Information Processing

Detailed analysis of boost-glide (BGV) and Maneuverable Re-entry Vehicles (MaRV): physics of interception by US SM-2,3 etc.

Hypersonic Weapons: Vulnerability to Missile Defenses and Comparison to MaRVs 

David Wright and Cameron L. Tracy 

Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy, Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University

As I concluded long ago, current ship-based tech is not effective to defend even against older DF21 MaRV. See, e.g., LEO SAR, hypersonics, and the death of the naval surface ship The study concludes that air launched BGV/MaRVs could attack ships from well over 1000km. Land or ship based launch would allow even greater range. There is currently no defense against such weapons.  Defense requires interceptor missile speeds significantly greater than that of MaRV/BGV in terminal phase. 

 

Some recent tweets which might be of interest :-)

Tsinghua University (dad's alma mater) seems to be the only academic institution in the world keeping up with big corp labs like OpenAI, Google Brain / DeepMind, Baidu, etc. in large AI models.

(NB: partnership with AI startup. Similar US examples?)https://t.co/lFjMBbVU7p pic.twitter.com/0il2R2iE2s

— steve hsu (@hsu_steve) August 12, 2022

Wordcels (e.g., in policy or geostrategy) have mystical ideas re: at-scale AI research, mistakenly linking progress to lone geniuses / democracy / open society..

They don't realize it's an engineering problem that requires *very* capable teams, but well within PRC capability 🤔

— steve hsu (@hsu_steve) August 12, 2022

RUSI report: semiconductor content of Russian weapons. Snapshot below from conclusions.

Miltech almost never uses leading edge (e.g., 7nm) chips. Much older e.g. 200nm process sufficient. RUS can source from PRC or use sanction evasion networks...https://t.co/ol5cpTPA0l pic.twitter.com/bdL4SqEn4f

— steve hsu (@hsu_steve) August 14, 2022

I quote "expert" reports like this because wordcels / midwits can't reason from first principles.

Right-tail obvious inferences which go against conventional wisdom ("sanctions will crush RUS economy and war machine!" "UKR will win!") need to be "sourced" from "real experts" 🤔

— steve hsu (@hsu_steve) August 14, 2022

On midwits and wordcels: g factor depends on M,V,S. If only V is high while M,S are mediocre, implies total g is ony in midwit range even if V (ability to make vacuous but impressive sounding BS arguments) is exceptional.

See Stephen J. Gould!https://t.co/958kZW7MIb pic.twitter.com/pqwQywyTWc

— steve hsu (@hsu_steve) August 14, 2022

Yes. Chips RUS needs for weapons cost ~$1 these days & can be sourced widely. Plus PRC is on the verge of indigenous 7nm.

Confusion reveals Dunning Kruger nature of our punditry and political (even strategic) leadership.

Plenty more strategic confusion:https://t.co/u2Zwk18z10 pic.twitter.com/ML4YXs0bbi

— steve hsu (@hsu_steve) August 14, 2022

 

 

 

Begin: American society, growing up as child of immigrants 

18m: Russia-Ukraine conflict (eve of invasion), geopolitical implications (China, India, Germany, EU) 

38m: Affirmative Action, Harvard case at SCOTUS 

54m: Woke leftists at the university, destruction of meritocracy, STEM vs Social Justice advocacy, Sokal Hoax 

1h25m: Academic economics, 2008 credit crisis, Do economists test theories? 

1h33m: Maverick thinking, Agreeableness, Aspergers, Pressure to conform 

1h39m: Far-tail intelligence, Jeff Bezos and physics, progress in science and technology

Full transcript at Richard's substack.

I've had numerous requests to comment on the conflict in Ukraine, but have been too busy to write anything.  While military and diplomatic aspects of the conflict in Ukraine are worthy of attention, far more important are the long term consequences of Western hysteria and economic war on Russia. Tacit support for Russia from China, India, Brazil, Turkey, OPEC states, indeed perhaps the majority of the world population, may presage a new era of multipolarity and hard power confrontation between great powers. Added from Comments: 

