Jeffrey Lewis (4:57)

This is a missile that can take not just one, but many warheads all the way from North Korea to the United States.

Dena Temple Raston (5:04)

That is the nightmare scenario. The US could defend against a single warhead heading for a US city, but lots of them fired at the same time. Probably not for the heavily sanctioned and isolated North Korea. Nuclear weapons are self preservation. Kim Jong Un figures that countries with these kinds of arsenals don't get invaded. And there have been whispers about this so called monster missile for years though most people doubted a missile like that could even be launched. And then just a few years ago, North Korea fired a suspected long range ballistic missile toward the sea this morning.

Jeffrey Lewis (5:42)

This type of missile is designed to carry nuclear warheads and could reach the United States.

Dena Temple Raston (5:48)

North Korea celebrated the launch in the most modern of ways. They posted a video about it online.

Jeffrey Lewis (5:59)

You know, it was this really overproduced video to say that the missile had worked.

Dena Temple Raston (6:05)

The footage is unintentionally hilarious. Kim Jong Un is wearing a top gun like leather jacket and he's walking in slow motion.

Jeffrey Lewis (6:14)

They had Kim Jong Un like looking dramatically at his watch, wearing crazy sunglasses.

Dena Temple Raston (6:22)

This is from the video. Kim Jong Un is flanked by two generals and an enormous mobile Launch vehicle is slowly trailing along behind them like an obedient attack dog. The video shows the missile powering up. And then about four minutes in liftoff, there's smoke. The missile rises into the air. The music swells. Then the camera cuts to Kim and a bunch of generals punching the air and applauding. And the thing about a video like this is that it's hard to know if it was just propaganda or a real threat. And harder still when it's from a country you basically can't even visit. But if Kim had indeed succeeded in launching the monster missile, the world needed to know. This is exactly the kind of mystery Jeffrey Lewis and his team live for. So the moment that video was released, they began poring over it for clues.

Jeffrey Lewis (7:26)

Does this look right? It's very difficult to verify anything. I know. This is so confusing. This is sparking our interest.

Dena Temple Raston (7:31)

This doesn't seem like it matches Jeffrey Lewis. Interest in these kinds of issues runs deep. He used to help study this at the Defense Department. And the continuous theme running through a lot of his North Korea work is figuring out when Pyongyang is lying.

Jeffrey Lewis (7:48)

And we know that North Korea doesn't always tell us the truth.

Dena Temple Raston (7:51)

But the good news, Jeffrey knows, is that even a lie can be revealing.

Jeffrey Lewis (7:56)

When you catch someone in a lie, then you've learned something really interesting about what they care about. You know what they want you to think, and you know what they want you to not know.

Dena Temple Raston (8:05)

Like, for example, the way Kim dissembles about a particular part of his anatomy.

Jeffrey Lewis (8:10)

My favorite thing that North Korea loves to lie about, which they've stopped doing. So I'm a little disappointed. But they always used to adjust the size of Kim Jong Un's ears.

Dena Temple Raston (8:22)

It seems Kim wants the world to think he has delicate little ears.

Jeffrey Lewis (8:26)

His ears look totally normal to me. I don't. I don't. I don't see what the problem is. But, you know, maybe you should see a therapist about that.

Dena Temple Raston (8:40)

It's a small thing, sure, almost silly, but it points to something bigger. Because when a regime is willing to lie about something as trivial and as visible as the size of a leader's ears, it raises a harder question. What else are they editing out of the picture? And that's where Jeffrey Lewis and his team come in. Because North Korea controls every camera, every broadcast, every official image. So you have to go looking for the one perspective it can't quite censor the view from above. Tiny, inexpensive Earth imaging powerhouses delivering data on demand. Satellite imagery used to belong almost exclusively to governments now there are dozens of companies selling it, not just to states, but to researchers, journalists and organizations, ordinary people.

Jeffrey Lewis (9:36)

One of the things that's changed about satellite imagery over the past decade or two is that is now there is so much of it, and with so much of it, you actually kind of get some choices.

Dena Temple Raston (9:48)

Broadly speaking, those choices fall into two categories. High and medium resolution images each have their own trade offs. If you want a very high resolution image, you can only get a picture of a very small area.

Jeffrey Lewis (10:02)

It is like looking at the Earth through a drinking straw.

Dena Temple Raston (10:06)

So you need to know exactly what you're looking for and exactly where to look. Satellites that take moderate resolution images have less precision, but more reach.

