 Good morning. All right, that's that you're waking me up. That's good My name is George Perkovich. I'm a vice president for studies here at the Carnegie endowment And it's my pleasure to welcome you here this morning I know people continue to come in and they should make themselves at home we have a good full half-day discussion lined up and and planned and and It it follows work that we've been doing here at at Carnegie Depending on how you count for 27 years or seven years or two years on the North Korean problem so a long time but the session in particular This morning on denuclearization roadmaps Will reflect work that the nuclear policy program's been doing in consultation with experts from a number of Nuclear arm states on on how in a comprehensive verifiable way You could first, you know contain the Challenge posed by the North Korean nuclear missile and and other strategic Activities and then move on into a Denuclearization process and and this is the kind of work that we think needs to be done and needs to be done internationally in particular with cooperation from experts from China In South Korea and in other regional countries and so my colleagues Toby Dalton Lee been Ellie Levita and a new Recently liberated from government colleague Corey Hinderstein of the nuclear threat initiative They will be talking about the kind of more technical approaches to give meaning to what May or may not be Intended in the statements that one's been hearing over the last weeks about denuclearization Whether it's coming from the US side or the South Korean side or the DPRK side And to try to parse what some of these things could mean and what actually Might be done in a realistic in a realistic way then there'll be a break and and we'll step back and locate What is the the kind of urgent nuclear challenge in the broader context of regional and international security and and politics and in particular how Key actors whether it's in China Japan South Korea how they're seeing the The diplomacy of the last few weeks and the alternatives to diplomacy How they see that through Their interest as they're looking in the short term but also in the in the longer term And where the nuclear issue in particular possible approaches to the nuclear issue fit into this broader set of regional and domestic political concerns And for that we also have a a great Panel we have a colleague James Schoff who just led an all-day workshop yesterday with an impressive delegation from South Korea talking about Kind of the bilateral context of James will moderate that session Chow Kong from South Korea Doug Paul Here from Carnegie and Jung Park from Brookings. We'll talk about Korean and Chinese perspectives on the regional challenge. So it's a full day It's the kind of discussion That we think is is both necessary and useful especially in this town especially as so much of the Discussion has been on Twitter And in cable news We're going to try to take the time to actually go through these things in some detail. And so we Appreciate and applaud your apparent willingness to withstand the the the long The long complicated discourse on these on these issues and so hopefully at the end of the day you'll feel Enriched and glad that that you did. So we really appreciate your being here I'll turn it over to Toby in the first panel Good morning, it's a pleasure to see you all here as George Had pointed out the stage now has been set with the successful inter-Korean summit last week And now since then with North Korea having made several Additional public and private commitments to do denuclearization the stage is now set to to really start the Investigation and rethinking of that issue here in Washington. And so we wanted to do our part To try to as George said parse Some of the language and some of the statements that have been made I think it's fair to say that the discourse in Washington over the last few weeks has been And parts optimistic Perhaps unrealistically so and in parts pessimistic and I think a lot of the pessimism turns on concerns In particular about different definitions of denuclearization and as some people have pointed out North Korea may have a particular idea about what denuclearization means and here in Washington the Prevailing assumption is that denuclearization means the complete verifiable Irreversible dismantlement of the nuclear program and between those two things obviously there may be quite a bit of space And I think even in the last couple days with expectations After the inter-Korean summit rising There's now concerned that those expectations are too great and that the chances of actually a failure To launch into a process of negotiating Denuclearization is becoming greater in part because those expectations are not aligned with the reality of the situation Which comes from these different ideas about what denuclearization might be So the first panel this morning will try to unpack these issues will focus on some of the practicalities of denuclearization What it means to try to negotiate it what things might be prioritized how they could be monitored or verified Where are some potential traps? And and so forth obviously this is not a new issue as George had said you can count back You can count back to the 1993 1994 period when there were Negotiations with North Korea even before that in the in the Korean context in the 1991 1992 timeframe obviously and another effort from 2005 through 2008 produced a joint statement that gave a vision for a future of the Korean Peninsula without nuclear weapons We have other experiences that we should also consider too, and I think it's not It would be difficult and improper to ignore what's been happening with the Iran nuclear deal over the last weeks here in Washington But we have other models also to include South Africa's decision to disarm its nuclear weapons And of course thanks to national security advisor John Bolton. There's been much consideration of the Libya model In recent weeks too Now President Trump has said he will not repeat past mistakes So I think we need to look at some of these past models to understand what lessons we should be learning And which models may be more or less appropriate for the tasks that we have at hand I hope that my colleagues today will try to avoid pop psychology Which is very tempting these days of two mercurial leaders and instead focus on some of the technical issues and implications We have a fantastic panel of experts with different perspectives from three different purchase So Washington and Beijing and Tel Aviv And some people might be wondering why on earth Tel Aviv while I suggest that It may be far from the Korean Peninsula, but it has considerable experience dealing with proliferating neighbors. So including from North Korea including from North Korea indeed So on the far end is my colleague Lee Bin who is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Xinghua Center for global policy And Beijing he also happens to be Notwithstanding that he's a physicist. He's a professor of international relations at Qinghua University And is one of the foremost Chinese experts on arms control Next to bin is Corey Hinderstein who is the vice president for international fuel cycle strategies at the nuclear threat initiative She indeed was recently liberated after three years serving in government as the senior coordinator for nuclear security and non-proliferation At the National Nuclear Security Administration. It's a pleasure to have you back in the NGO community She has long experience Managing and facilitating international cooperation projects on nuclear challenges And then last but certainly not least is my colleague Arielle Eli Levite. He's a senior fellow here at Carnegie works in both the nuclear policy program And on our cyber policy initiative Before joining Carnegie some 10 years ago He worked as the principal deputy director general at the Israel Atomic Energy Commission and deputy national security advisor And he's written widely in particular on issues associated with nuclear hedging And so as we think about what North Korea is seeking to accomplish with its nuclear program I think thinking about kind of the hedging what what comes after hedging and breakout Is is a useful thing to think about I realized I did not introduce myself also I'm Toby Dalton. I'm the co-director of the nuclear policy program here So excited to get into this topic that I forgot to do that So what I I'll do is moderate a conversation with these three experts and try to dive into some of these issues I thought what we might do is start with Trying to discern what is different now today as we think about this issue as to Compared to the last time there was a fervor in Washington for negotiating with North Korea In the 2005 to 2008 time frame and in particular, what are the most for each of you? What is the most significant change? Technical political or otherwise and what are the implications for for thinking about this problem this time So then you're furthest from me, but why don't I start with you and then we'll work this way Thank you Toby Because I'm I'm the first person to explain what has changed in the last 10 more years So I would like to mention a positive change in 2005 North Korea had a big and workable Program for plutonium production, but now they don't they made the big effort to Resume the production of