The Things to Come

Moshe Sharon – Nov 26, 2007
Outpost

Everybody says that his donkey is a horse.
There is no tax on words.
(Two Arab proverbs)

On December 25th 1977, at the very beginning of the negotiations between Israel and Egypt in Ismailia, I had the opportunity to have a short discussion with Muhammad Anwar Sadat the president of Egypt. “Tell your Prime Minister, he said, that this is a bazaar; the merchandise is expensive.” I told my Prime Minister but he failed to abide by the rules of the bazaar. The failure was not unique to him. It is the failure of all the Israeli governments and the media.

On March 4, 1994, I published an article in The Jerusalem Post called “Novices in Negotiations.” The occasion was the conclusion of the Cairo Agreement. A short time later Yasser Arafat proved yet again that his signature was not worth the ink of his pen let alone the paper it was written on, and his word was worth even less. Then, as in every subsequent agreement, Israel was taken aback when her concessions became the basis for fresh Arab demands.

In Middle Eastern bazaar diplomacy, agreements are kept not because they are signed but because they are imposed. Besides, in the bazaar of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the two sides are not discussing the same merchandise. The Israelis wish to acquire peace based on the Arab-Muslim acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state. The objective of the Arabs is to annihilate the Jewish state, replace it with an Arab state, and get rid of the Jews.

To achieve their goal, the Arabs took to the battlefield and to bazaar diplomacy. The most important rule in the bazaar is that if the vendor knows that you desire to purchase a certain piece of merchandise, he will raise its price. The merchandise in question is “peace” and the Arabs give the impression that they actually have this merchandise and inflate its price, when in truth they do not have it at all.

This is the wisdom of the bazaar: if you are clever enough, you can sell nothing at a price. The Arabs sell words, they sign agreements, and they trade with vague promises, but are sure to receive generous down payments from eager buyers. In the bazaar only a foolish buyer pays for something he has never seen.
There is another rule in the market as well as across the negotiating table: the side that first presents his terms is bound to lose; the other side builds his next move using the open cards of his opponent as the starting point.

In all her negotiations with the Palestinian Arabs, Israel has rushed to offer plans, and was surprised to discover that after an agreement had been “concluded” it had become the basis for further demands.

Most amazing is the reaction in such cases. Israeli politicians, “experts” and the media eagerly provide “explanations” for the Arabs’ behavior. One of the most popular explanations is that these or other Arab pronouncements are “for internal use,” as if “internal use” does not count. Other explanations invoke “the Arab sensitivity to symbols,” “honor,” “matters of emotion” and other more patronizing sayings of this nature. Does Israel possess no “sensitivities” or does it have no honor? What does all this have to do with political encounters?

It is therefore essential, as the late President Sadat advised, to learn the rules of the oriental bazaar before venturing into the arena of bazaar diplomacy. The most important rule is the Roman saying: “If you want peace – prepare for war.” Never come to the negotiating table from a position of weakness. Your adversary should always know that you are strong and ready for war even more than you are ready for peace.

In the present situation in the Middle East and in the foreseeable future “peace” is an empty word. Israel should delete the word “peace” from its vocabulary together along with such phrases as “the price of peace” or “territory for peace.” For a hundred years the Jews have been begging the Arabs to sell them peace, ready to pay any price. They have received nothing, because the Arabs have no peace to sell, but they have still paid dearly. It must be said in all fairness that the Arabs have not made a secret of the fact that what they meant by the word “peace” was nothing more than a limited ceasefire for a limited period.

Since this is the situation, Israel should openly declare that it has decided to create a new state of affairs in the Middle East, compelling the Arab side to ask for peace and pay for it. Unlike the Arabs, Israel has this merchandise for sale.

From now on Israel should be the side demanding payment for peace. If the Arabs want peace, Israel should fix its price in real terms. The Arabs will pay if they reach the conclusion that Israel is so strong that they cannot destroy it. Because of this, Israel’s deterrent power is essential.

Therefore, if anyone asks Israel for plans, the answer should be: no “plans,” no “suggestions,” no “constructive ideas,” in fact no negotiations at all. If the Arab side wants to negotiate, let it present its plans and its “ideas.” If and when it does, the first Israeli reaction should always be “Unacceptable! Come up with better ones.”
If and when the time comes for serious negotiations, after the Arabs have lost all hope of annihilating the Jewish state, here are ten rules for bargaining in the Middle Eastern bazaar:

1. Never be the first to suggest anything to the other side. Never show any eagerness “to conclude a deal.” Let the opponent present his suggestions first.