Jeffrey Lewis (10:17)

They try to take a picture of the whole Earth every day at about 3 meters in resolution. And so that gives you a ton of coverage.

Dena Temple Raston (10:26)

You can use that kind of broad coverage to take photos over time and turn that into a kind of time lapse photography, which then tells where to zoom in.

Jeffrey Lewis (10:35)

You try to watch all the moderate resolution stuff that you're getting all the time so that you know to say, oh, hey, look, something's interesting happening here. Go take a high resolution picture.

Dena Temple Raston (10:45)

Jeffrey and his team are pretty confident that they could do that with the alleged monster missile launch because they'd done it before. A few years earlier, Pyongyang released pictures of Kim Jong Un touring a ballistic missile factory. And it was their usual bluster. But in the midst of their bravado, they accidentally dropped a clue. A small detail Jeffrey's team noticed in the background of the photos was a map. And it suggested that this missile factory was about to undergo a huge expansion. So Jeffrey's team tasked a high resolution satellite to look for the factory and take some pictures. And they did. They found it, and they began to watch it over time.

Jeffrey Lewis (11:28)

When we found the place he visited, they had not started the expansion yet. So it was just this tiny, tiny, tiny little facility.

Dena Temple Raston (11:36)

But over the course of several months, the satellite images showed North Korea knocking down structures and building new ones from that one tiny detail on a map to the satellites in the sky, to suspicions confirmed. So it allowed Jeffrey and his team to announce to the world this expansion is happening. That kind of information helps governments plan for the future, shape defense strategies, and make decisions that can otherwise be hard to make about secretive and unpredictable regimes like North Korea's. So when Jeffrey and his team saw the monster missile launch video, they found themselves with perhaps their most important mission to date. Help the world decide if North Korea was bluffing or if the country had just announced one of the most dangerous developments on the Korean Peninsula in decades. This one would require not just satellite analysis, but more of an Ocean's eleven team approach.

Jeffrey Lewis (12:37)

My name is Lisa Levina.

Dena Temple Raston (12:39)

I'm also a graduate research assistant here.

Jeffrey Lewis (12:40)

Steven Delafuente, John Ford, Tricia White, Michael Dutzman.

Dena Temple Raston (12:44)

And you're Ben, right? Yes. And they called you Mr. Computer.

Jeffrey Lewis (12:49)

Walking computer, I think Trisha said.

Dena Temple Raston (12:56)

Everyone in the team specializes. Ben, the human computer. He micro examines satellite images. Lisa Lavina speaks Korean and models rockets. Tricia White, among other things, finds clues in social media. John Ford has this incredible ability to remember if he's seen something before and then actually place it.

Jeffrey Lewis (13:17)

Something that just came out earlier today to John Kim Jong Un sitting at a really big table and he's like, oh, is that in this place? I'm like, yes it is. Because he knows that exact table.

Dena Temple Raston (13:26)

He knows when we come back how Lewis and his team caught Kim Jong Un in a big lie. Stay with us. Support for Click Here comes from Quince Are you working on your capsule wardrobe? Quince has you covered. Quince is all about elevated, effortless essentials that are designed for layering and mixing. They've got all the essentials you need to build a timeless wardrobe that will last season after season. Quince uses the highest quality materials. The stitching, fit and fabric speak for themselves with versatile silhouettes and thoughtful details. You'll find low key luxury for every occasion. Luxe cotton cashmere blends perfect for changing seasons. Premium denim made with stretch for all day comfort. These are the pieces you'll reach for over and over. And for me, as a conscientious consumer, what stands out most is that Quince works directly with safe, ethical factories. Not only does that make me feel good about what I wear from Quince, it means they have cut out the middleman. So I'm not paying for a brand markup just for high quality clothing. My new cashmere quarter zip sweater is my favorite sweater. I'm reaching for it all the time. Super soft, great fit. I love it. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Don't wait. Go to quince.com clickhere for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q u I n c-e.com clickhere to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com clickhere support for click here comes from Factor don't beat yourself up for not eating better. Eliminate the reasons you don't. If you're too busy to meal plan. Let Factor deliver a healthy diet right to your door. No grocery shopping, cooking or cleanup. Just heat for two minutes and eat. Factor is designed by dietitians and ready made by chefs. Always fresh, never frozen, their meals are what you would make if you had the time. Lean proteins, healthy fats, colorful vegetables and whole food ingredients. No refined sugars, artificial sweeteners or refined seed oils. Personally, I love the Ginger Teriyaki Burger. The sauce is awesome and so easy, even for super busy people. But you can choose from 100 rotating meals every week in categories like Calorie, Smart, Mediterranean and a new MusclePro collection for strength and recovery. Head to FactorMeals.com clickhere50OFF and use your code clickhere50OFF to get 50% off your first Factor box. Plus free breakfast for a year offer only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with Factor if.

