about some of these programs
we did with the Navy. So it's a lie they play
over and over again. So let me move a little
bit into some of the Iran stuff, because it matters
to us today, now, because there's a lot of talk
about it. Oh, did we obliterate the program?
Or if we didn't, can we just send some special
forces guys in there? You've written an excellent
op -ed in the New York Times. Let me just start
with the first one. What would you want to know
before you believed any claim that Iran's nuclear
capability had been obliterated or destroyed?
Well, we know more about the Iranian nuclear
programs than just about any other intelligence
target. I mean, when I served as assistant secretary
of defense. I was a consumer of the most exquisite
intelligence from our own sources, from Israeli
sources. I mean, we had that program totally
penetrated. So there's very little we don't know
about it. Plus we had IAEA inspectors there and
remote. you know, video cameras and monitoring
for many, many, many years. So we know everything
there is to know about the Iranian nuclear program.
The bombing in June, Operation Midnight Hammer,
and when I was at the Pentagon, we started that
program to develop a special munition just for
those facilities in Iran. That bombing was very
successful. It took out their enrichment capacity
at two places called Fordow and Natanz. What
it didn't do was much of anything to their stockpile
of highly enriched uranium, and especially the
60 % enriched uranium, where they have about
440 kilograms of it. enough for up to a dozen
bombs. That's what I worry about. We think we
know where most of it is. It's in tunnels in
Isfahan. We had bombed the entrances to those
tunnels, and then the Iranians poured more dirt
and put up more barriers. But we think it's deep
inside those tunnels. Eventually, I would love
to see an international effort. First of all,
in a negotiated agreement for Iran to allow that
material to be excavated, packaged for transport
and moved to a third country. Until we do that,
they still have a, you know, a good possibility
of developing nuclear weapons. bomb away the
knowledge, though, right? I mean, this is technology
from the 1940s, how to make at least a basic
bomb. And yeah, I don't know, you know, we've
come to, question for you, we've come to accept
that North Korea has a bomb, right? And they're
arguably, not even arguably, they're more of
a threat to the U .S. than Iran is. So it seems
like we're at a crossroads. Do we Do we negotiate
and accept the legitimacy, you know, holding
our nose of the Iranian regime and try to work
a deal? Or do we try to overthrow the Iranians?
And if that's the case, then it makes no sense
for them to give up their nuclear weapons, right?
I mean, that's their, at least in their minds,
that's their fail safe. So what do we do? You
know, not that you're the president or anything,
unfortunately, but I'd vote for you. I mean,
do we do you cut a deal like JCPOA part two and
just simply recognize that we're going to have
to live with this to a certain extent? I think
in the short term, that's our only option is
to cut a deal. It's our only option. Let's hope
that that hideous regime, you know, is replaced
in the future. that the Iranian people get a
better government that they so long have deserved.
But in the meantime, you have to deal with the
government that's there. And unfortunately, we
probably have emboldened the hardliners, strengthened
the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. And that's
why we're having such a devil of a time trying
to negotiate anything with them. And they've,
you know, by not losing the war. And having been
able to close the Strait of Hormuz, they had
the world economy in a bit of a stranglehold.
It's a little bit better than having a nuclear
bomb. So I mentioned this New York Times op -ed
that you wrote about the difficulty of getting
out Iran's nuclear program. Tell us a little
bit about that. What would it take to remove
or secure nuclear material? We did it in Kazakhstan.
We've done it with chemical weapons in Syria.
Tell us, what would that take? Can we send in
a SEAL Team 6 and they could just go in there
and grab it? And let's just define it, because
there's 11 tons of uranium, right? And then,
but just, you know, 900 pounds of the highly
enriched stuff. Yeah, so I'm most concerned about
the 60%, but we need to pay attention to the
20 % and even, you know, the 3 .67%. The 3 .67%,
they have an argument that... They can use that
for nuclear energy, for their power reactors.
So there's some legitimacy to having low enriched
uranium at that level, but a limited amount.
What I like to say, first of all, when I served
as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear,
Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs, I
did a lot of work with the elite special forces
that are trained in this area. They're the best
in the world. The Israelis also have very good
special forces. But you can't get around the
fact that this is not a go in and grab Maduro
and come right out with him. Because we'd bomb
these tunnels, the time on target required would
probably be days, probably even weeks. You'd
have to do a major excavation. to recover these
canisters that have the 60 % enriched. They're
deep in these tunnels. We don't know what condition
they're in. Are some of them damaged by the bombing
and maybe have released toxic gas and chemicals?