Plotonium, but it does not seem that they're successful now. I believe that we have very good knowledge about How much plutonium North Korea Has so this is the good side So if we look at the production of plutonium We could say that this part the dismantlement of plutonium production in 2008 Was quite successful and it was irreversible But if we look at a bigger future of physical material production Then we would realize that North Korea Develop an alternative that is to produce highly enriched uranium So the lesson, you know, I I Draw from that that appearance is that Now we need a comprehensive picture When we talk about Reversible irreversible, we need to look at the big picture. We should we should not just focus on a specific part So good so changes in the physical material picture is a significant change for you. Cory. What about for you? Well, first of all, thank you Toby and George and the carding the endowment for welcoming me back Into the NGO community and I will say and not just because some of my former colleagues are in the room that Although there are a lot of jokes about escaping government service It was an amazing three years working with some fantastic people of the Department of Energy and at the Interagency that said It's nice to be able to speak My own mind and I will do that today So I the biggest change for me is the weaponization side I do think that if we look back at 2005 We actually have had changes on all three major tracks related to nuclear weapons capability in North Korea and so that is the the physical material production side the nuclear weaponization side and infrastructure where we can assume that they will have spent their last 13 years wisely and Also on the delivery system side. So I agree with With Finn's final statement, which is that when we look at the North Korean program we have to look at a vastly more complicated and more comprehensive program than any of those that we have history in Managing backward as a non-proliferation challenge Oh Let me start with where Corey had ended up The nuclear weapons Accomplishment has multiple dimensions to it and I think all of them are relevant for where we are So one aspect is the sense of mission accomplished of Kim Jong-un Which means that he's now willing to negotiate He's not willing to negotiate exactly what the US may wish to call it to negotiate But he's he's he has explicitly said in his January 1st speech That he would be open to something after January 1st because the mission has been accomplished the energy will now be diverted elsewhere So one aspect is the political strategic calculus as distinguished from the technical reality a Second dimension is not only does he have nuclear weapons and the delivery the capability of nuclear weapons and a robust Delivery capability based on different platforms and so on and a long-range delivery capability I'll be it's not a fully reliable one yet. Thankfully, but he also has an H bomb That by all accounts he's been able to test and so on so that kind of is another sobering thought But even more alarmingly in terms of the agenda in front of us We have a situation where he has a domestic infrastructure To sustain and enhance and further expand that Capability so what happens is what is in front of us is not just to incapacitate in some fashion the weapons But we have to deal with the infrastructure the human infrastructure the technological infrastructure Look at the story that emerge about Iran about the infrastructure there So we have a much much bigger issue here in terms of the technical cadres and what we do with them Which I guess Cory will address later and so on we have a sort of what do we do? With the technical capabilities that are with the materials with the facilities and so on so we have I would only point out one more One more aspect that I think is we have a lot of traumatic experiences that have been accumulated in the pre which will color people's vision As they approach the process so for Kim Jong Un He's been talking about Libya as this thing to avoid the fact that a national security adviser said this is what the US Will be aiming for Will help focus his mind of what the thing to avoid namely the collapse of the regime is associated with giving up on the nuclear weapons There is another thing which is that the US won't be able to deliver and some of its obligations in terms of the way the South The North Koreans look at them for the US the traumatic experiences the North Koreans will cheat will walk back and so on So we're approaching these declarations as as you said We need to have a really realistic Expectations with a lot of traumatic experiences shaping people's mind not just technical insights from previous negotiations They want to come back to the the cheating in a lessons piece in just a second So I'm a little surprised that none of you Specifically said that the ICBM capability. I'm sure Corey that was part of your sort of comprehensiveness, and I think for me What has focused attention here in Washington in particular is the developments over the sort of latter half of last year And the ICBM consolidation in particular That that has crystallized a threat now to the United States that that wasn't there before And certainly wasn't there in 2005 to 2008 so Whereas South Korea and Japan have been living with a nuclear North Korea for a while now Now the United States has to live with it in a much more present way And I think that that's I mean clearly that's part of the motivation here But it's not clear that the thinking about what you specifically do or how you know How you specifically tackle that part of the threat has has materially changed So anyway, we'll we'll come back to sort of various pieces in a minute I did want to pick up on this this piece about the prior experience with with North Korea I think it's it's entirely fair to say that there's a perception in Washington that The prior agreements broke down because of North Korean cheating that that's the narrative And I'm I want to get sort of different different slices of that If if that is indeed an Objective picture of what happened in the past then what lessons should the United States learn from that behavior looking backwards? So Cory, let me let me start with you in thinking about that. I think we There are a lot of lessons that we can learn from both past experience with DPRK as well as our experiences with other countries along the way a couple of things to draw out one is I think Declarations will absolutely be key. We have to have a common starting point and As much as we have speculated you've heard words about, you know The ability to put a warhead on a missile miniaturization thermonuclear device, you know, we have a lot of speculation on what they have And that speculation, you know, the roots of that are all Down into the program as well What kid what facilities are they operating? How effectively are they operating them? What redundancy do they have built into their program? What do they have as far as the long-term pipeline the R&D? so we absolutely have to make sure in a negotiation that we are starting from the same point and That is going to to a certain extent be a result of iteration and It will have to be a result of of some trust being built up through a process We can't expect to walk in on day one and have that no matter how Charmingly our leaders might get along The second piece is that I think we've learned that we can't set aside Progress on one piece while we make progress on another You know, we've heard so many of these kind of Synonymous phrases over time step-for-step action for action parallel actions You know, but I think what we've learned is and for one one specific example is You know in the in the agreed framework we put off The verification from even beginning until the key nuclear components were scheduled to be delivered for the keto reactor And so I think we have to be very clear that we can't set certain things aside that are pivotal elements That said we will also have to be flexible as to how all the pieces relate to each other and You know, I take the example You know for an outcome-based Example of within the JCPOA when we looked at Iran's capability. We had a policy objective But one of the things we looked at was how much enriched uranium could they have and at what level could that be enriched and And then how what could their installed enrichment capacity be you can think about those things on sliders, right? So you can accept more installed capacity enrichment capacity more centrifuges in place You can accept more of those if you accept less material You can accept more material with less with fewer centrifuges And so there are ways to make judgments within it, but you have to have the policy objective to be the driver and The final point I would make is clarity of language is going to be key and the more that we Think about the expediency of reaching a negotiated outcome at the expense of clarity The more we risk that clarity coming Becoming a bone of contention down the road and we've seen this in in many negotiated outcomes We've certainly seen it, you know in obvious ways with you know a space launch vehicle not being seen as the same as an ICBM capability and therefore You know at the confidence in the leap day agreement Being destroyed, but you know the North Koreans we shouldn't underestimate