Jeffrey Lewis (16:30)

There was a big red button that would just demolish the Internet, I would smash that button with my forehead. From the BBC, this is the Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work, your politics, your everyday life, and all the bizarre ways people are using the Internet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get.

Dena Temple Raston (16:59)

Your podcasts you're listening to, click here. I'm Dina Temple. Rest When Jeffrey first started watching North Korea back in the 90s, its nuclear ambitions were a bit of a joke.

Jeffrey Lewis (17:14)

We thought they wanted a nuclear weapon, but it wasn't all that clear that they could actually get to the point of having one. And it was a threat that we kind of thought of as being abstract and a thing we'd like to prevent or but not something that felt pressing.

Dena Temple Raston (17:27)

Turns out a lot of people were wrong about that. It was pressing. And today North Korea has an extremely large and well developed missile program.

Jeffrey Lewis (17:36)

They used to name the missiles after local places. Pretty soon they ran out of towns and just started numbering them. And we're up into the 30s now and North Korea has done six nuclear tests. And so at least for someone like me, there is no doubt that North Korea can put a nuclear warhead on a missile and send it all the way to the United States.

Dena Temple Raston (17:58)

As soon as the propaganda video dropped, the team went to work. They began going through the video frame by frame, looking for micro clues, working.

Jeffrey Lewis (18:08)

Together as a team and bouncing ideas off each other like does this look weird, or is this kind of normal? Like, is this expected or is this unexpected? Is this something that makes sense, or am I just reading into it?

Dena Temple Raston (18:20)

They also kept a close eye online to see if there were other clues popping up. And one day, they noticed a random article by a journalist in South Korea named Collin zorko. He thought something was a little fishy about the monster missile launch.

Jeffrey Lewis (18:34)

This guy, Collins zwerko, was the first person who said, I don't think this is right. And that's music to our ears because that is like waving a red flag at a bull. And my whole team was like, well, let's check that out.

Dena Temple Raston (18:48)

So they started with something you might not immediately think would be a great clue. The shadows in the video.

Jeffrey Lewis (18:55)

There are tools online that you can use to measure the angle of the sun at a particular time of day and determine which direction the shadow should fall.

Dena Temple Raston (19:08)

That's Michael Dudesman. He used to work with Jeffrey Lewis on these kinds of projects. And his detective specialty is in measuring shadows, which can tell you a lot about a satellite image or, say, a propaganda video.

Jeffrey Lewis (19:21)

We could compare the direction the shadow would fall at the two different launch times and determine how that compared with what was seen in the video.

Dena Temple Raston (19:35)

Because if north Korea claims the missile was launched, say, in the morning, the sun should be in one place and the shadows should fall a certain way. But as Michael looked closer, something felt off. The shadows seemed to kind of jump around, almost like a time lapsed photography video.

Jeffrey Lewis (19:53)

I do remember being in the office and Jeffrey slamming his hand on the.

Dena Temple Raston (19:56)

Desk and thinking this was like a really big deal. Does he slam his hand on the desk a lot?

Jeffrey Lewis (20:03)

Occasionally.

Dena Temple Raston (20:05)

In a good excitement, Right?

Jeffrey Lewis (20:06)

Yeah.

Dena Temple Raston (20:07)

Why would flickering shadows get Michael and the team excited? Because they might indicate that the video had been doctored in some way. Spliced together, perhaps to hide something. So they started looking for another kind of evidence, this time in the satellite photos. They pulled up images of the airfield before the alleged launch as a kind of baseline. What did the place look like before anything was supposed to have happened? Jeffrey called up one of those images on his computer for me.

Jeffrey Lewis (20:38)

You can see all the same buildings. You can see the same fields. The road looks the same.

Dena Temple Raston (20:44)

At first glance, everything seemed normal. But then they noticed one big difference.

Jeffrey Lewis (20:50)

And the truck is gone. But there's a black kind of smear.

Dena Temple Raston (20:58)

That's when things stop making sense. Because this image was taken before the launch. And yet that dark smear looked exactly like the kind of burn mark you'd expect after A missile takes off in the moment.

Jeffrey Lewis (21:12)

I was like, oh my God.

