Smoking Skillet

by Ron Foster

  Smoking Skillet

  Ron Foster

  Alabama, USA

  © 20017 by Ron Foster

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13:

  978-1981717422

  ISBN-10:

  1981717420

  Printed in the United States of America.

  How To Win The War Without Direct Conflict

  The news headlines that everyone had been reading for months now said pretty much the same thing and referred to the basic rhetoric saber rattling going on of "North Korea: Trump and Kim call each other mad" Kim Jong Un had said that remarks by the allegedly “deranged" U.S. President Donald Trump had convinced him that he was right to be developing nuclear weapons for North Korea’s self preservation. That was the whole ticket in a nutshell in his opinion because rocket man was seen in the media regularly brandishing the biggest gun in his arsenal he had at the world allegedly because of his fears of a military invasion by South Korea and the United States.

  In other words Kim Jong’s country’s line in the sand was to go nuclear if we did anything to him at all militarily and he was going to hide behind this substantial threat as Supreme Leader of his people and hurl insults and provocations at the world until the war games stopped on his borders. He was supposedly using these threats to influence political actions behind the safe cover his demonstrations of possessing nuclear missiles of sufficient range to reach any continent and hoped the world would be afraid of his nuclear retaliation enough to get his way. In Kim’s eyes he needed to keep developing nukes to stay in power and be left alone in his hermit kingdom and there was a little something to that. Of course there was a lot to be said for preventing him to do so by a lot of nations.

  Mr. Trump responded that the belligerent "North Korean madman... will be tested like never before" if he didn’t stop going down this path. That threat was made before that bastard Kim started making up his own vexing test questions and putting America’s military and political doctrine leaders to the test. Questions that were aimed directly at Washington and that the hermit kingdoms leader knew that the US was most likely pretty much unprepared to handle as he bought more time to prepare his country for war or get his way possibly.

  A whole bunch of clever little terrorist pop quizzes and distractions were devised by Kim’s armed forces and intelligence agencies in the form of guerilla tactics designed to add fuel to the fire and upset America’s apple cart while denying any fault or guilt by North Korea. Kim Jong Un was secretly preparing for a major “category one” cyber attack as payback for all the sanctions on his country among other things.

  This new attack he was planning was much bigger in comparison to the WannaCry ransom ware virus attack that he had previously unleashed and had already hit the British government badly. This prior economic attack was only considered as a “category three or four” cyber event and this time he had more than getting money for his war chest in his sights. He would claim no credit for the next cyber attack of course, just as he had denied the last and profited mightily he thought.

  China as usual didn’t say shit about their troublesome neighbors threatening antics towards the world but made a statement; China responded to the war of escalating threats and retaliatory words, warning that the situation was "complicated and sensitive" and that America should be more diplomatic.

  Russia also urged American restraint, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov describing the rhetoric between the two leaders as a "kindergarten fight between children" but like a belligerent classmate they and China relished the thought of egging things on in their own way from the outer circle of a possible fight as instigating observers.

  North Korea has been testing and developing missiles recently at an unprecedented rate. They had already conducted their sixth nuclear test despite all the international condemnation and imposed sanctions. North Korea already had about every sanction imaginable imposed on it and the country itself lacked the power to impose any political or economic revenge on others until its military could hatch a new diabolical plan.

  North Korea threatened, roared and saber rattled as its leader tried to bluff its way out of the corner that they had backed themselves into demonstrating their nuclear capability. The plan North Korea had come up to lash out once again with was somewhat simple on its surface, it would impose its own misery and financial woes on other countries that had imposed their wills upon it with sanctions But it would be very subtle about it at first and hide behind layers of plausible deniability while it played its chaotic games to keep its leader in power.

  Instead of just a simmering pot waiting to boil over into war through world politics, he would turn up the heat and leave a smoking skillet on the burner waiting to erupt into an unquenchable grease fire at the slightest flash point. America was already embroiled in conflicts and various disputes worldwide were distracting its war weary citizens so Iran thought also that this was a good time to take a page out of Korea’s playbook and start testing its own missiles and once again advertising its nuclear intentions.

  The Trump administration was due to announce the details of its strategy vis-à-vis Iran around the end of September but knowing that Trump being a strong hawkish president probably wasn’t going to give in to any demands like the lily livered Obama had previously on their nuclear aspirations, they decided to go back to threatening and awaited the inevitable sanctions so that they could go do business openly with North Korea. Iran could plot and scheme on the demise of the “Great Satan” while using proxy henchman Korea and the hundreds of terrorist groups they already funded in the Middle East and elsewhere.

