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Dead Drop: February 2

<p>dead drop</p>

SUPPRESSIVE IMPRESSION: Mike Pompeo invited BBC reporter Gordon Correa into his CIA headquarters for an interview published on Monday. (The fact that a non-U.S. reporter and cameras were allowed inside the building was, itself, unusual.) But something Pompeo said in the interview caught the eye of Agency alumni. Talking about what the CIA is doing to counter Russian efforts to tinker with future U.S. elections, according to the article Pompeo says, “the intelligence community was involved in identifying who was behind subversive activity, using technical means to suppress it and trying to deter Russia.” That sounded like the CIA director was sounding off about an act that, CIA vets tell us, could be a covert action – something that only the president can declassify. But those in the know say the director was talking about instances where the CIA informs local countries via diplomatic or other channels that servers are being hijacked by the Russians, and asks those countries to take the servers down. You decide which version you believe.

HAVE A BLAST: Sign of the times. There is a website called NUKEMAP which presents an interactive data visualization tool which gives you with an opportunity see what various sized nuclear weapons would do to various locations around the world. (Spoiler alert: nothing good.) When you visit the site, you enter a city name, then select a yield in kilotons – and you are shown a map which illustrate the blast effects of a nuclear weapon. If you simulate exploding a weapon similar to “Little Boy” (the bomb used on Hiroshima) over the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, for example, you are told there would be an estimated 100,850 fatalities. A similarly-sized weapon in New York City would result in 232,200 fatalities. The site enables you to move ground zero around – so if, let’s say, you have a particular animus toward Tacoma Park, Md., you can see what happens with that location in the bull’s eye. Pretty creepy, actually.

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