2. Always reject, always disagree. Use the phrase: “Not meeting the minimum demands” and walk away, even a hundred times. A tough customer gets good prices.

3. Don’t rush to come up with counter-offers. There will always be time for that. Let the other side make amendments under the pressure of your total “disappointment.” Patience is the name of the game. “Haste is from Satan!”

4. Have your own plan ready in full, as detailed as possible, with the red lines completely defined. However, never show this or any other plan to a third party. It will reach your opponent quicker than you think. Weigh the other side’s suggestions against this plan.

5. Never change your detailed plan to meet the other side “half way.” Remember, there is no “half way.” The other side also has a master plan. Be ready to quit negotiations when you encounter stubbornness on the other side.

6. Never leave things unclear. Always avoid “creative phrasing” and “creative ideas” which are exactly what your Arab opponent wants. Remember the Arabs are masters of language. Playing with words is the Arab national sport. As in the market, so also at the negotiating table, always talk dollars and cents.

7. Always bear in mind that the other side will try to outsmart you by presenting major issues as unimportant details. Regard every detail as a vitally important issue. Never postpone any problem “for a later occasion.” If you do so, you will lose. Remember that your opponent is always looking for a reason to avoid honoring agreements.

8. Emotion belongs neither in the marketplace nor at the negotiating table. Friendly words as well as outbursts of anger, holding hands, kissing, touching cheeks and embracing should not be interpreted as representing policy.

9. Beware of popular beliefs about the Arabs and the Middle East – “Arab honor” for example. Remember, you have honor too, but this has nothing to do with the issues under negotiation. Never do or say anything because somebody has told you that it is “the custom.” If the Arab side finds out that you are playing the anthropologist he will take advantage of it.

10. Always remember that the goal of all negotiations is to make a profit. You should aim at making the highest profit in real terms. Remember that every gain is an asset for the future because there is always going to be “another round.”

The Arabs have been practicing negotiation tactics for more than 2000 years. They are the masters of words, and a mine of endless patience. In contrast, Israelis (and Westerners in general) want “quick results.” In this part of the world there are no quick results; the impatient one always loses.

Moshe Sharon is professor of Islamic History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

(This is part 1 of a 3 part Prophecy Update give at Calvary Chapel of Appleton Oct-Nov 2007. To order the audio CDs, call us at 920-735-1242.)

We live in a world of constant, phenomenal change.

Question: How many centuries did people live without electricity, mass transportation, mass communication? Answer: all of them. Until that last one, the one with all the wars and blood and stuff. Let’s see, doesn’t the Bible say that in the last days ‘knowledge shall increase’? Yes it does, it is one of the major signs of the end times, and possibly 1) the most overlooked one, and 2) the most understated one, and easiest to ‘prove’, as if the Bible needs any proving by the likes of me and you.

But here we are, on this end of so many inventions, gadgets, bells and whistles, noise and insanity, one has to wonder if this increase in knowledge is the one that will drive us all mad in the end.

And here we are, and all the gadgets do make life easier to SOME degree. I really enjoy my computer for things like communicating about Bible prophecy, and sometimes I wonder if there could be anything more revolutionary for the planet than the age of the personal computer – and I believe there is – and it is nearly upon us.

Why should this be of interest to us? Because the Bible tells us that in the last days there will be a a vast worldwide economic infrastructure in place that will make it possible to number and track every person and their buying and selling habits. Even people who never cracked a Bible have heard of 666 and the mark of the beast. But we really are the first generation that can honestly say we can conceive of such a thing; compared to the many centuries of low-tech living that have gone before, our wireless and interconnected lifestyle would be unrecognizable to the generations before us. A world system that revolves around buying and selling is very conceivable, and when combined with cutting edge technology, I think it really gets a bit creepy.

How did we get here?

Way back in 1875, a gentleman named Herman Hollerith studied engineering at Columbia University, the very same Columbia that hosted Ahmadinejad last month, and entertained Nazi sympathizers in the ‘30s, but that’s a different story. Upon his graduation, Mr. Hollerith took a job with the US Census Bureau in 1880. At that time, America was growing rapidly and the government felt that for this particular census, there was a great need for someone to come up with a solution to analyzing the large amounts of data that the US wanted to collect on it’s growing population. They realized that with all the new immigrants, it could easily take longer to count everyone by hand than the actual 10 years between each Census. So, they held a contest to see what the bright minds of the day could come up with. While he was a professor at MIT in 1882, he began experimenting with what we call a ‘punch card’ type of system for analyzing data.

