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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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On May 1st, 1946, a South Korean guerilla tried to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. Kim was speaking at a political rally in Pyongyang when the White Shirt guerilla threw a grenade on stage. Kim's bodyguard---the young soviet officer Yakov Novichenko---caught the grenade and threw it away. Novichenko was seriously mutilated by the grenade blast, but Kim survived the incident without injury.

The recent assassination attempt against Trump reminded me of this story, and I wanted to share it with themotte for two reasons:

  1. It's just a great story, and one that I wish were more widely known. For me, it helps shed light on why the North Koreans felt like they "needed" to start the Korean War and invade the South in 1950. (I only know about Novichenko because of my time living in North Korea, where a North Korean army officer told me to look him up.)

  2. I feel like there should somehow be a meme connecting these two assassination attempts and the Trump/Kim summit, but I'm not enough of a meme-warrior to figure out how to do it. Maybe one of you all can pull it off?

Neat story. Never heard of it.

(I only know about Novichenko because of my time living in North Korea, where a North Korean army officer told me to look him up.)

Tangential, but wtf? I can't believe this has been hidden in theschism for years. Have you written about your experiences in this role beyond your polite request to resume academic exchange? I assume we haven't resumed it.

You lay out some good points with the Soviets in that post, re: collapse and nukes. Academics can provide a basis for further collaboration. Do you think there are any risks associated with academic exchange with geopolitical rivals and adversaries?

Tangential, but wtf? I can't believe this has been hidden in theschism for years. Have you written about your experiences in this role beyond your polite request to resume academic exchange? I assume we haven't resumed it.

There's:

  1. a travelog at mailto:https://guest:trip-to-pust@izbicki.me/pust/
  2. a description of how I got NK students to contribute to open source software: https://izbicki.me/blog/teaching-open-source-in-north-korea.html
  3. and how I helped fix the North Korean's official KCNA webpage at: https://izbicki.me/blog/fixing-north-korea-kcna-webpage.html

I have more fun stories I'd like to share but either haven't gotten around to it or have been asked by the "state department" not to.

You lay out some good points with the Soviets in that post, re: collapse and nukes. Academics can provide a basis for further collaboration. Do you think there are any risks associated with academic exchange with geopolitical rivals and adversaries?

With major powers like China/Russia, I think there's some risk (but the way the FBI/military talk about the risk is way overblown). With a much smaller country like North Korea that is super isolated, I think there's basically no risk.

With a much smaller country like North Korea that is super isolated, I think there's basically no risk.

even though they have a history of cyberattacks and crypto scams? I don't know why you think there's no risk, or any benefit, in freely helping them increase their IT skills. Even if the stuff you're teaching them is purely peaceful, it frees up their state resources to work on other, more black-hat stuff.

even though they have a history of cyberattacks and crypto scams? I don't know why you think there's no risk, or any benefit, in freely helping them increase their IT skills.

Eh... I think the cyberattacks/crypto scams are blown way out of proportion. Literally every country on earth does this. For some reason, however, it's only used as an excuse to block exchanges with North Korea and not with countries like Israel.

Also, FWIW, I used to work for the NSA red team running these types of operations. I have a pretty good sense of what types of training contribute to hacking capabilities and can ensure that the academic exchanges stay far away from that material.

it frees up their state resources to work on other, more black-hat stuff

I disagree. For example:

  1. Albert Einstein was part of an enemy state in WWI. This led to his theory of relativity being ignored by the outside world because a Good American (TM) wouldn't support German physics. If non-Germans had paid more attention to Einstein, then we would have understood relativity ~10 years earlier, and the whole world would be better off because of it. Ignoring Einstein did not result in increased capabilities of the German war machine, and I think was clearly a mistake in hindsight. Who knows what types of Einsteins are living in North Korea right now that we don't even know about because we don't want to support North Korean science?

  2. Above I give two examples of the work I did in North Korea that resulted in North Korean programmers being assigned peaceful tasks (contributing to open source software and fixing the KCNA webpage) that they would not have otherwise completed. If these exchanges hadn't been happening, then those programmers would have been assigned other tasks (possibly military related) instead. I personally know several American machine learning researchers who have benefited from the pull requests, and several government analysts who rely on the improved KCNA website to perform their jobs.

There's a lot more examples of why I think this work is a net-benefit in the /r/theschism link above. If you disagree with any of those particulars, I'd love to learn why.

Also, FWIW, I used to work for the NSA red team running these types of operations. I have a pretty good sense of what types of training contribute to hacking capabilities and can ensure that the academic exchanges stay far away from that material.

I'm fascinated (not being sarcastic) by your journey from NSA employee to working for North Korea. I would really like to know what motivated such a journey.

I also must admit I have a lot of skepticism about the value of helping North Korea. The DPRK is one of the few countries left in the world I would unambiguously call "bad" and while I understand the argument that "We should try to entice them into joining the international community and normalizing," I just... really don't think that will work with the existing regime.

You can find a summary of my career in this college newspaper bio of me: https://tsl.news/professor-mike-izbicki-discusses-path-to-pacifism/. There's more details about me leaving the navy on my blog at https://izbicki.me/blog/my-co-discharge.html.