  North Korea's foreign minister set the ultimate game ball in play for a cosmic confrontation when he reported that the nation may set off the "most powerful" hydrogen bomb detonation ever in the Pacific. No other details were provided like yield, but at face value everyone assumed such a blast would be 1,000 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bombing. Chinese intelligence was now saying they thought North Korea may have as many as 40-60 nuclear devices of various explosive powers as Russia reminded publicly the US that two of their top generals had already warned that the Russian plans for a Super EMP weapon had already somehow found their way into Kim Jong Un’s hands. Behind closed doors at the Pentagon our own intelligence agencies had warned the same for things for years but our Nation’s electrical grid remained unprotected

  The North Koreans had just taken this war of words up to a whole different level of threat. North Korea has set off several powerful nuclear test blasts in recent years, but they had all occurred deep inside a mountain. A nuclear explosion in the air, on the ground, underwater, or in space has not happened in decades in the modern world and international treaties are in place to hopefully never allow this type of testing to happen again. America knew that if North Korea sets off an above-ground nuclear explosion — and the most powerful one ever detonated in the Pacific its probable effects.

  The Cold War's deep and involved rich history of America’s and Russia’s atomic test blasts suggests what might surely happen should such an event occur, particularly in regards to this much more technology dependant world. The Pentagon knew that class was officially in session for real now and scrambled all its resources to come up with an answer as to what America would do if Kim ever dared for such a thing to occur. If North Korea detonated a nuclear device 200 kilometers or so above the Earth in order to create an electromagnetic pulse, would the U.S. counterstrike North Korea with conventional and perhaps even multiple nuclear weapons? That option as certainly on the table but no one in the world wanted that outcome.

  The problem with nuclear test explosions for one is that they create radioactive fallout. Space detonations come with their own risks, including a more widespread electr
omagnetic pulse. Now Kim Jong Un knew an EMP attack over or near U.S., Japanese, or South Korean territory is a physical attack that would wreak havoc with communications, the power grid, and civilian physical infrastructure and get massive retaliation. He wasn’t going to do anything as foolish as that, he didn’t have too, just the threat and demonstrated capability might get the desired responses.

  However in his mind if America could test its nuclear weapons over the remote pacific than why couldn’t he? Why couldn’t he do it way away from the main countries as a demonstration of his countries super power? His advisors explained timidly to him that atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons can lead to multiple dangerous scenarios and pushed their thoughts about using plans from Russia’s Cold war playbook to seek his status and revenge alternatively.

  They asked their Great Leader to please remember that Soviet Premier Khrushchev- had said “We will take America without firing a shot ...We do not have to invade the U.S. - We will destroy you from within...” It was quite dangerous for his military advisors to try to sway Kim Jong Un’s mind away from anything but his newly found knowledge of this great EMP weapon but this quote helped them to sell him on another idea to bring America to its knees for now as they developed bigger stronger weapons.

  This coaxing and nudging him to seek other venues and schemes they hoped took the risk out of the threat of themselves possibly getting nuked to oblivion in return for pushing America too far should the psychotic leader get his way.

  A war of attrition was already going on everywhere at a scale unimaginable, it occurred at every level and included all nations. When people have nothing to lose they often times lose it, Kim had everything to lose if he miscalculated America’s resolve. As long as he didn’t cause a international incident that caused America to use its first strike or second strike conventional or nuclear capabilities he was in his megalomaniac mind winning on all fronts, regardless of his nations multitude of starving suffering people..

  If his followers were starving from economic and trade sanctions, he figured then the opposing nations should suffer the same fates in return he decided before the day he would ultimately destroy them. He could start with the resources he already had on hand unleash “cybergeddon,” and cause trillion-dollar losses, infrastructure collapse, societal break down on those governments that currently opposed him. They would feel the financial sorrows and hunger pains that his people had felt for years under his communist regime he decided.

  Kim Jong Un didn’t have any lack of imagination or advice for that matter when it came to achieving that task, it was rather simple really and the Americans had already provided him and everyone else on the dark net with lots of cyber warfare tools to mess up the worlds financial markets and get paid to do it. He would use the enemy’s weapons of war against themselves.

  The UN Banking sanctions weren’t hurting North Korea much except on the surface and the murky normal channels of world finance and commerce. The WannaCry ransomware attack was his first act of implementing his nefarious plans against the US and its allies to impose economic and infrastructure hardships.

  On May 2017 a worldwide cyber attack by the WannaCry ransomware cryptoworm, which targeted computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system by encrypting data and demanding ransom payments in the Bit coin crypto currency was executed. Lots of people considered that information has to be a bit suspect and that this was a big false flag ploy by the US government led by the SEC and other concerned elite parties to discredit Bitcoin by association. The ransom demanded by American intelligence agency software is demanded in Bitcoin after all. The general public just assumed it was asked to pay this way because it was supposedly an untraceable form of payment and not a lot was said about an alphabet agencies hacking tools getting hacked.