Dena Temple Raston (21:15)

And there was this other thing, the monster missile, the way it flew in the video, it wasn't what they expected. Michael Dutzman again.

Jeffrey Lewis (21:23)

And knowing what we did about the engine and the propellants and everything else, we expected it to accelerate at a certain rate, and it accelerated slower than that, which was kind of a red flag. Either our model was wrong or there was something wrong with the missile.

Dena Temple Raston (21:46)

So they lined up their clues. The shadows that didn't match the time of day, the burn mark that appeared before the launch, the missile acceleration that was a little off. And then Jeffrey had a realization.

Jeffrey Lewis (22:00)

They tested two missiles in March.

Dena Temple Raston (22:03)

One that didn't work, and then one that did.

Jeffrey Lewis (22:06)

The simplest answer is that they launched the big one on the 16th. They filmed it. Kim Jong Un was there, but it blew up, so they couldn't announce it. So they came back. A few days later, they launched a different missile that they were pretty sure would work.

Dena Temple Raston (22:25)

In other words, the monster missile launch, it failed. So a week later, Kim filmed a non monster missile he knew would work. And the North Koreans just spliced together the two videos. Footage of the monster missile just parading around, and then footage of the successful non monster missile launched a week later.

Jeffrey Lewis (22:46)

In order to imply it had worked.

Dena Temple Raston (22:48)

All the clues taken together were a smoking gun.

Jeffrey Lewis (22:53)

It's almost like you went and looked at Kim Jong Un and you asked him like, hey, did you eat those brownies? And he says, no, I don't know who did it, but he's got chocolate smeared all over his face.

Dena Temple Raston (23:06)

It was a significant discovery. If the so called monster missile was real, truly functional, it would have marked a dangerous turn in the global arms race. But Jeffrey and his team of tech detectives could now say something just as consequential. That it wasn't real. What looked like evidence turned out to be an illusion. Shifting shadows, mislabeled smudges. A story the image was trying to lead you to believe. And in a nuclear age, knowing what isn't true can matter just as much as knowing what is. Because false certainty changes calculations. It raises threat levels. It nudges the world closer to the brink. As we said earlier, this kind of investigation once happened in secret. Inside governments. Officials would spot Soviet missiles moving into Cuba. Or decades later, nearly 200,000 Russian troops massing along Ukraine's border. The public might hear about it afterward, if at all. But technology has changed that. Today, these investigations happen in the open, which means the next time North Korea wants to project Power. The audience isn't just governments. It's all of us. This is click here. Museums are more than places we visit on a field trip across the country. Museums protect our shared history, care for wildlife and collections, strengthen local economies, support job training, and spark curiosity in people of all ages. Right now, you can help make sure museums stay strong for future generations. Museum Advocacy Day is a national moment when people contact Congress to ask for continued support for museums and the federal agencies that fund them. Learn how to take action at AAM and tell your representatives that museums matter to education, to communities, to the economy, and to our democracy.

Jeffrey Lewis (25:18)

Looking for more of the cybersecurity and intelligence coverage you get on? Click here, Then check out our sister publication the Record from Recorded Future News. You'll get breaking cyber news from reporters in New York, Washington, London and Kyiv, among others, and you'll see for yourself why it attracts hundreds of thousands of page views every month. Just go to the Record Media.

Dena Temple Raston (25:45)

Here are some of the top tech stories making news this week. It's Tuesday, February 17th.

Jeffrey Lewis (25:52)

There's new concerns over the safety of artificial intelligence after the head of Anthropic's AI safety resigned, writing the world is in peril.

Dena Temple Raston (26:02)

A senior safety researcher at Anthropic, the AI company behind the chatbot Claude, has resigned, warning publicly that the technology poses serious risks. The researcher, Maurenaik Sharma, has been studying two sensitive why chatbots tend to shower users with praise and how AI systems could be misused to design biological weapons. In his resignation letter, Sharma said employees often face pressure to set aside their values and that the world is threatened not just by AI, but by what he called a web of interconnected crises. Reports suggest that even Anthropic's own internal tests raised some troubling results. For example, in one scenario, the company's chatbot Claude, was told it would soon be phased out and was given access to compromising information about the person making that decision. Decision Claude chose to blackmail in most simulations. In another test, a hypothetical person was trapped in a server room, and Claude chose not to ring the alarm. One anonymous Anthropic researcher was quoted in the New Yorker as saying, maybe we should just stop. Sharma says he's leaving the tech industry altogether. He plans to study poetry in the United Kingdom and, in his words, become invisible. And full disclosure here. Anthropic is a financial supporter of this program through paid advertising. That support does not influence our editorial decisions or coverage. Dutch police have arrested a third suspect in an international cybercrime investigation involving a tool designed to defeat one time passwords, the security codes that many people rely on to protect bank accounts and email. Authorities say the 21 year old suspect allegedly distributed software known as Joker OTP. The tool allowed criminals to intercept those verification codes by tricking victims directly. It used automated phone calls that appeared to come from banks or payment companies, warning that criminals were trying to access the victim's account. Callers then asked for the one time password, supposedly to secure the account, and used it instead to break in. Police say the suspect sold access to the software through Telegram and that he was carrying license keys for the program when he was arrested. The arrest follows earlier operations in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, where authorities detained the system's developer and co developer last year. According to UK police. Joker OTP was used more than 28,000 times across the 13 countries over the past two years, with losses totaling at least $10 million.