The cards were known as “Hollerith Cards”. When fed into a card-reading machine, they could tabulate and record such data as name, number of children, address, country of origin, etc. They were used in the 1890 Census which took only 1 year to complete, an amazing feat for the time; They were also used at Ellis Island to record information on each immigrant as well – greatly speeding up the process of blending 8 million new citizens into the American landscape. His Hollerith Cards and calculating machines became the foundation for The Computer Tabulating and Recording Company in 1911, renamed “International Business Machines” or IBM, in 1924. Hollerith is regarded as the father of modern automatic computation, and several decades later, we have computer chips in wristwatches that are more powerful than the ones that sent men to the moon. I must admit that baffles me a bit. We are so accustomed to thinking we need computers for every little thing, and sending men into orbit is probably one of the more difficult things to accomplish on any given day!

But now with a company like IBM part of corporate America, we can move confidently forward that our ‘increase of knowledge’ will continue unabated for decades to come. And with the addition of radio wave technology and the miniaturizing of computer chips, we arrive at a point in time, and be the first generation to say so, in which the Bible’s prediction of a world where we can number and track every single human being.

Kevin Ashton was working for Proctor & Gamble in Europe in 1997 marketing things like Oil of Olay and their new line of lipstick. He found the marketing part pretty easy, as people were already aware of the brand name – but he soon found that the problem of keeping a certain very popular shade of lipstick on the shelf brought a completely different challenge.

His research for a method of supply-line tracking took him into the world of RFID, or ‘radio frequency identification’. RFID technology was already being used for things like cashless highway toll collection and remote starters for cars, but was not being applied in the vast world of buying and selling. The marriage of the computer with radio waves was about to become reality, and affect our world in ways we are only beginning to understand.

RFID tags are made up of a tiny microchip with a flat coiled antenna. A special reader is then used to send radio waves to the tag, and the chip beams back the information that was programmed into it. By now everyone is familiar with the current ID system, the bar code. I remember when those things started showing up on everything in sight, and wondered why I had never heard of them or what their use was. But it appears that radio-frequency tags are poised to take over and also take buying and selling to a whole new level, which I will get into later.

But here is the application part of the technology: placing these RFID chips into or onto every single item bought and sold in the world. Just think for a second about all the goods manufactured and sold in this world, and the task of identifying them with a chip – that alone is mind-boggling – but take it even further – the chips be incorporated into nails, beads, wires, fibers, or even painted pictures or words – eventually even the period at the end of a sentence. This gives a whole new and frightening meaning to surveillance and brings up serious privacy issues. Could our Bibles one day be chipped unbeknownst to ourselves? RFID chips could be put into your shoes, your jeans, your tires, your passport, your meds, your work uniform, any of your groceries – and be completely undetectable until a reader activates it. And this is exactly what influential people in retail envision for our future. And this part you already know: these very same chips can also be implanted into humans.

Now this is where it gets kind of creepy for me: now inanimate objects have the ability to communicate with manufacturers, retailers, or each other. Hollywood often presents the idea that the next big techno-leap would be a form of artificial intelligence where computers would come to the point of understanding the physical world around them, and thinking independently. How many futuristic movies center around the android that can reason and move and talk to humans? Well, with RFID, that is not necessary – instead of having a computer look around and decipher our world, what if the objects in our world were simply able to identify themselves to the computer? A Bible with a chip in it would just tell the computer that the Bible was in the room, and with whom, or that a can of Coke was in the room, or any one of thousands of other items. Major corporations are convinced this will revolutionize retail, and are spending unholy amounts of money to make this a reality in the near future. In fact, Walmart, which was just named the top Fortune 500 company of the year, is leading the way in RFID application. They are requiring their top 100 suppliers to manage their cargo with RFID chips, thereby forcing suppliers to invest in the technology, and pushing the implementation of RFID forward rather quickly.