Two years ago, Burns wrote a memoir entitled, The Back Channel. It directly contradicts the argument being proffered by the administration he now serves. In his book, Burns says over and over that Russians of all ideological stripes—not just Putin—loathed and feared NATO expansion. He quotes a memo he wrote while serving as counselor for political affairs at the US embassy in Moscow in 1995. ‘Hostility to early NATO expansion,” it declares, “is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.” On the question of extending NATO membership to Ukraine, Burns’ warnings about the breadth of Russian opposition are even more emphatic. “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” he wrote in a 2008 memo to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” 

While the Biden administration claims that Putin bears all the blame for the current Ukraine crisis, Burns makes clear that the US helped lay its foundations. By taking advantage of Russian weakness, he argues, Washington fueled the nationalist resentment that Putin exploits today. Burns calls the Clinton administration’s decision to expand NATO to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic “premature at best, and needlessly provocative at worst.” And he describes the appetite for revenge it fostered among many in Moscow during Boris Yeltsin’s final years as Russia’s president. “As Russians stewed in their grievance and sense of disadvantage,” Burns writes, “a gathering storm of ‘stab in the back’ theories slowly swirled, leaving a mark on Russia’s relations with the West that would linger for decades.” 

As the Bush administration moved toward opening NATO’s doors to Ukraine, Burns’ warnings about a Russian backlash grew even starker. He told Rice it was “hard to overstate the strategic consequences” of offering NATO membership to Ukraine and predicted that “it will create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.” Although Burns couldn’t have predicted the specific kind of meddling Putin would employ—either in 2014 when he seized Crimea and fomented a rebellion in Ukraine’s east or today—he warned that the US was helping set in motion the kind of crisis that America faces today. Promise Ukraine membership in NATO, he wrote, and “There could be no doubt that Putin would fight back hard.” 

Were a reporter to read Burns’ quotes to White House press secretary Jen Psaki today, she’d likely accuse them of “parroting Russian talking points.” But Burns is hardly alone. From inside the US government, many officials warned that US policy toward Russia might bring disaster. William Perry, Bill Clinton’s Defense Secretary from 1994 to 1997, almost resigned because of his opposition to NATO expansion. He has since declared that because of its policies in the 1990s, “the United States deserves much of the blame” for the deterioration in relations with Moscow. Steven Pifer, who from 1998 to 2000 served as US ambassador to Ukraine, has called Bush’s 2008 decision to declare that Ukraine would eventually join NATO “a real mistake.” Fiona Hill, who gained fame during the Trump impeachment saga, says that as national intelligence officers for Russia and Eurasia she and her colleagues “warned” Bush that “Putin would view steps to bring Ukraine and Georgia closer to NATO as a provocative move that would likely provoke pre-emptive Russian military action.”

Oh, there's some historical background to all this? Some context? Wait I'm told every day this crisis just happened because Putin went crazy and wants to rebuild the USSR / Russian Empire.  I certainly sympathize with "Putin bad", "Russia bad place for me to live", "democracy good" sentiments. 

 

 

Added from comments:

... you can make some good guesses based on physics and the technologies involved. 

1. Very hard to hit a hypersonic missile that is maneuvering on its way in. It's faster than the interceptor missiles and they can't anticipate its trajectory if it, e.g., selects a random maneuver pattern. 

2. I don't think there are good countermeasures for hiding the carrier from LEO SAR. I don't even think there are good countermeasures against final targeting seekers (IR/radar) on the ASBM (or a hypersonic cruise missile) but this depends on details. 

3. If the satellite has the target acquired during the final approach it can transmit the coordinates to the missile in flight and the missile does not have to depend on the seeker. On the Chinese side it is claimed that the ASBM can receive both satellite and OTH radar targeting info while in flight. This seems plausible technologically, and similar capability is already present in PLAAF AAM (i.e., mid-flight targeting data link from jet which launched the AAM). 

4. The radar cross section of a large ship is orders of magnitude larger than, e.g., a jet fighter. The payload of a DF21/26/17 is much larger than an AAM so I would guess the seeker could be much more powerful than the IR/AESA seeker in, e.g., PL-15 or similar. (Note PL-15 and PL-XX/21 have very long (BVR) engagement ranges, like 150km or even 400km and this is against aircraft targets, not massive ships.) The IR/radar seeker in an ASBM could be comparable to those in a jet fighter. 

I seriously doubt you can hide a big ship from a hypersonic missile seeker that is much larger and more powerful than anything on an AAM, possibly as powerful as the sensors on a jet fighter. 