  Now China at the same time was doing its own economic thing mucking up the financial and securities markets coming up with its own new currency, one that was actually physically gold backed and was going to be used to replace the FIAT or un asset backed American petro dollar for purchases. Saddam Hussein thought about doing just that that and you know what happened to him when the industrialists and elitists decided they couldn’t have that hard tangible asset currency succeed. Losing the monopoly on oil and gold futures trading and payments based on nothing more than printing presses and promises didn’t sit well the operators of such monetary manipulations. The economists said the dollar would crash. The elites who fund and profit from wars made their move.

  The accusations that China and Russia are hacking the world for political influence and finance and focusing on the U.S.A were everywhere in the news now and with Iran and a number of other pissed off Middle eastern nations and terrorist groups all trying their hands at hacking this push shove cyberwar for money and power on the internet as battleground, one might consider this war could go on forever with no clear enemy of the state being directly punished.

  Yes indeed earlier on you might remember I said that Bitcoin was chosen for payment of the ransom because it is supposedly a measure of exchange easy to set up and is a technically anonymous banking transaction, but those in the community all know this isn’t true.

  All Bitcoin transactions leave a trail… Kim Jong Un knew this fact but since the whole hacking community had the same programs and capability he had to operate with besides his own software he may or may not released like the Americans evidently said oops and had, then deniability wasn’t a problem. It was hard to directly confront North Korea of having caused all the damage that was occurring on the internet networks and indeed it was the admitted American spy agencies own software that was being used by more than one several high profile individuals and proxies as well as state sponsored groups to get on this cash cow of hacking for money or influence.

  If bit coin was discredited or could be traced to NK it was only a mythical digital number to Kim Jong and no real loss of physical wealth, in the meantime his country still made digital money as long as people accepted it for rice imports etc. If need be he could hack or EMP the whole thing and the world would spiral into financial collapse and be as poor as he was in the end Kim figured. “Mess with him how dare they? He would have his just revenge and they would pay tribute” the hermit kingdom ruler thought.

  The malware attack unleashed by North Korea and others paralyzed computers in factories, banks, government agencies and transport systems, hitting 200,000 victims in more than 150 countries. The US couldn’t say it was a state sponsored act using its own software directed by NK. The US National Security Agency believes with “moderate confidence” that the ransomware, called WannaCry, came from hackers sponsored by North Korea’s spy agency. Notice they said sponsored by and not committed by. Hell there are hackers for hire world wide and the Middle East as well as Russia, China etc. who all have their own software programs as well as state sponsored cyberwarfare and intelligence gathering agencies the same as the US as well as their deniable rogue agents.

  The WannaCry malware relied on leaked American NSA agency code, so it doesn’t entirely prove North Korea’s hacking acumen or program creation either. However the country has repeatedly been involved in major hacking incidents over the past few years. In the US, most notably, it was said to be responsible for the 2014 breach of Sony Pictures for making a derogatory movie about the leaders of North Korea. And the NSA says it was linked last year to several thefts from banks throughout Asia to raise funds to prop up its sanctioned finances and loss of revenues from exports and imports. Electronic bank robbery is nothing new these days. You can get your bank account depleted buying gas at a local station that has had a credit card skimmer attached to the pumps or an ATM for that matter.

  Messing with a countries infrastructure instead of just hacking in to gain intelligence or corporate manufacturing secrets is a different matter. The rewards and reasoning’s are different and it becomes an act of preparing for war. Kim Jong Un’s cyber war games continue to escalate in complexity and effects as technic
ians tried to keep up with encroaching probes and threats to gas lines, water systems, electrical substations, oil pipelines, trucking and food distribution systems etc.. Kim Jong’s military and intelligence operatives continue to hit infrastructure targets around the globe of the heartlands of countries every minute practicing and refining techniques for the day when full scale cyber war at the World War Three level is declared.

  When the National Security Agency lost control of the software behind the WannaCry cyber attack, it was like "the U.S. military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen," Microsoft President Brad Smith said.

  Everybody heard about this fiasco for about a week and then things went quite. Did we false flag ourselves? Who knows really? Somebody got a lot of money to buy a lot more hacking software and employ a lot more hackers though. Technology is a wonderful thing if used and applied responsibly but it appears to be a self prorogating threat that mere mortal man cannot control his need or abuse of at this time. Now with AI or artificial intelligence being put into the programs we begin to fear our own machines and their impact on our survival as they begin to think for themselves.

  Cyber warfare isn’t the only way to mess with digital data. The internet is full of a plethora of plans to create devices made from stuff that you can buy from a hardware store and disable computers at varying range, depending on size at various distances or total impact area. There are plans for small EMP pulse generators to cause even more damage as well as the assembly principles and lists of necessary materials on the black market and dark web to make EMP bombs that use conventional munitions and can take out a whole cities infrastructure.