them. They are good negotiators They are going to pursue their Their objectives and we need to do the same and so the more clarity you can have in language the better Foundation you look you can build for addressing any future questions about compliance or non-compliance So Ben I want to have you sort of give each a Chinese perspective I'm not asking you to speak for the Chinese government obviously But is the is the narrative about the reasons for the failure of the past agreements? That's that's heard in Washington that this is North Korean cheating. Is that an analysis or a perception that is shared in Beijing no, I I don't think so. I think many Chinese believe that North Korea was responsible for the failure and United States was also responsible for the failure North Korea height is uranium Production KVT and that was the fault of the North Korea side but United States in the in the whole process we could see that US is always added new objectives to disturb the whole process for example Territory sponsor, you know financial sanctions money laundering all these kind of things are So so my my my my suggesting to the US government is that United States the Americans should should look at the Big picture United States could win every step and But but eventually United States would lose the big deal. So we need a Systematic view on this issue I guess that's a good a good good point speaking of a systematic view it's probably not a surprise that Iran nuclear deal is is casting a shadow over this and then announcement yesterday out of Israel about this cash of documents that had related to the prior Iranian activities purportedly in pursuit of nuclear program nuclear weapons program Is one of the arguments that is now Being being dealt with in terms of you know, how do you deal with a recalcitrant state that is going to cheat and so forth? Ellie given what we've seen Kind of happening with the Iran nuclear deal to include the announcement yesterday and looking ahead to this the state of May 12th Where the president may or may not? Withdraw the US from the deal. What what should Negotiators with North Korea take from from that experience about having seen a deal Successfully reached but now under attack from from multiple multiple places Wow, it's a loaded question. Let me say the following I think on the whole the JCPOA is a very poor template for dealing with the DPRK There are a couple of good things that one could take away with it, but it's a very on the whole It's a very bad template for mainly for reasons of the difference between the DPRK in Iran But also because of some I think sobering lessons with the Iran agreement itself Which is not bad But there are some some balances that have been struck which are like between the regional the distinction between the regional behavior and the Nuclear behavior, which has come back to haunt us or doing an executive agreement, which is now Easily renounceable by the president res this thing which we're making it a treaty and things of that nature Giving the Iranians a break on the declaration of past activity, which is coming back to haunt us That's what the prime minister was referring to yesterday and so on Keeping the IEA from actually exploring to its full length the possible military dimension Which again is coming back to haunt us and so on a sampling procedure So there are lots of issues with the Iran deal that would not work and so on now at the complexity of the DPRK Namely, it's a nuclear weapons state already So so on the whole I would say There are few things that one could take the sampling the snapback sanctions could be an interesting idea that one could take from it And so on the concentration of all the permissible activity in one site could be an interesting idea that one could take Which was with the evolution already with the JPEO way the interim agreement with Iran to the full agreement and so on So there are individual elements which are quite useful Maybe the six-party talks as a mechanism that one could apply in the Korean Peninsula case But I think the issue in front of us is actually to design And I think Korea was beginning to get to this as well as been a Korea specific agreement that allows for the specific strategic political the geographic conditions Of the DPRK to to actually affect the agreement. Let me give you an example declarations The one thing that the DPRK wants in the short to medium term is to be acknowledged as a nuclear state The declaration will make that a feta complete. Is it easy to absorb? The US doesn't want to recognize the DPRK is nuclear state They would say that they're a nuclear state the US would say well They're de facto nuclear state and that's complication. All right So that's one thing the company the creations would do if they have to actually admit where those nuclear weapons are They would feel that the US could target them if the agreement walks back So what happens for some reasons that our US related or some other things and so on So they would be quite nervous about making the kind of declarations Corey wants of them and I want of them as well So we have a serious problem with the declarations much as I would go the same way the Corey does and others and ask For those declarations and try to leverage them gradually to get the DPRK to get to that level of granularity The biggest difference I think And not to talk about too long is the first priority unlike the previous agreement and unlike Iran is not the physical material And there are two reasons for that reason number one they're ready a nuclear weapons states and They have an abundant supply of H.E.U And as a result and they can as a result a little bit more less a little bit more is unhelpful Or a little bit desirable if you actually take a little bit down But that won't make a difference if they are able to re keep to keep the nuclear arsenal so the first order sort of first order the first priority for my from my perspective is to try and create a freeze of all of their weapons related activity and To do it in a way that I disaggregates the components in such a way that if they try to remate it Reconfigure it in such a way that it becomes workable as a military capability Would both give you a lot of time and Capacity to intervene in the process to me. That's the first order of business business. How do we get to a situation that the DPRK lends itself to that kind of an agreement? And this is not to say that we shouldn't get to the comprehensive arrangement that Cori is looking for. I fully agree. We need to have the physical material weighed in, the infrastructure and all of those things. But the first priority, try to make sure that the weapons become less and less usable in the short term, and over time become less and less reversible in terms of the ability to regenerate that capacity. I think what you're starting to point at here is where the sort of reality starts to depart from the inflated expectations, right? And so South Korea has managed to produce kind of out of the ashes of 2017 this peace process. Now there's a lot of expectation for the summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, leader of North Korea. And so now that we have this Libya model being put forward as kind of the expectation here where North Korea would make a strategic decision and then magically the weapons disappear or something like that, right? I mean there's sort of some magical thinking involved. We would wish that that kind of outcome could be achieved, but I think as you're starting to point out, as soon as you accept that that is not a highly probable outcome, then we immediately start to get into some really thorny issues. So there was a report over the weekend that the new Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, in his talks with Kim Jong-un had said that the North Koreans are going to give us a roadmap. So we have some idea about where we'd like to start that roadmap, but what kind of what are some endpoints of that roadmap? And what could be constructed so that that roadmap has some sort of waypoints, if you will, towards the total denuclearization of North Korea, even if that is an outcome where the price is going to be extremely high and it may be impossible to get there. But things where we can still take some satisfaction or the President could claim some credit for having negotiated a good deal. And so I think what Ellie has suggested as one piece of it is focusing on doing things with the weapons. What are some other pieces? Ben, you talked about the need to have a comprehensive piece. I'm going to put it back to you. What do you mean there? Thank you. I would assume that the whole process would be a step-by-step process. We cannot finish denuclearization overnight and we should begin with easy steps and then we expand our effort to more complicated steps. And some steps may take quite a while. For example, North Korea has spinoffium. We would eventually ship the spinoffium out. That would take quite a while. So we should begin the work to shut down the plutonium production facilities and then eventually ship the spinoffium out and then clean the site. So that would take quite a while. So I do not believe that the Libya model would work in this case. And I also believe that in the middle of the process we need to cut the connections between different facilities, the production