So there are a lot of unknowns about the current
condition. So if you have to have a special team
working on the ground in the middle of Iran,
for, you know, a week or more, then you have
to have a perimeter protecting that. And so you've
got heavy equipment. You need heavy equipment,
right? You need heavy equipment. You need an
airfield. And you'd have to have thousands of
boots on the ground, U .S. soldiers protecting
that force. for as long as they're working there,
against Iranian, you know, missile, short -range
missile and drone attacks and ground assaults.
So I just don't think it's realistic. I think
it's so risky. We would probably take a large
number of casualties. Yes, we could do it, but
it would be so much better to do it as a negotiated
solution. with an international team under IAEA,
International Atomic Energy Agency, supervision
to, you know, to monitor and verify the quantities
and locations. I just don't see even Trump taking
that big a risk of rolling the dice with our
soldiers' lives. And to get really scary, as
if this isn't scary enough, right? So there was
this article, you've probably seen it in the
New York Times a little while ago, that Dr. David
Relman, who is a microbiologist, a biosecurity
guy, he was working with a chat box, an AI function,
and he was testing it out. And he asked it about
a pathogen. And the AI chat box was able to,
using AI, was able to tell him how to take, it
doesn't identify that, but it's how to take a
potentially dangerous pathogen or dangerous pathogen,
how to modify it, how to modify it so it can't
be treated, how to spread it in an urban area
to cause mass casualties. And then it, just for
luck. It told him, like, how you can get away
with it and probably not get caught. And so this
chat box is like, and he said, it was telling
me all sorts of things that I hadn't thought
of. And he's a biosecurity expert, right? And
so now you've got Anthropic telling the Pentagon
it doesn't want to give Anthropic to the Pentagon
with, I guess, with those sort of capabilities.
What are these sort of capabilities that you
could have or, God forbid, John could have, right?
I mean, so I was just wondering if we could get
your, you know, you're a big thinker on this
kind of thing. What are your thoughts on technology
and AI and, you know, not so much nuclear, but
back to chem bio issues? Yeah, so I spent, you
know, over 30 years of my career working against
biological weapons, and they probably scare me
the most. David Relman is a dear friend and colleague
at Stanford University. He was involved in the
Havana syndrome stuff too, working with those
people. Yes, he was. He's a very level -headed
guy. He's not an alarmist. Kevin Esvelt is the
other scientist who was quoted in that article.
So bioweapons threats have always been a major
concern of mine. But now you add AI enablement.
These large language models which make information,
how -to information, available to a larger section
of the public, of the world, and of bad actors,
potential bad actors. And it also enables those
few countries that still develop biological weapons,
and we're talking about just less than a handful,
Russia. The PRC, North Korea, and Iran are really
the four that our government knows are pursuing
prohibited biological and chemical weapons today
in violation of the treaties. It gives them the
capability to make more precise biological weapons,
to tailor the effects. And so I worry a lot about...
a covert attack by state actors. You know, think
of Salisbury. It was two GRU officers with 10
,000 lethal doses of Novichok, you know, fourth
-generation chemical weapons agent that was recovered
in that perfume bottle. Now, their goal was to
kill one guy. That was the point of that operation.
But that same capability, if we're in a... a
moment of tension. And, you know, Russia is committing
sabotage in Western Europe, whether it's China
trying to prevent the flow of forces towards
a Taiwan scenario, hitting U .S. bases in Japan
or Guam, Hawaii, with a covert attack of biological
weapons, and then tailored ones that might not
even be lethal and might be hard to attribute.
That's a real concern of mine is so you have
the more traditional, you know, bioterrorists
or lone actors are enabled by these new technologies.
But then the state programs that could use them
covertly in a, you know, a gray operation, a
hybrid. warfare scenario, you know, before a
total conflict to neutralize our bases, airports,
seaports, you know, our ability to move forces.
It's very frightening. But the good news is we
can use these same tools for biodefense and to
develop this system of biodefense from early
warning, you know, wastewater surveillance, air
sampling, rapid characterization attribution.
There's a huge initiative the Pentagon just launched.