On launch the missile will have a good fix on the target location from the satellite data. In the ~10m time of flight the uncertainty in the location of, e.g., a carrier is ~10km. So the seeker needs to find the target in a region of roughly that size, assuming no in-flight update of target location. 

https://www.iiss.org/public... 

https://sameerjoshi73.mediu... 

Finally, keep in mind that sensor (both the missile seeker and on the satellite) and AI/ML capability are improving rapidly, so the trend is definitely against the carrier.

USN guy: We'll just hide the carrier from the satellite and missile seekers using, you know, countermeasures!  [Aside: don't cut my carrier budget!]

  See also two Escobar articles linked here. Related: Foreign Observers of US Empire.  

See also The East Is Red, The Giant Rises and Ditchley Foundation meeting: World Order today. Bonus: blockchain based digital RMB?

Four recommended discussions, with perspectives largely absent from US media and establishment sources.   

I really enjoyed this conversation. Previous posts on Bruno Maçães.

Originally from Portugal, Bruno Maçães earned a PhD in Political Science at Harvard under Harvey Mansfield, and served as Portugal’s Secretary of State for European Affairs from 2013-2015. He is regarded as a leading geopolitical thinker with deep insights concerning the future of Eurasia and relations between the West and China. He is the author of two widely acclaimed books published in 2018: The Dawn of Eurasia and Belt and Road.

Topics discussed include: China's Belt and Road Initiative, the Middle Income Trap, A Chinese World Order, Techno-Optimism in East and West, China-Russia alliance and geopolitics, the future of Eurasia and the EU.

Transcript

Russia to China: Together we can rule the World (Politico.eu)

Equilibrium Americanum (Berlin Policy Journal)

The Dawn of Eurasia: On the Trail of the New World Order

Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order

History Has Begun: The Birth of a New America


man·i·fold /ˈmanəˌfōld/ many and various.

In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point.

Steve Hsu and Corey Washington have been friends for almost 30 years, and between them hold PhDs in Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Theoretical Physics. Join them for wide ranging and unfiltered conversations with leading writers, scientists, technologists, academics, entrepreneurs, investors, and more.

Steve Hsu is VP for Research and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Michigan State University. He is also a researcher in computational genomics and founder of several Silicon Valley startups, ranging from information security to biotech. Educated at Caltech and Berkeley, he was a Harvard Junior Fellow and held faculty positions at Yale and the University of Oregon before joining MSU.

Corey Washington is Director of Analytics in the Office of Research and Innovation at Michigan State University. He was educated at Amherst College and MIT before receiving a PhD in Philosophy from Stanford and a PhD in a Neuroscience from Columbia. He held faculty positions at the University Washington and the University of Maryland. Prior to MSU, Corey worked as a biotech consultant and is founder of a medical diagnostics startup.

Above, Lev Landau. See also F > L > P > S and Out on the Tail.

An incredible story from The World of Andrei Sakharov:

... Nonetheless, in the early 1950s, Landau worked on Sakharov’s assignments. True enough, that work was in computational mathematics, not theoretical physics. Odd “material evidence” of this appears in Landau’s Collected Works: placed between the 1958 article about fermions and the 1959 article about quantum field theory is the lecture “Numerical Methods of an Integration of Partial Equations by a Method of Grids.” It was published in 1958 but, as it indicates, describes the methods developed in 1951–1952.

When you look at the article’s unexciting formulas, it’s difficult to imagine what’s behind them. What’s behind them, among other things, is the first thermonuclear bomb in the world and the suicide of the head of the security department. ...

Landau’s group did the calculations for the 1949 A-bomb, for which he received an Order of Lenin and a Stalin Prize of the Second Degree.

Landau’s contribution to the hydrogen bomb was even greater, judging by the fact that he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor and a Stalin Prize of the First Degree. Landau’s group managed to complete the Sloyka calculations “by hand”; it was the problem akin to the one the Americans postponed until computers appeared. This required devising an entirely new method of calculation.

The processes of a thermonuclear explosion are much more complicated than an atomic one, if only because it includes the atomic one as its first step. Numerical calculations using old methods would have taken years, but the problem had to be solved in months, which ensured a new method needed to be found. However, while developing it at the Institute for Physical Problems, theorists found a serious mathematical problem—the stability of the calculations. Without solving it, they couldn’t be sure that the calculations, no matter how precise, would actually have any relationship to physical reality. The new method solved this problem. But the mathematics group directed by Andrei Tikhonov, which had been created in parallel as a failsafe, denied the problem’s very existence.