facilities, the physical material production facilities, the nuclear weapon laboratory, the missile production facilities, the nuclear weapon deployment site. That's the same idea as Ali just suggested. We cut the connections among them and then isolated all these facilities and then we could design verification for each of them. I also believe that the cooperation from North Korea would be very, very important. One cooperation we need from North Korea is that they would submit the record of work to Earth. They did that when they dismantled the plutonium production facility. So that's why now we have very good knowledge about the plutonium stockpile. If the North Koreans are cooperative in that way, that would make our work of verification much easier. So that's one cooperation we need from North Korea. The other cooperation we need from North Korea is to develop a new cooperative threat reduction program. So we could, you know, when we dismantled the nuclear weapon programs in different parts, we could, you know, remove their key technical team from the site and, you know, and arrange them to learn some different kind of work that would have reduced the possibility of reverse. That would also help us get a better knowledge about the nuclear weapon program. So that's... Do you think that there's a view in China about, in this step-by-step approach, you know, is there an idea or understanding about what the first step should be from the Chinese perspective? China had an old proposal that was suspension for suspension. It has already been there. From my perspective, I would suggest we begin with the plutonium part because that part does not need very intrusive inspections. We could use remote monitoring approach to monitor the dismantlement. And we have a lot of knowledge. We got from our old work, the Six-Party Cog joint statement. So I would like, you know, to begin with that part. Troy, what's your sense? If you're sitting in Washington and you have an expectation about how this is going to go, what's the first priority as far as you're concerned? Well, I'm gonna, I'm a grammar pedant. I admit it. My name is Corey. I'm a grammar pedant. And one of the things that I don't like is that things are very unique. That's very unique. Look at that. It's very unique. So something's either unique or it's not, right? North Korea is unique. And the reason that's important is we can talk about these models. We can talk about the Libya model. We can talk about the South Africa model, and we may want to a little bit. We can talk about the Iran model, but we need to start talking about a North Korea model. And for me, I'm not as cogent as Ben is about the plutonium program. I believe that our information, you know, are on the ground. Information is a decade out of date. I don't have the confidence that going into a negotiation, we should assume that we know the answers to the questions we will have about the plutonium program. We may have good assumptions, but that's not knowledge. And personally, I'm also, I would not be comfortable setting the uranium program off to the side. So for me, I think there are a couple of different models that tell us where to start. I was fascinated, frankly, by the reference in the Moon-Kim Summit to, to, I'm not going to get the exact words right of the joint declaration, but basically making sure that all previous agreements reached between the countries would be able to come into force and be implemented. So of course, my mind jumps to the 1992 North-South denuclearization agreement. That gives us one starting point if we wanted to. I mean, it talks about an absolute clean slate, no fissile material production, etc. Another model that is somewhat similar to that is actually one that comes out of the U.S., the State Department in, in the 90s at one point, early 2000s, talked about, you know, that, that denuclearization in North Korea would mean burning every physics textbook in the country. So, you know, these are the extremes, right? So what is the, what is the real North Korea model for 2018? To me, it is something that does address the nuclear program comprehensively, that addresses fissile material production, both uranium and plutonium, that addresses the R&D side of that, because I, even if we cut something off today, if you have a robust R&D program or production infrastructure, you know, you may have cut off the head, but the chicken's still running around, right? And so I think what's important is to be realistic, though, that when I say address, what do I mean? I would be very happy to start with something that looks like a freeze or a suspension, but I also would like for us to have a more robust conversation about what does freeze actually mean. If you're talking about an enrichment plant, does freeze mean shut down the electricity, turn out the lights, walk out? Does it mean centrifuges can spin under vacuum? Does it mean that centrifuges can continue to have uranium hexafluoride go through as long as they don't produce enriched product on the other end? You know, there are all different models as to what a freeze of enriched uranium production means, and I don't think we have a clear vision of that. So the key thing for me is that whatever we do, we start with verification. Whatever we do has to be verified from the beginning, and that we build time into our process at every step. And so time means time to reconstitute, time to restart, time to resume, to get back to whatever level we started at, and that that time be calculated in a way that allows for a political process to operate in parallel, either because of a, if there's some sort of, if the verification determines some sort of non-compliance, that we have time to get back to the agreement, or if the non-compliance is persistent enough that we have time to have a unified international response. You put one of probably the most important issues from Washington's perspective on the table, which is the monitoring and verification approach to whatever deal you negotiate. I want to come back to that in just a second. But first, Ellie, you and I had written an article that advocated for a capping concept for the program. I wondered if you might sort of lay out briefly kind of what the rationale for that is, and then pick up on any of the points that we've been in correctly. Yeah, in our Foreign Affairs piece we advocated for a first stage which is not negotiable, but where the U.S. basically tells the DPRK hopefully already at the summit, hopefully the president confines himself to a generic statement and then someone else actually hands over the detail to the DPRK of what you expect the DPRK to refrain from one negotiations are going forward. So what would the U.S. consider provocative behavior inconsistent with the spirit of negotiations that ought to be implemented immediately and without rewards? Maybe some symmetry where they would say don't do overflights, be too overflights over the DPRK or provocative statements about toppling us and things of that nature, don't do Sony movies on decapitation, but that's the kind of stuff. But on the whole, not negotiate. Here are the things you ought to refrain from which go a lot further than what Kim Jong-un had voluntarily put on the table. Phase two would then be the comprehensive capping that you and I are talking about which ought to be as precisely as Corey had talked about leveraged in gradually, incrementally, with a comprehensive scope in mind, but can't be done all at once. So we need both the progressive aspects and the comprehensive scope one next to the other. So let me go into those various elements and explain them. One is that the elements of the program ought to be separated. Ben has already referred to that. B, they have to be frozen in location. They can't be moved around. They can't be assembled, integrated, and things of that nature. They have to be. Three, they have to be declared. So they're in frozen in place, they're separated, and they're declared, and then we can talk, and Corey has already alluded to this, you know, the level of granularity of the declaration has to considerably be increased over time and so on. Fourth, they have to be monitored offsite initially. Five, gradually you begin to introduce the monitoring onsite, the IEA on some relevant parts of it, but also other capabilities and so on. And the last element is that you actually begin to take this in an irreversible direction. So Corey, and Corey and Ben have already referred to some of these elements. What we have had in the previous agreement is that the DPRK was asked to do some irreversible steps. They blew away the cooling towers of the Young Beyond Reactor. Then they'll ultimately rebuild them in the six months period. So that's not, we know that that won't be good enough going forward and so on. Two other aspects that I want to talk about, you know, that we're built into our joint work, that Ben is also part of and so on. One is our concept is about giving the DPRK choice, but listen to the choice, the choices we want to give them. Choice number one, do you want to be more transparent or freeze more? So what happens is if they are not willing to be more transparent, the scope of the freeze has to be much, much larger. Because if they want to do some maintenance work, preventive maintenance, safety enhancements and so on, they can't touch any of that stuff