Jeffrey Lewis (28:47)

Russia is clamping down on another global tech giant. This time it's WhatsApp.

Dena Temple Raston (28:53)

Millions of Russians were abruptly cut off from WhatsApp last week as the Kremlin continues its crackdown on foreign technology platforms. The Meta owned messaging service has more than 100 million users in Russia. Officials are now steering those users toward a state backed alternative called Max, a messaging app modeled on China's WeChat that does not offer end to end encryption. Critics warn the app could function as a surveillance tool. Facebook and Instagram have already been banned in Russia on allegations of extremism and are only accessible through virtual private networks. A Kremlin spokesman said Meta could resume operations operations if it complied with Russian laws and norms. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russian regulators have been steadily increasing pressure on messaging services that operate outside government control. Access to Telegram, widely used by both Russian forces and civilians near the border for drone and missile alerts, has also reportedly slowed. Russia argues foreign platforms facilitate fraud and refuse to store user data inside the country. WhatsApp says it will continue working to keep users connected, warning that restricting secure communication could make people less safe. Meanwhile, Russia has begun pre installing the state approved Macs app on new digital devices sold in the country, effectively guaranteeing it a massive user base. And finally, the Winter Olympics kicked off this month. And while many skating fans had their eyes on American favorites Madison Chalk and Evan Bates, another pair got people talking not for their costumes or for their lifts, but for their music.

Jeffrey Lewis (30:36)

The broadcaster mentioned they were dancing to an AI generated track.

Dena Temple Raston (30:41)

In ice dance, teams perform two routines. The rhythm dance this year, themed around the 1990s, is usually a blast of nostalgia. Spice Girls Lenny Kravitz songs you instantly recognize, but the Czech brother sister duo Katerina Morozova and Daniel Murozek chose something stranger. They skated to a mashup of ACDC's Thunderstruck and an AI generated song built to sound like a lost Bon Jovi track, complete with synthetic vocals that eerily mimic his voice. AI music isn't banned under Olympic rules. Still, the choice made some people uneasy because the song didn't just feel inspired by 90s rock, it sounded almost too familiar, raising questions about whether AI is creating something new or just remixing what already exists. The judges, for their part, focused on the skating. The Czech pair finished 17th. Click Here is a production of Recorded Future News and prx. Today's show was written and produced by Megan Dietre, Sean Powers, Erica Gaeda, Zach Hirsch and Casey Giorgi. It was edited by Karen Duffin and Sarah Covedo and fact checked by Darren Ancrum. Original music is by Ben Levingston, with additional music from Blue Dot sessions. Our staff writer is Lucas Riley, our illustrator is Megan Gough, and our sound designers and engineers are Jake Cook and Jesse Niswonger. Find us on X or Facebook at Click Here. Show or leave us a voice message at 6615CHTalk. Sometimes we'll turn those moments into reporting, sometimes into a conversation, and sometimes into a future story you'll hear on this show. I'm Dena Temple Raston, and thanks for listening. Support for this program comes from Recorded Future. In cybersecurity, the biggest risk isn't what can be seen, it's what gets missed. Recorded Future analyzes billions of signals to help organizations stay ahead of threats. Recorded Future Know what matters, act first.

Jeffrey Lewis (32:58)

If you're looking for a daily guide to cybersecurity news and policy, sign up for the Cyber Daily from Recorded Future News. It serves up today's most interesting and important cyber stories from our sister publication the Record, and then aggregates all of the big cyber stories you might have missed from news outlets around the world. Just go to the Record Media and click on Cyber Daily to get all you need to know about the world of cybersecurity right in your inbox.