Dissent and discussion are common in science, but in this case the science was top secret and super-urgent. Beria could not wait for the problem to be resolved in a free exchange of ideas, so a meeting was convened under the chairmanship of Mstislav Keldysh, the future president of the Academy of Sciences. It lasted for several days and the discussions ended in an unusual way: based on Keldysh’s opinion, the top leadership gave the order regarding which interpretation was to be considered scientific truth—the top leadership was Nikolai Pavlov, the KGB general in charge of nuclear weapons development. And Tikhonov’s group switched to the new method of calculation.

The assignment for the Sloyka calculations sent to the Landau group was “a piece of graph paper, handwritten on both sides in green-blue ink, and it contained all the geometry and data of the first hydrogen bomb.”

[[ Sloyka = "layer cake" = early thermonuclear bomb design. ]]

This was possibly the most secret document in the Soviet project—and it could not be entrusted to any typist. After a mathematical assignment was prepared on the basis of this document at the Institute of Physical Problems, it was sent on to the Institute of Applied Mathematics where Tikhonov’s group worked. And the page disappeared there. Perhaps it was mistaken for a rough draft—it was a single handwritten page—and it was destroyed along with other drafts. But this action was not recorded, which is what led to the tragedy Sakharov describes:

The head of the Security Department from the Ministry—a man whose mere physical appearance, his stare from under drooping eyelids, elicited physical dread in me—came to investigate the extraordinary incident. Former head of Leningrad State Security during the so-called “Leningrad Affair,” when about 700 top leaders were executed there, he spent nearly an hour on Saturday with the head of Institute Security. The Institute official spent the next day, Sunday, with his family; they say he was cheerful and very affectionate with his children. He came to work on Monday 15 minutes early and shot himself before his co-workers arrived.

Andrei Sakharov with daughter, 1948.

Physicists can do stuff.

Overly aggressive US foreign and economic policies toward Russia and China are pushing the two into a tighter relationship. US rapprochement with China, exploiting Sino-Soviet tensions, was an important achievement of Nixon and Kissinger in the previous Cold War. Today a solidified Russia-China bloc is an extremely negative development for US interests.

There are important synergies between the two countries. Russia still leads in key military technologies, and can supply China with badly needed natural resources.  China has a more vibrant economy and is starting to surge into global leadership across a range of technologies and in manufacturing.

The main source of potential conflict between the two is the sparsely populated, but resource rich, Russian Far East. I doubt territorial ambitions there are a top priority for China, especially if an amicable trading relationship can be established for oil, gas, and other resources. Chinese economic influence in the region is growing, threatening to overwhelm the Russians. But the trajectory is manageable if both sides agree to cooperate.

The article excerpted below is by Bruno Maçães, a former Europe minister for Portugal, and author of The Dawn of Eurasia (Penguin 2018).

Politico (EU): ... In the halls of the Kremlin these days, it’s all about China — and whether or not Moscow can convince Beijing to form an alliance against the West.

Russia’s obsession with a potential alliance with China was already obvious at the Valdai Discussion Club, an annual gathering of Russia’s biggest foreign policy minds, in 2017.

At their next meeting, late last year, the idea seemed to move from the speculative to something Russia wants to realize. And soon.

... Every Russian speech — from obscure academics to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin himself — played that note and no other. There was even a new sense of desperation in the air.

As Sergey Karaganov, a former adviser to Putin, explained to me at breakfast, now everything must be about China.

... There was no doubt at Valdai that China knows how to do economic growth, and that Russia does not. Russia’s elite — always so ready to resist any sign of Western hegemony — have no problem admitting China’s economic superiority. Their acceptance reminded me of the way Britain gave way to the United States as the world’s dominant economic power.

... In the past, the possibility of an alliance between the two countries had been hampered by China’s reluctance to jeopardize its relations with the U.S. But now that it has already become a target, perhaps it will grow bolder. Every speaker at Valdai tried to push China in that direction.