unless they are becoming totally transparent and give you on-site access. So it's their call. They could refrain from touching all of the stuff that we have actually frozen and that's fine. Or if they want to touch it, they have to give you access to a certain that that is not being upgraded or expanded in terms of quantity or other things and so on. Give them the choice. I'm happy either way as a starting point. Ultimately, we need both, of course. So that's one type of choice. Second is pace. We all believe that there are individual elements that ultimately have to come together to produce the kind of comprehensive cap that you and I have been talking about. Who should be in the driver's seat on the pace? Well, if the DPRK is half as desperate as we are inclined to think the sanctions are causing it to be, let them race ahead and do more of these elements in parallel or in rapid succession. If they're less pressured and so on, they shouldn't expect the dividends to flow in as rapidly as they kindly demand and expect. Let them be in the driver's seat on the pace. So I don't think the U.S. should artificially drive the pace much as it wants to get all of it very quickly, but it should say that the benefits would be closely tied to how quickly and how comprehensively the DPRK moves in the direction that we're talking about. So that's the second area. A third area is in terms of the scientific collaboration, other types of things and so on. We could tell them, here's what you need to do, but maybe we don't fully understand their sensitivities of putting the people up front that they don't want us to know or fearing that this would give some transparency into the regime or openness as the Iranians fear and so on. We give them a choice. Here is the choice. It will give you prestige. It would give the scientists an alternative vision, but let you choose what projects you want to work with. And you want to work with Chinese, Koreans, Americans, Europeans, all of the above. I think we are creative enough and there are some ideas that are being percolating the quarries working on others and so on and what those could look like and so on. Finally, I want to sort of just to conclude at this point about about the verification. And I think Corey referred to it. So I'll pause here. Yes, thank you. Ben, I want to come back to you because you had started out by making the observation that we need to keep the big picture in mind. And I don't mean the comprehensiveness, but you know, what is the strategic objective that we're working towards? And without intending any disrespect for my friends who do verification, there is a tendency towards tomorrow, your term being pedantic in verification to that you have to have, you know, okay, great. 100%. Right. And so there's a tension between these things. On the one hand, keeping in view the big picture. On the other hand, wanting, you know, verification at the ground level of all of the fissile material that's been produced. So Ben, as you think about, you know, constructing a monitoring and verification approach, you know, what are what are the important principles that you think, and that, you know, might reflect Chinese thinking about constructing that approach? Well, I would say it's, it's not a Chinese thinking, you know, I think, you know, we talk to experts from different countries. Many of them share the same view. That is, for example, when we look at whether or not an approach is a step is reversible or irreversible, we should look at the whole picture. In our report on the nuclear numberation of federal project, we divide the nuclear weapon program into five domains. Four technical domains, one political contextual domain. The first domain is physical material production. The second is nuclear weapon design and production. And the third is integration and delivery system. And the fourth is military deployment of nuclear weapons. And the political domain includes international commitment and some domestic arrangement. So we should, you know, make a calculation, you know, whether or not effort, progress would contribute to the development in the whole future a lot, or whether or not the effort would be irreversible according to the big picture. So it is nice that, you know, we make efforts in all different domains, in all different directions, on all different steps. That is very nice. But we would have to firstly, you know, begin with easy steps. And secondly, we would have to calculate the effect on the whole picture. I think that would be important. Ellie, so I know you had started down this road. There's a lot of uncertainty in this picture. And that, as I said, is intention with the desire to have as clear a picture as possible. So how do you imagine, you know, managing the uncertainty, particularly when the task, if you accept this comprehensive approach, is to monitor and then verify activities that we don't actually have a lot of past experience or even the technical toolkit to necessarily draw from. How do you manage the sort of political tension that comes there? A 60 second answer would be difficult to give. But let me say two things. First is just to build for a second on your earlier question. The delightful expert was not just working with you, but working with the Chinese experts to discover that if we leave aside issues of peacemaking and unification and denuclearization at the end, when we actually focus on the question of how do we make progress on arresting the program and beginning to roll it back, there was no light between us. I mean, there was a total convergence of opinions and so on. So I think this is a very, very refreshing observation of this experience, that there was a common language here and a common agenda. Specifically, and what it actually produced was a following approach that I know deviates from some of the orthodoxy in Washington, which says we want 100% certainty of verification capability on every single item. I think that in the earliest to medium stages of the process, our conclusion is this is impossible. However, and the however is equally important to the first part, we want humility to reach a conclusion that they are indeed complying with the deal and the one or two elements where there are some fractions or there might be friction, whether to be able to tell over time whether they are teething problems or they actually indicate something much more sinister in terms of intentions to walk back, hold back or things of that nature and so on. So by disaggregating to the program to so many components and creating a verification regime to cover every single one of them, we may get it wrong in parts on one of them. But just as I think Corey had talked about granularity and scope, that is the fundamental aspect that you marry the verification to every single one of those elements. And if they can, if they move ahead on one or two of them hold back, that would not be and they wouldn't be able to do such a comprehensive damage, certainly not quickly because they have to bring those elements together. So that's one aspect. The second again to try and weave in the realities of the DPRK, I think we see the first stage married to these U.S. capacity to monitor things from afar through use of tech national technical means. So if we insist on the bridling of the young beyond reactor, so they don't produce tritium and they don't produce more plutonium and so on, the U.S. could actually tell whether this is happening and so on. The DPRK represents a serious proliferation and offshore activity risk. So we have to do point of entry monitoring at all the points of entry of the DPRK to give you a second area which could be done regardless of whether the DPRK cooperates, but obviously it's cooperating, they get to benefit from a much smaller process. So that's a second element. And lastly, I think that in terms of the technical solutions as we understand and so on. For example, a lot of the technologies that have been deployed elsewhere rely on access to electricity. You know, that's not a forgone conclusion that there will be electricity or even solar light enough to actually do cover some of those things that are hidden in tunnels which you want to monitor. So that's not going to be easy and so on. However, if you try to look at this in its integrity, I think you would have a higher level of confidence. And clearly the key there is to start with some form of declaration and marry that. So basically we go the other way around. We start with saying what can we verify cumulatively? And then on that basis try to devise the deal to leave less room for haggling and ill will to emerge from this exercise. You want to defend the pedants on this? No, actually. I mean, I think there is a lot of misunderstanding about verification. And the biggest misunderstanding I think is that verification is an action whereas verification is a process. And I think that the process has room for uncertainty. I mean, it must. There is no 100% verification. 100% verification is an unreal circumstance. Or regime change. Even then. So the next one, the next guy comes in and what do you want to know about the previous program? I mean, that was some of the, you know, both positive and negative of the South African verification experience. I mean, obviously the... 17 years of a process. 