It's not very well known. It's called the Indo
-Pacific Biodeterrence Sprint. And this year,
by the end of this calendar year, we are going
to have systems in place at 25 sites in the Indo
-Pacific region that will be able to detect bioattacks.
And that's what we need are those kinds of visible,
major investments that leverage our technical
capabilities. And I'm convinced that if we invest
significantly and exercise those capacities,
that we can take bioweapons off the table. But
in the meantime, you know, as COVID showed, we're
woefully underprepared. So you mentioned that
there's got to be, if we look at Iran now, the
most likely thing was going to be some sort of
deal. Now, of course, the Trump administration
said the JCPOA was the worst. agreement and the
history of agreements and stuff. And what they're
going to get is probably that or something worse.
However, for our listeners, when they look at
whatever kind of deal comes down the road, what
would a serious verification regime look like?
What should we look for to be at least, if we're
serious about an agreement, what would we expect
to see? Well, you'd have to have intrusive IAEA
inspections, and they're very good at this. Rafael
Grossi, the director general of the IAEA, is
a very experienced, capable diplomat. Any deal
that leaves the highly enriched uranium in -country
is a failed deal in my book. I mean, we need
to get that material out. It doesn't have to
come to the United States. I believe we could.
negotiate the removal to Kazakhstan, to the IAEA
low -enriched fuel bank in Kazakhstan, where
it could be blended down for the power sector
under IAEA safeguards. Russia and President Putin
and President Takayev from Kazakhstan have been
speaking recently. And I understand from what
I've been reading in the press is that The Iranians
are talking about allowing at least some of the
material to be moved out of the country. So I
think that's something we need to press for is
to have that material removed. And then you have
to deal with whatever enrichment capacity remains,
the facilities like Pickaxe Mountain, you know,
that we haven't really been into to make sure
that those aren't operational and remain non
-operational if they're not operational today.
And then have, you know, continuous inspections.
That's what we had before 2018 when Trump walked
away from the deal and said he was going to get
a better one. And here we are eight years later.
We don't have a better one. We certainly did
demolish those enrichment facilities at Natanz
and Fordow. But the material is still there.
And, you know, they still have probably centrifuges.
which are more advanced than the ones that they
were making 10 years ago. They have the IR -6
model, which is their sixth generation centrifuge.
So there's a lot of work that would have to be
done over months and years to have that inspection
regime to ensure that Iran never pursues a nuclear
weapon. Andy, you've missed, I think, maybe the
biggest point, and I'll just point it out, is
that what you need is a better CIA. You need
better espionage because it all comes down to
both. Russia, Putin, and the Iranians, it seems
to me, plans and intentions, right? What is it
that they want to do? There's what they can do.
And so I'll put in a plug for the espionage side
of the house, especially the human side of the
house that John and I were involved in at CIA.
You also need a robust way to... you know, to
get into their heads and understand what they,
what they want to achieve. So just a quick point.
I was a beneficiary. I was a beneficiary, a consumer
of what I described as the most exquisite intelligence
on Iran's nuclear program that, you know, I had
the privilege of seeing when I was in, in serving
as assistant secretary of defense. I mean, our
collection capabilities across the board and
then combined with the Israeli collection capabilities.
were extraordinary because we made it a very,
very high priority. And when you do that and
you focus over decades, it's incredible what
you can learn. I'm not sure how well CIA can
do now that John and I aren't there, but I imagine
it'll struggle on. Well, also, it's amazing to
me that when you say it was... largely successful,
we're getting good at, is we didn't have people
there. I think in many ways when there's not
diplomats and experts and academics and spies
and stuff in country, it makes it much harder
to get at those secrets. And much easier to fool
us, too. We've seen that in Iraq and Iran and
other places. Yeah, but Iran has never been totally
closed off to the world like the way North Korea
is. So I think we did a very good job. And we
need, obviously, to continue. Intentions, political
intentions of the leadership, that's always the
hardest to know, right? You can learn about capabilities,
but what's in that, you know, what is in Putin's
head this morning? That's not necessarily a secret
you can steal. Good point. So, listen, you've
been really kind with your time. So let me just
get you sort of out of here with one question.
And also. At the end of that, let us know if
there's stuff that you're doing publicly or writing
about that people could find. And the question
just sort of, you spent your whole career trying
to reduce the danger of weapons of mass destruction.