When Putin finished a fireside chat with policymakers — a set-piece of the conference, where he fields softball questions from the audience — he made a gesture to leave the room, but then quickly rushed back to grab Yang Jiechi, a former Chinese foreign minister and arguably the main architect of the country’s foreign policy. He insisted on walking out with Yang by his side, to the obvious delight of his Chinese guest.

... I met Karaganov again at a meeting with Chinese officials and think tankers in Beijing a few weeks ago. There, a number of Chinese participants said they doubted Russia’s assertions that the world is in the midst of a new Cold War.

Karaganov dedicated himself to convincing them otherwise, arguing with increasing passion that China is deluding itself if it thinks issues between Beijing and Washington can be conveniently resolved to the benefit of both sides.

If Beijing places its bets on peace and cooperation, the great Chinese adventure will come to an end, and China will have to live in the shadow of the U.S. for another generation — perhaps forever, Karaganov said. Chinese authorities, he argued, have no more than five years to make a decision.

The meeting was held under the Chatham House rule, so unfortunately, I cannot report on what the response from the Chinese side was; only Karaganov allowed me to relay his words.

... from my own separate conversations, Chinese officials appear to agree the clock is ticking. They’re just not yet convinced they should choose war — even a Cold War.

More Bruno Maçães: podcast interview on his new book Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order. See also Remarks on the Decline of American Empire.

See earlier post Trump, Putin, Stephen Cohen, Brawndo, and Electrolytes.

Note to morons: Russia's 2017 GDP is less than that of France, Brazil, Italy, Canada, and just above that of Korea and Australia. (PPP-adjusted they are still only #6 in the world, between Germany and Indonesia: s-s-scary!) Apart from their nuclear arsenal (which they will struggle to pay for in the future), they are hardly a serious geopolitical competitor to the US and certainly not to the West as a whole. Relax! Trump won the election, not Russia.


This is a longer (and much better) discussion of Putin with Oliver Stone and Stephen Cohen. At 17:30 they discuss the "Russian attack" on our election.

Russian forces seem to have integrated both Electronic Counter-Measures (ECM) and real-time artillery targeting into drone warfare. To a technologist, this seems quite easy and predictable -- the main challenges are training and organization. Nevertheless, opposing militaries such as NATO might be unprepared for these new tactics.

Land Warfare in Europe: Lessons and Recommendations from the War in Ukraine: Shortly before dawn on the morning of July 11, 2014, elements of Ukraine’s 24th Mechanized Brigade met a catastrophic end near the Ukrainian border town of Zelenopillya. After a mass rocket artillery barrage lasting just three minutes, the combat power of two battalions of the 24th Mechanized Brigade was gone. What remained was a devastated landscape, burning vehicles and equipment, 30 dead and 90 wounded. According to multiple accounts, the Ukrainians were on the receiving end of a new and dangerous Russian weapon: the 122-mm Tornado Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS). Capable of covering a wide fire area with a deadly combination of Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICMs), scatter mines and thermobaric warheads, the attack had not only destroyed the combat power of the Ukrainian forces, it offered a glimpse into the changing nature of Land Warfare in Europe. The battlefield was becoming deadlier.

... NATO armies should prepare to fight an ECM battle to keep their drones aloft in addition to the Anti-Access/Area Denial fight for the skies.

Phillip A. Karber, Lessons Learned from the Russo-Ukrainian War (Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory & U.S. Army Capabilities Center (ARCIC)):

The surprising thing about the Russian use of drones is not in the mix of vehicles themselves or their unique characteristics, but rather in their ability to combine multiple sensing platforms into a real-time targeting system for massed, not precision, fire strikes. There are three critical components to the Russian method: the sensor platforms which are often used at multiple altitudes over the same target with complimentary imaging; a command-and-control system, which nets their input and delivers a strike order; and, an on-call ground-based delivery system which can produce strikes within short order.

... The author personally witnessed a fire-strike east of Mariupol in September 2014 in which an overflying drone identified a Ukrainian position, and destroyed it with a “GRAD” BM-21 MLRS [ range: 20-30 km ] within 15 minutes of the initial over-flight and then returned shortly after to do an immediate bomb-damage assessment. Last month when hit by a “GRAD” fragment in a similar strike, there were two UAVs over us – a quad-copter at 800ft and small fixed wing drone at about 2,500ft.

Rutgers Historian Jochen Hellbeck, author of Stalingrad: The City that Defeated the Third Reich.