17 years of a process to get the IA to the conclusion that they don't hide anything. With a regime, a new regime that was cooperative and that most had the going in assumption that they were not trying to hide a secret nuclear weapons program. And so, you know, I think that having, you know, building some realistic expectation in both the region and the public is actually important. And the other thing is that within a verification process, even with a cooperative partner, mistakes will be made, right? You might have a mistake recording a law, an activity law, you might have, you know, missed a file folder of documents. There has to be a process by which the level of information over time can be increased, elevated, and the confidence in the whole picture is built. And then on this point about where the verification is going to be a challenge, you know, when it comes to fissile material production, the production facilities, et cetera, I have a high degree of confidence that we have the tools in our toolkit to do what we need to do. But when it comes to the actual verified dismantlement of a weapon, we are not there yet because we haven't had to do that. And through the international partnership on nuclear disarmament verification, which is a project that the State Department leads, NTI is involved in, and is a partnership of 25 countries, they've been working for two years so far and have another two-year scope ahead of them that has, and they've broken down verified dismantlement of a nuclear weapon into a, as a 14-step process. And we don't have all the technical tools, procedures, approaches yet identified on how to do that. And so, you know, I would love for North Korea to be the cooperative test case on how we do this. But there are big questions, you know, who will do it because the IAEA is not the obvious answer. Obviously, within the, you know, the six parties we have three nuclear weapon states, maybe they're the ones who do it, maybe you have a P5 effort, there are a lot of different ways to think about it. But the point is this is another element in which the North Korean situation will be unique and the North Korean solution will have to be its own animal. Ben, the, I think there has been a conventional wisdom in Washington and sort of this picks up on this point about division of labor, but China has been the key to making maximum pressure effective, largely through the, you know, tighter implementation of UN Security Council sanctions. But my sense is that that thinking has not yet translated into what are the expectations going to be of China in implementing a deal to include on-ground activities and assistance and so forth. I'm curious to know, you know, if you have a sense of, you know, what you would like to see from a Chinese role to participate in this process, to continue to be sort of an indispensable partner and not just as before the kind of convener of the talks, if you will. Good question. I think the cooperation between China and the US states and other nuclear weapon states is very important, as Kowal just said, you know, when we dismantle North Korea's nuclear warhead missiles, the job would have to be done by some of them, not others, not IAEA. And so we need very good cooperation between China and the US states and maybe Russia and maybe UK and France. So that's very important. So firstly, I would encourage the Chinese government to develop good cooperation with US states on the whole process. And at the same time, I would also encourage the Chinese government to develop an independent roadmap. The reason that I believe an independent roadmap would contribute to the resilience of the process. You know, look at the JCPOA. So far, China and the US states have had very good cooperation on the implementation of JCPOA. But US states decide to leave, to withdraw from JCPOA, what should China do? Should China continue or should China leave that agreement too? So if China has an independent roadmap, that would change the calculation of other countries. So I believe that an independent Chinese roadmap would improve the resilience of the whole process of denuclearization. Corey, what's your sense about the sort of willingness here to define a division of labor or sort of a complementary approach that would involve Chinese experts and assistants in this process? Do you think there's openness to that? Absolutely. And I think there's going to be pressure on China to do that, in fact. I think there is a strong view that China needs to be a leader in this process, that China in some cases needs to maybe be more out front than they are comfortable being. In the end, will the US kind of agree to a negotiated outcome that China negotiates? Probably not, but will the US agree to a negotiated outcome where it is not confident that China will be an active and helpful participant, on the side that the US is on, and not be the advocate for North Korea? I think that will be, I think it will be vital, and frankly I think it will be vital to the success of the agreement, because I do think we've seen a more robust position by China that has contributed to the political environment in which North Korea has been willing to, again, with uncertain outcome, of course, been willing to take this next step of diplomacy. Ellie, I wanted to pick up on a earlier point that you started to make, and I wanted to strengthen it, and it's, I think, it relates to the different ideas that the US and China may have about North Korea, and you had started to highlight ways that we could address the status problem of North Korean weapons. So how can you imagine a building in an agreement with the US and China where we agree that certain kinds of steps or behaviors would be necessary in order to deny North Korea the status that they seek, or how do you mitigate the status seeking, and also then the coercive benefits of nuclear weapons that North Korea might be seeking to retain through this process? Let me put it this way, and I'll give a very personal view of that. I think the US and China differ some, and we could disagree whether it's, and I assume the next panel will actually deal with some of that aspect on what the end of the process looks like. Is there a unification? How does it do? What does it look like? Are US troops deployed on the Chinese border and things like that? Those are issues, and so on. But if you will leave aside the tail end of the process, and what kind of a vision we see for the Korean Peninsula at the end of the process, where, and so on, and we confine ourselves initially to a process which is supposed to prevent provocative behavior from taking place so the conflict doesn't escalate. By the way, regardless of whether there is progress at the summit, and perhaps even more importantly if there is no progress in the summit, and that we have to first and for most account for what's there, freeze it with an eye towards ultimately eliminating it. I think that China would be not just a natural partner and the expectation and so on. I think there is no fundamental disagreement between the US and so on. I think the Chinese would probably hold a mirror to the US face and say, well, but you also ought to refrain from certain things. Some of your exercises, some of your deployments in the ROK, some of the statements that you're making, talking about the Libya model is not going to be endearing the whole process to the Chinese who do not want to see the Libya collapsing after the removal of, the DPRK collapsing after removal of King Jogun, the way Libya had collapsed after removal of Gaddafi and so on. That is not going to endear the process to the Chinese government to say the least. But leaving that issue aside, I think we have a way of getting China and the U.S. to be aligned on the first two parts of the process in ways that are not inimical to U.S. in first but as Justice Corey had said actually enhance U.S. interests, get China of the feeling that they are part of the process. They also have to deliver on it, but they have a sense of what's going on, they're part of it, they derive some of the prestige of it, they get, if you wish, the credit for doing those things and so on, which builds the way of talking about the final step on what the nuclearization reunification, peacemaking and so on. And I remind everybody, there is a fourth-party talks, not just the six-party talks. The whole thing about, you know, moving beyond armistice to a comprehensive settlement is a four-party process, not a two-party process, or a six-party talks and so on. I would add in passing that there is a big issue out there of whether Russia is involved and I can't, and I don't think there is the same level of enthusiasm of having massive Russian involvement in this process, the way there is for Chinese involvement. But let me just put this as a teaser. Fair enough, we could maybe come back to that in the Q&A. So last question before we turn to the audience. So, Lee Bin had suggested that we might draw from the cooperative threat reduction or CTR experience looking backwards to apply some of those tools in North Korea. Corey NTI obviously is an organization that has a lot of experience with that, in particular, having Sam Nan and Richard Luger as kind of the figureheads of the non-Luger cooperative threat reduction and involved in the founding of NTI. As you think about the range of challenges if we do enter this process with North Korea, where can we apply