With RFID, each tagged item could have a unique identifying number not even shared with items similar to itself. The P&G’s Auto-ID center not only came up with the chip technology, but also a unique numbering system that is so vast it could number every item produced on earth for the next 1000 years – with no repeats. After much research, they came up with a 96-bit code for numbering. Technically, that is 2 to the 96th power, and suffice it to say, it is enough to number 80 thousand trillion trillion objects. It would only take a 33 bit system to number 6 billion humans, so this system is more than adequate to take global finance, and trafficking in humans, to a whole new level.

The new identifying tags are called EPC codes, or ‘electronic product codes’.

Now, to implement this vision,
RFID tags would have to be on everything,
Tag readers would have to be everywhere;
Then you would need a mode of communication where the information on the tags is available to be read in real time, anywhere on earth. Now, what do we already have in place that is used daily by millions of people wirelessly all over the world, and functions in real time? Why, the internet of course. But the one they envision using is not the current Internet network, but a new, massive upgrade, which will encompass something called the Internet of Things.

MIT tells us that on this new internet, each individual tagged item would have it’s own webpage with the history of the item’s existence. Verisign, the company that handles Webpage addresses, or domain names, for the entire internet has already agreed to oversee addressing for the Internet of Things. Instead of domain names, it will be the name of an object, like a can of Coke. There will be no limit to the amount of info that could be stored this way – which is mind-boggling in itself. Consider that the 2004 information database for Walmart contains twice as much data as the entire Internet, this gives you a small idea of what we are looking at.

This is a huge conference coming up in Zurich, Switzerland next Spring, in anticipation of a new Internet ‘architecture’ as they call it, expected to be rolled out next year. Instead of a possible 4 billion web addresses, (which is not enough for the current planetary population and it’s cell phones and PDAs) there will be a possible duodecillion….that’s a number with 39 digits…and if you want to translate that to a physical measurement, it will allow for a heptillion sites per meter of the earth’s surface. That’s a 24-digit number folks, so that whatever man conceives of tracking can be a reality.

Here is a stunning quote from the European Union’s latest report on the “Internet of Things” :
“The Internet of Things represents a ‘fusion of the physical and digital worlds.’ It creates a map of the real world within the virtual world. The computer’s view of the physical world need not reflect a human view of the real world, but can free itself of constraints imposed by the limitations of human understanding.” – In other words, the Internet of Things will be able to reach autonomously into the real world. They claim it will be able to interact with the physical world and influence it, without any humans pressing any buttons. It will be an interactive part of the humans’ environment. It is mind-boggling, and it is almost a reality.

Here is a quote from the Auto-ID Center’s vision statement: “We have a clear vision – to create a world where every object – from jumbo jets to sewing needles – is linked to the Internet. Compelling as this vision is, it is only achievable if this system is adopted by everyone everywhere – Success will be nothing less than global adoption” (Helen Duce, Auto-ID Center associate director)

What started out as a quiet research project at MIT in 1999 has exploded into a huge corporate endeavor with the likes of Wal-Mart, International Paper, Home Depot, Intel, Pepsi, Coke, Target, Best Buy, Gillette, Kodak, UPS, Phillip Morris, the US Postal Service the Department of Defense, and the FDA signing on as sponsors. So now that they have a new global standard for item identification, they have passed control of the chips over to the Uniform Code Council, the company that manages the entire bar code system.

There is so much more I could relate to you about this, but stay tuned for part 2.

The article that follows is from Lighthouse Trails, they have said what I have been planning to post for a week or so.

When I read about some ‘repentance’ stance from Willow Creek, I believed it not even for a minute. Willow Creek, one of the largest and most influential churches in the nation, has done an about face regarding it’s ministry style and focus? That part I believed. It’s what followed that I was highly skeptical about – that they would return to some simpler Biblical focus and teaching the pure milk of the Word. I think that is what a lot of folks WANTED and HOPED for, but in this Laodicean age, not very practical. I also considered the sheer numbers of who they are: and I simply did not believe that they would give up the huge amounts of money they have, and the prestige of the liberal world/church/social gospel to possibly settle for a mass exodus both in people and funds, counting the cost of true cross-led Christianity as we are all called to do. I believe that they want to keep up with Saddleback and would never ever go any direction that they did not feel wasn’t ‘cutting edge’ by today’s (worldly) church standards.

So, I went to their website, read their current Willow Creek Magazine, and saw all the buzzwords worthy of an emergent path. Do they really think we are so ignorant of the enemy’s schemes to draw people from a pure gospel and the hope of His return that so permeates today’s churches? I also found out they are having Brian McLaren next Spring to draw the youth in too. So, I couldn’t believe that they were going to switch ministry in half stream and still invite the likes of that heretic. Yep, we said long ago that seeker-sensitive pap does not work, apparently they agree with us finally. But that is where our agreement with Willow Creek ends.