LA Review of Books: ... The archive was compiled by a historical commission headed by a Moscow professor, Isaak Mints. Members of the commission were allowed into Stalingrad in late December 1942 — this was more than a month before the battle would end, and there was bitter fighting going on in the city. Over the next weeks they conducted more than 200 interviews with soldiers and other eyewitnesses. These first-person accounts were so frank and multifaceted that they couldn’t be published at the time. They were locked away, but not destroyed.

I found them quite by chance. Several Russian colleagues who knew about my interest in first-person accounts told me about entire boxes filled with memoirs, somewhere in the basement of a Moscow archive. When I finally received permission to study these documents, my jaw dropped. I first assumed they were recollections of the war written in the 1960s or 1970s — but the archive was full of first-person statements delivered during the war. It shows the interviewed soldiers steeped in the events that they describe. In 1942 nobody knew when or how the Second World War would end, and the interviews show you the horizons of people at war, they bring you closer to their thoughts and emotions than any other source.

... When I began my project I initially wanted to compare the voices and emotions of German and Soviet soldiers. There are many diaries available on the German side, but hardly any from the Soviet perspective. The Red Army forbade personal diaries, and Soviet censors ensured that soldiers wrote only bland letters along the lines of, “Hello, I’m well and alive,” so that the letters couldn’t be used for intelligence or propaganda if they fell into German hands. Consequently there are few sources that present us with a full record of unmediated wartime voices.

... In the account I mentioned earlier, the otherwise unexceptional Lieutenant Averbukh fell back from his command post after it was overrun and, shot, retreated while carrying his dying unit commander:

Captain Lizunov was showing little sign of life, but I could hear him whispering, saying that I should leave him and save myself. Obviously I didn’t leave him. We crawled to Verkhnyaya Elshanka, in the area of the radio station. I sat up to get my bearings and got hit again. Submachinegun fire to the left side of my chest and my left arm. I lost consciousness. I don’t know how long I was out. I woke up because it got really cold. It was late, around four in the morning. It was already starting to get light. I could hear people speaking German all around me. I couldn’t see Lizunov anywhere. I decided to shoot myself because I didn’t have any strength left, and I didn’t want them to take me alive. I figured there was no way out. I pulled the trigger, but the Mauser was clogged with sand and wouldn’t fire. My right arm was still okay. With my right arm I crawled away and by some miracle made it to the division command post. It was already midday.

See also Hellbeck's project Facing Stalingrad.

Portraits of German and Soviet Survivors

The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the most ferocious military campaigns of all time. Ending with the rout of an entire German army, it marked a turning point in World War II. “Facing Stalingrad” features portraits of German and Soviet veterans who were interviewed in their homes in 2009. The project illuminates the battle’s human dimension and juxtaposes perspectives from both sides.

Johan Scheins, 16th Panzer Division, captured January 29, 1943. Released from captivity in late 1949.

... The general said nothing; they said nothing. They were afraid. They were officers. I then said: “What should we do now?” And then a staff sergeant, who could speak perfect Polish, entered at a trot. He was Polish, but a German Pole. He announced that four tanks, Russian T-34, had run over and cut the cables, that there was no longer any connection. There was nothing that could be done. One could no longer make telephone calls. They had run over the cable. We should surrender. The general then stood up. He adjusted his collar to make it neater. He was tall. He put on his cap. I stood here; he stood there. He just stood there, then he took his revolver – Long live Germany! Long live my country! – and he shot himself here and then fell forwards. I thought he would fall off the table. I stood right there. I had never seen such a thing: some white stuff came out at the top. The stuff that comes out of a herring when you cut it up. Not the bones. The white stuff. ...

Does Stalingrad appear in your dreams?

I’ve only been speaking to you for a couple of days. I can say that I sit every day in my bed – for hours. All the memories surface. Always before Christmas. Terrible. Christmas was the worst time when I was a prisoner. On Christmas Eve the Russians would come in at 10 PM. They would count us. We then had to go outside – quickly, quickly. Nearly barefoot, only wearing socks. 20, 30 degrees cold. We stood outside half-naked. Just padded jackets on. And we had to form groups of five men each. Raz, dva – always five men.