the kinds of experience that we developed through the CTR program most effectively? So I think there are a number of things that are related to kind of the principles behind CTR as well as the specific actions that we could take some examples. And I think these are issues that really deserve further concentrated study and development in order, again, to develop what is the North Korea approach to this. I talk about cooperative threat reduction in this case with kind of the small CTR, right? So not just the limited to what was under the non-Luger legislation but what was the model that it set and how the activities are. You know, some of the guiding principles in particular that, you know, it built delay into the resumption of specific activities that we had concern about in the former Soviet Union. It created transparency for, you know, who were the people involved? What were the resources devoted? What were the facilities involved in some of these activities? It frankly, it increased that both the political and the financial cost on the part of the other party for if they would step back from certain agreements and it created international consequences especially to the extent that CTR kind of evolved into the G20, the global partnership model. It created lines of contact, frankly, where you actually had people on the ground with counterparts that when questions were raised they knew who they could talk to in the other country. And it also created win-win situations, which, you know, something I think the Chinese would like. They like win-win situations. And that's something that will be a challenge, I think. So I'll come back to that in a moment. So what are the types of projects? You could think about after a freeze, after verification, once the scope of what it will be allowed and permitted, and we really haven't talked about some of the issues related to, you know, do we have a common understanding about whether North Korea should be allowed to have a peaceful nuclear program on the other side of this negotiation, for example. So once you determine what will be allowed and what can continue, you know, you can do facility decommissioning, you can convert facilities cooperatively, you can have joint scientific and technical cooperation. That may involve scientist redirection. At one point, the North Koreans asserted that they had 200,000 people involved in their nuclear program. If you add in weaponization missiles, the rest, one could imagine that number growing. That said, I don't believe that number, but, you know, I think that there is probably a cadre of a few thousand people with key specific knowledge, but we do have to be realistic again about what this about the successes of scientist redirection in the former Soviet states. And I don't think that was a slam dunk. Maybe we can learn some lessons. We could remove materials and facilities. We can do environmental remediation to kind of claw back the legacy of some of these at some of these locations. And we couldn't be involved in commercial joint ventures that kind of that take some of the expertise and skills, for example, in machine tools and read and do something that that points that in another direction, which has multiple layered benefit. With all of this, though, the key to cooperative threat reduction is that the other party, you know, this is not adversarial, it's cooperative. So the other party has to see benefit out of it. That might be financial benefit. It might be stature or status reputation. And I'm not sure yet for the United States specifically, but maybe for all of the regional parties, how much they're willing to stomach in the form of providing incentives to North Korea and where in the process those incentives can comfortably come without, you know, feeling like they are either front loading an agreement or giving, you know, giving North Korea the benefits without reaping all of the threat reduction consequences. So, you know, I do think there's a fundamental principle of incentivization and again, having a positive benefit a win-win. And I'm not sure we have a common understanding about where we are on that. I think your point about what's left in North Korea is really key. And if there's a space launch program, if there's a, you know, nuclear research or nuclear energy program, then those start to create opportunities, but also create risks. I think if you look at the experience with the JCPOA and the safety assistance and work that the Europeans were going to do with Iran, that has become a bit of a lightning rod. I think it's, you know, that's something that we need to pay attention to. Ben, you had raised this point initially. I wonder, you know, is there thoughts in China about what North Korea should be left with? Is there comfort with with the nuclear energy and research program that China would want to facilitate or participate in or maybe even sell reactors to? I don't think in China we have had a debate on that issue. But even we did not allow North Korea to have civilian nuclear energy programs, space launch, a program we could still develop cooperative sort of reduction programs. For example, there are a lot of civilian programs that are not so much relevant to nuclear weapon programs. For example, nuclear treatment in in medical nuclear medical treatment that kind of thing, application of nuclear technology to agriculture and other industry. So we can still do a lot. And and besides that, I would suggest that we could develop such kind of centers on the territory of North Korea. We could also do that on the territory of its neighboring countries, for example, in China, in South Korea, or in some other countries. That would contribute to the regional economic integration. Toby, could I add one more point? Very quickly. Also, you know, one of the legacies of CTR is that it also dealt with missiles, especially in the non-Russian former Soviet republics, and it dealt with chemical weapons. And so to the extent that we think about a North Korean solution as being comprehensive across new chem, potentially bio missile, etc., there is also the opportunity for more of these pieces to come into place. That's a very good point. I think it's on the one hand easy to be a reductionist and say this is a nuclear problem, but clearly it's a much larger problem than that. So we'll now have time for a few questions. What I'd ask you to do is briefly state your name and your question or comment. If it's a comment, you know, shorter is better. If it's a question, if you have a particular panelist in mind, please ask. I saw you first. So we'll take a couple together and then we'll go from there. Thank you, Edward, if Stanford University. A question about existing agreements, I would think that we would push hard from the beginning that North Korea would rejoin the NPT, accept the additional protocol and also join the CTBT. Now its status in the NPT would be very tricky. Is it a nuclear weapon state? No. Is it a non-nuclear weapon state? That doesn't really work either. So probably some kind of new status would be necessary. And then a related question in the Iran negotiations, a major issue was that Iran insisted on having the full rights of a non-nuclear weapon state, in particular, the right to enrich uranium. That got papered over in the JCPOA, but it's clear that Iran won the substance of that debate. Do you foresee similar issues coming up with North Korea? Thank you. Okay. There's one immediately behind, just there. Thank you, Bob Peters, National Defense University. I applaud all the discussion about verification. It related mostly ever to the production of fissile material. I would offer that the harder piece of it is actually getting to the warheads themselves. If I were a defense planner, I'm not, but if I were, I'd be far more concerned about suspected warhead storage depots, missile garrisons, the Bimoas, potential launch sites, potential hide sites. How do you verify that there are no warheads at those sites? And who does that verification? It's unlikely that they'd accept, say, the 82nd Airborne going in there, but it's unlikely as well that we would accept, say, the KPA or even the PLA doing that kind of verification. So if they have a declaration that is far lower than what we think the actual number is when it comes to warheads, how do we get out of verification for those numbers? Because from a defense perspective, that's the much harder piece than getting at the long-term fissile material cutoff. That's a very good point. I saw one question back there, gentleman in a picture, yes. Hi, I'm Tim McDonald, a PhD candidate at MIT. I've got a question that sort of builds off Toby's first question, but maybe puts a little bit finer point on it insofar as it deals with the models that you use. So Toby asked, what's changed over the last 10 years? The finer version of that question, the sharper version, is why is the DPRK seemingly interested in negotiating now? That the subtext and a lot of your discussion seem to assume that they're negotiating from a position of weakness, that they're so crippled by sanctions their economy is so rotten that they just need to do something to change the status quo. And if that's the case, then maybe your model, you don't look at Iraq or Libya or South Africa, maybe your model is the Soviet Union circa 1989, 90, 91, 92. If, on the other hand, the North