Are we in a more dangerous era now than in the
early 1990s when you started your work? Well,
if you look at the arc of, you know, let's say
40 years since I started my government career.
And then, you know, now 10 years into retirement,
I still do consulting for the government. We
had at that time five rogue states that were
pursuing weapons of mass destruction. And one
by one, that number has decreased. So Libya no
longer has weapons of mass destruction programs.
Syria no longer has. And we have a chance to
really put a bookend. on the remnants of the
chemical weapons program with the new regime
in Syria. They're cooperating very well with
the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons. So those are two countries. Iraq has
no weapons of mass destruction. So that's three
out of five. Iran, I think we're close. And with
the JCPOA, we were actually there. But we tore
up that agreement, and now we're in a much worse
situation with Iran. I'll keep my fingers crossed
and hope that we can negotiate a solution that,
you know, once and for all ends their nuclear
weapons aspirations. And then the big one, the
big unfinished piece of unfinished business is
North Korea, which, by the way, in addition to
their missile and nuclear weapons programs, also
has a very, very large chemical weapons stockpile
and biological weapons program. And their biological
weapons program is applying all these new scientific
capabilities that we've been discussing. I'm
going to go have a drink. It's early in the morning.
Here he's hiding over there in Hawaii. He thinks
he's going to be safe from all this, but he's
not. I do want to ask one on a lighter note.
My favorite intelligence failure when it comes
to this weapons of mass destruction actually
comes out of World War II. I wonder if you know
about Operation Toothpaste. This was... True
story. Russian, excuse me, the Nazis were looking
at a nuclear weapon, right? They weren't as far
along as we thought they were. And they had this
group, the Alsos group, right, which was trying
to figure out how close they were and what routes
they were taking to possibly to a nuclear weapon
adjacent to our own Manhattan Project. And before
France fell after D -Day to the Allies. A group
of a group of German Nazis went into this research
facility in Paris and took all their thorium.
And apparently thorium is one potential avenue
to making a nuclear weapon. And Alsos thought,
oh, my God, the intelligence was the only explanation
for this is that they are trying to develop a
nuclear weapon via the thorium avenue. And as
it turns out, we and this this. Allied bombing
runs were prefaced off of this. Huge military
personnel were put into different places because
we were concerned about this. And at the end
of the war, it turned out we got it all wrong,
that thorium was an ingredient in a popular German
toothpaste called Thoramed. or Doramed. And it
actually, it made your teeth shiny because it
was uranium. And of course it was like, watch
your teeth, but they didn't know it. And they
thought it cleaned your gums. And the Nazis thought
we're going to lose the war. If we get the thorium,
we can come up with a better toothpaste afterwards.
And it was, it was, we got it wrong. It was all
about toothpaste, not a nuclear weapon. The intelligence
got it completely wrong. We, we may. You know,
we've made some big mistakes through our history.
You know, the one that's resurfaced in the news
recently is the Iraqi fabricator, Curveball,
who sold us on the mobile BW Labs, which was
a complete fabrication. So we make mistakes,
but more often— We can blame that. I blame that
on the DIA and the analytic component. I do,
too. We in CIA, we're okay with that. It wasn't
us. I mean, but, you know, more often we get
it right. We got Putin's invasion of Ukraine
100 % right. Well, Andy, it's so good to have
you on. It's good to see you. I'm glad you're
doing stuff and keeping busy. We'll have to have
some drinks one of these days. Yeah, I just closed.
So currently I'm working for a small think tank
called the Council on Strategic Risks. And it's
just... I get to still work on these issues that
I care so passionately about. But what gives
me real optimism and hope are the young people
that we're mentoring. We run fellowship programs.
And the next generation is so much better than
we were, John. It really gives me hope for the
future. Thanks for listening to this joint Steady
State Mission Implausible episode. We'd love
to hear from you about what you thought about
this episode and the broader idea of occasional
partnerships. And if Iran caught your attention,
stay tuned. In one of our upcoming episodes,
I sit down with former Assistant Secretary of
Defense Mary Beth Long for a deep dive into Iran
and what the current moment actually means for
all of us. You won't want to miss it. Thanks
again for joining us. This is Lauren Anderson
for the Steady State Sentinel Still Standing
Watch.