Then the Russians started counting. The commander. And then they went back to the headquarters, in the house, to booze. Then they returned after an hour. Nichevo [Russian: “no problem”]. “Have you counted?” I said: “Nope.” “Count!” Then there was a new count. We counted from 10 PM, 11 PM till 2, 3 AM. The sentries stood outside with carbines. Then one man fell over due to the cold. Another man fell over… 10, 12 men, 16 men, the number varied, fell over. They had to be placed in front. So that they could also be counted. Oh, zavtra [Russian: “tomorrow”] it’s all over. Tomorrow morning he’ll be dead. We went indoors and they remained lying on the ground. They weren’t allowed to be brought indoors. In the morning they were frozen stiff – broken. Zavtra utrom – tomorrow morning it’ll be all over with them. Posmotri! [Russian:“Look!”] Look up, that’s where God is, He’s seen that and you bandits will go to hell.

I was invited several times to Stalingrad. It’s definitive – I’ll never go there again. I’d rather walk with a dead man.

Andrei Sakharov with daughter, 1948.

Excerpts below from The World of Andrei Sakharov (link goes to full text) by Gennady Gorelik. See Out on the tail for a discussion of Landau's logarithmic ranking of physicists.

(p.159) Discussing Tamm’s desire that Landau be his official dissertation opponent in his Memoirs, he remarked that the latter “fortunately, refused; I would have felt very awkward because I realized the dissertation’s inadequacies.” Sakharov also talked about his failure in pure physics in the summer of 1947, and how Pomeranchuk (his dissertation opponent) did “a hatchet job” on the same problem, while Landau dealt with it “in an elegant and productive way.” This gave Sakharov the basis to humbly “formulate a system of inequalities: L > P > S” (L for Landau, P for Pomeranchuk, S for Sakharov).

... Sakharov for some reason came to the Institute of Physical Problems, where Landau headed up the Theoretical Department and a separate group doing research and calculations for “the Problem.”

After we finished discussing our work, Landau and I walked out into the Institute garden. This was the only time we talked without witnesses, heart-to-heart. He said: “I really don’t like all this.” (The context was nuclear weapons in general and his participation in this work in particular.)
“Why?” I asked somewhat naively.
“Too much fuss.”
Landau usually smiled a lot and easily, baring his large teeth, but this time he was sad, even mournful.

Landau on the Soviet nuclear weapons effort:

(p.190, quote from 1952-3) "One must use all one’s strength not to get involved in the thick of atomic work. But one has to be very careful refusing it . . . If it weren’t for Box Five [Jewish ethnicity], I would not be doing special [nuclear-weaponry] work, but pure science, in which I now lag behind. The special work gives me a certain amount of personal security. But it’s far from my serving 'for the good of the Homeland' ... I have been reduced to the level of a “scientist slave” and this defines it all."

... Zeldovich was close enough to Landau to know how he felt about this work. Zeldovich considered Landau his teacher, and it was on Landau’s recommendation that Zeldovich was elected Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences. However, in the early 1950s, Landau berated Zeldovich with the foulest possible language when the latter attempted to drag him more deeply into secret work in spite of his unwillingness.

On Sakharov and Zeldovich.  Gorelik interprets events surrounding the development of the Soviet H-bomb as I did in the earlier post: Sakharov's Third Idea.

(p.188) From an eyewitness: These two prominent theorists had very different “styles of thinking.” Sakharov was characterized by inventiveness and great profundity while Zeldovich by very quick thinking and high erudition. These scientists created an extraordinarily creative climate; the Institute [Installation] became orphaned after their departure at the end of the 1960s.

Another eyewitness recalls how interesting it was to follow the discussion of these outwardly opposite individuals: One was short in stature, bespectacled, rapid in his movements, and spoke clearly; the other was tall, languid, and spoke with a slight burr. But they were linked by sharp minds and enormous physical intuition. Mutual problems stimulated their thinking and they quickly grasped the crux of processes; hardly anyone managed to follow the course of their reasoning.

... Sakharov himself did not underestimate the heroism of what he had done. Twenty years later, when he received an invitation to come to the United States and lecture, his wife asked him what would interest him the most in America. By that time his imagination was already involved in cosmology and the physics of elementary particles, and he had an altogether different view of the government for which he had created thermonuclear weapons. However, he told his wife that he wanted very much to sit side by side with Ulam to compare the paths by which they had arrived at the same solution (it was in the 1970s, when the roles played by Ulam and Teller in creating the H-bomb were not clear).