Koreans believe themselves to be negotiating from a position of strength, mission accomplished, we're now a nuclear armed state, we feel confident now, then your model is completely different. Maybe then your model is the Soviet Union circa 1972 and we're not negotiating something called denuclearization, although that may be the term of art at the moment, we're negotiating something more like strategic arms limitation. And so if we need to acknowledge that, maybe we should choose that model and start acknowledging that from the get-go. So do you have any sense for why they're doing what they're doing and maybe for Korea in particular, do you have any sense whether anybody in the United States government has a definitive answer to this, whatever that answer may be? Excellent. That's a good first round of questions. We'll come back and take a second round. So briefly, we've got what do we do about NPT and can North Korea rejoin? And if so, how, what kind of rights might they have to a peaceful nuclear program that Iran asserted, for instance, on Richmond? How are we going to do warhead verification when the numbers are uncertain? And then is, you know, what are the motivations for negotiation now and what kind of model does that imply? Who wants to go first? Let me jump in and offer three quick answers. First, on the last question, I would say we have a, they're not mutually inconsistent. I think they are under pressure because sanctions have been biting, but that doesn't even begin to get them to think seriously about the nuclearization. The nuclearization is, first of all, there is no newest nuclear threat in the peninsula. There are all kinds of other things. There is, I can't see Kim Jong-in giving up on his nuclear weapons. In fact, he wants the nuclear weapons recognized. You want the model? India. India, right? Yes, they're committed to the nuclearization, but they also wanted their nuclear status recognized. So just to actually calibrate our expectations. We do have some information that suggests, yes, there is a malaria epidemic. Yes, there are exports that have gone into the domestic market, have temporarily improved the situation, but have also costing them dearly and so on. So my answer is, we have both, we have, it's both, and they're not going to be easy negotiators. Cory had already alluded to that. Even before we talk about external influences, not to rush and attach some conditions that the US will find difficult. Second question, verification. The problem you've raised could be a deal stopper. Obviously. If we don't think that we should let this be a deal stopper, then the partial answer is, let's disaggregate the elements and let's find technical solutions that take away some of the gravity. So, separate the tells from the missiles. They transport the reactor launchers. Separate the warheads from the missiles. So you can actually monitor them, the missiles more easily than you can monitor the warheads. It's the mating of them. Separate the pits from the warheads. Separate the physical packages and so on and so forth. Not everything is verifiable, but they need to ultimately, if they want to deliver a capability, they have to mate them. So, demating from our perspective is the number one priority in terms of those capabilities and so on. Bear in mind one thing, and that is that we, it's sort of a previous talking, but previous agreements, we always have to allow for the possibility that whereas they will negotiate missiles and missile limitations, they will have developed UAVs, cruise missiles and artillery-based shells. So, let's not kid ourselves that by covering the missiles, we'll cover the whole delivery capability or even mount a nuclear weapon or ship. Just to give you the sense of the gravity of the problem we're facing. So we have to gradually do it, and that's why that's a desegregation here of every one of the elements, both on the infrastructure, on the sites, on the activities, and on their capabilities is so important. Lastly, to Ed Yeft's question. Ed, I don't see NPT relevant anytime soon because of exactly the issue you highlighted. I think CTBT would be relatively easy, but the verification regime may pose some issues that we will need to do, but one might be able to build on it. I think the most interesting question and the one that doesn't lend itself to immediate solution, notwithstanding everything we have already on the book, is with respect to how does one leverage safeguards of different types. And here the issue is, do we start with something which is site-specific? Let's say Yongbyon. And if that is based on implementation of what is a site-specific 66 or first applying partially 153, that's the full subscape guards as distinguished from the site-specific. Either way, I think we need to aim for an additional protocol, that's the 540, but I don't see that happening right away. I think it's over. What we need to create and sort of go back to a point that Cori had made earlier. We need to be creative to take the existing tools and tweak them to fit a career type, etc. And that means starting discussing those issues with the agency now, and I'm not talking the CIA, I'm talking the IEA, because that requires not just technical competence and creative minds within the agency, but also in its political organs, which is not a straightforward issue, as we're well aware from Iran negotiations, others. I think you guys want to add anything? Yes. For the verification, I believe that two approaches are very important. The first approach is that we would want North Korea to submit the record of their work. It is so difficult for them to cheat in this record. So this record could help us significantly improve the accuracy of verification, first. And the second, I would believe that the CTR program would provide a lot of clues for us to find a heightened facilities, materials, components. So it would not be easy for North Korea to hide the significant amount of physical materials. So that's my comment on the verification. And on North Korea's position today, I believe that their position, their motivations today are based on their perceptions, shared perceptions and perceptions about other things. When the North Koreans began to engage with people from other countries, their perceptions would change in positive or negative directions. If their perceptions, you know, change in the positive directions, then we would have better chance to change their objectives from, for example, nuclear freeze to denuclearization. So that's my comment. So just to add a couple of points on Ed's question, I am not comfortable with thinking about a new status for North Korea. So I do think that the, it's probably a longer term question. I hope there would be some statement about an of intent of what the future is for North Korean, you know, North Korea rejoining the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state. If denuclearization, as we have perceived it, is really the negotiated outcome. Agree on CTBT. But I think the additional protocol can be more of a tool in the nearer term maybe than Ellie does because I think that the process by which the additional protocol approach is undertaken in a country is actually one that is both parallel to and reinforcing of some of the verification objectives that we would already have. And so I think there might be a way to integrate that sooner. And that actually gets me to Bob's question about the warheads. You cannot have a fully reconciled thistle material inventory if you've taken the nuclear weapons off of the table because presumably there's thistle material in nuclear weapons. And so I do think, and I mentioned this 14 steps, you know, it starts with deployed weapons and ends with, you know, material in a container. And so you have to think about how you would approach both access, counting, measurement, monitoring, et cetera, all along that. And I think it's, it is going to be a tremendous challenge. And I, but I also think it's one that is worth undertaking. But Bin is right that if we get the records we would know what could be the size of the arsehole. Yes. Yeah. No, that's that's that would validate, validate that. And I won't speak to the position of strength or weakness. I will say that I think there are probably a lot of people in the United States government who think that they know what that is. I will also say that that I think North Korea is doing a very interesting thing right now. Just, you know, I'm watching the statements and what they're, what they're kind of pre agreeing to do before a negotiation even starts. What I find interesting is they are narrowing their negotiation space without requiring us to narrow ours. And I don't say that as a positive for us, frankly. I think they're already putting on the table what they're putting on the table and then they're going to negotiate us up and down. And as opposed to us all having a whole lot of stuff. And then we start, you know, passing the shells across. I've done a terrible job as a moderator and have left insufficient time to get into additional questions without eating into Jim's time for the next panel. So I apologize for that. But please join me in thanking these these folks for a good discussion. So we'll take a short break to reset. Please have a coffee, a drink of water and be back in 10 minutes or so. You can you can take it up with Jim.