Zeldovich admired Sakharov’s talent, treated him “extraordinarily carefully,” “timidly,” and said: “What am I? Now, Andrei, he’s something else!” According to another witness, Zeldovich said: “I can understand and take the measure of other physicists, but Andrei — he’s something else, something special."

The touching essay I quote from below is by Eddie Frenkel, a noted Berkeley mathematician. I recommend the whole thing. Eddie and I used to play in the regular Junior Fellows basketball game at Harvard's Malkin Athletic Center (MAC), where Spike Lee and Obama also played. I don't recall ever playing with Obama, but I do remember Spike, who was teaching a film class on campus. Spike is no baller, despite being such a big Knicks fan. For some reason I came up with the nickname "Kazakhstani Kid" for Eddie, which he never appreciated. During all the years I knew Eddie we never talked about anti-semitism. I did, however, hear such stories from Bob Nozick (from his Princeton years) and Stephen Greenblatt (Yale). They were, of course, from an earlier generation.

Perceptively, Nozick once asked me if I thought Asian-Americans were discriminated against by elite universities like Harvard. Perhaps he was aware of the 1990 investigation of Harvard by the Department of Education (our conversation would have been in the early 90s); I certainly was not. See also The bar is different.

New Criterion: ... It was 1984, my senior year at high school. I had to decide which university to apply to. Moscow had many schools, but there was only one place to study pure math: Moscow State University, known by its Russian abbreviation MGU, Moskovskiy Gosudarstvenny Universitet. Its famous Mekh-Mat, the Department of Mechanics and Mathematics, was the flagship mathematics program of the USSR. Since I wanted to study pure math, I had no choice but to apply there.

Unlike the U.S., there are entrance exams to colleges in Russia. At Mekh-Mat there were four: written math, oral math, an essay on literature, and oral physics. I had, by then, progressed far beyond high school math, so it looked like I would sail through these exams.

But I was too optimistic. ...

“What’s your name?” she said by way of greeting.

“Eduard Frenkel.” (I used the Russian version of “Edward’’ in those days.)

“And you want to apply to MGU?”

“Yes.”

“Which Department?”

“Mekh-Mat.”

“I see.” She lowered her eyes and asked:

“And what’s your nationality?”

I said, “Russian.”

“Really? And what are your parents’ nationalities?”

“Well. . . . My mother is Russian.”

“And your father?”

“My father is Jewish.”

...

“Do you know that Jews are not accepted to Moscow University?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is that you shouldn’t even bother to apply. Don’t waste your time. They won’t let you in.” ...

But Eddie tried anyway, to no avail.

... We walked out of the room and entered the elevator. The doors closed. It was just the two of us. The examiner was clearly in a good mood. He said:

“You did very well. A really impressive performance. I was wondering: did you go to a special math school?”

I grew up in a small town, we didn’t have special math schools.

“Really? Perhaps, your parents are mathematicians?”

No, they are engineers.

“Interesting. . . . It’s the first time I’ve seen such a strong student who did not go to a special math school.”

I couldn’t believe what he was saying. This man had just failed me after an unfairly administered, discriminatory, grueling five-hour exam. For all I knew, he had killed my dream of becoming a mathematician. A sixteen-year-old student, whose only fault was that he came from a Jewish family. And now this guy is giving me compliments and expecting me to open up to him?!

But what could I do? Yell at him, punch him in the face? I was just standing there, silent, stunned. He continued:

“Let me give you some advice. Apply to the Moscow Institute of Oil and Gas. They have an Applied Mathematics program, which is quite good. They take students like you there.”

The elevator doors opened and a minute later he handed me my thick application folder, with a bunch of my school trophies and prizes oddly sticking out of it.

“Good luck to you,” he said, but I was too exhausted to respond. My only wish was to get the hell out of there!

And then I was outside, on the giant staircase of the immense MGU building. I was breathing fresh summer air again and hearing the sounds of the big city coming from a distance. It was getting dark, and there was almost no one around. I immediately spotted my parents who had been waiting anxiously for me on the steps this whole time. By the look on my face, and the big folder I was holding in my hands, they knew right away what had happened inside.

A reader sent me this list of deceptively simple "Jewish problems" used in oral exams at Moscow State University (MGU): http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556.