Now, don’t think for a minute I wouldn’t have LOVED to be wrong about this. Lest ye think I revel in any cynical approach to stories like this, I wish to drive home that am but a realist in the times in which we live. I am not shocked by this, I expected it. I am not shocked by movies such as “The Golden Compass”, and I do not call them junk because the enemy uses these things to deceive. I am not shocked by anything anymore, and I could list multiple shockers in the news these days. Stay tuned, and thanks Lighthouse Trails for putting this article out.

Recently, headlines about Willow Creek filled the home pages of several online news outlets. The caption stated: “A Shocking Confession from Willow Creek Community Church.” Some wondered if Willow Creek’s pastor Bill Hybels was repenting from past errors in ministry techniques.1 But a Lighthouse Trails commentary showed that this “shocking confession” was actually a re-enforcement of Willow Creek’s efforts to “transform this planet” through contemplative and emerging spiritualities. The LT commentary stated:

School District Orders Parents to Appear in Court for Failure to Immunize

By CULLEN DIRNER

Nov. 14, 2007 —

A Maryland school district has ordered parents of more than 2,300 students to court Saturday for failure to immunize their children. The parents could face fines and jail time if they do not appear.

The students, in grades five through 10, will be required to report to court with their parents. While students can expect to be vaccinated before they leave the courthouse, parents will be lectured to by Circuit Court Judge Philip Nichols Jr. on the necessity of vaccination. Those who fail to appear face fines of $50 a day and up to 10 days in jail.

According to Prince George’s County Schools spokesman John White, the students were required to receive two shots before Sept. 20: one for hepatitis B and the other for the chickenpox. Parents who did not meet the deadline for both shots were asked not to bring their children to school until they were immunized or provided proof of an immunization appointment.

White said students still continue to show up at school without having received the shots or providing proof of an appointment. The parents were also asked to sign a consent form allowing the schools to provide the necessary vaccinations, White said.

“This shows you how redundant our attempts have been. In many cases kids still have to come to school, and when they come to pick their child up, they are asked if they could sign the consent, and in some cases they don’t sign it,” said White.

According to Prince George’s County Schools, neglecting to have a child vaccinated is not the norm. Out of 132,000 students in the county school system, 2,300 students have been tardy in meeting the immunization deadline. “The majority of parents have done the right thing,” said White.

A Nationwide Survey of Vaccination

Despite discrepancies in state immunization laws, the nationwide vaccination rate is approximately 95 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. William Schaffner, a professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, says that on the whole, “we’re doing a very good job vaccinating children.”

“We vaccinate infants and insist that children be vaccinated before they attend day care and kindergarten. So, by the time they enter kindergarten, more than 90 percent of the children are well-vaccinated against a whole spectrum of communicable diseases,” said Schaffner.

According to Schaffner, the responsibility to vaccinate children lies on the shoulders of the parents.

“When we bring children into the world, responsibilities go with that. These parents have had ample opportunities. The vaccine is available. They could have organized to do this. So shame on them,” he said.

Circuit Court Judge Philip Nichols Jr. was asked by the school board to send out the letters to the parents ordering them to court. With the help of the school district and the county health board, the Circuit Court gathered all the tools necessary to immunize all the children Saturday. The plan is to get the students back in school.

“They asked me to ask everybody who has a child who isn’t going to school to explain to them how important it is to go to school,” Nichols explained.

Nichols said that by working with the school board on this issue, he hopes it will teach the students lifelong lessons about the importance of staying in school and the importance of preventing bad habits — the kind that would send them back to the courts — from forming. “It is a lot of kids not going to school for something that is easy to fix,” Nichols said.

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

By Hal Lindsey

“This Perfect Day” takes place in some artificially perfect global utopia (reminiscent of Orwell’s “Big Brother” society) in which uniformity is the defining feature and ethnic differences are abolished. In Levin’s creation, there are only four names for men and four for women, and last names are an alpha-numeric code. Everyone eats “totalcakes,” drinks “cokes” and wears exactly the same thing – every day.

The world is ruled by a central computer called UniComp, which has been programmed to keep every single human on the surface of the earth in check. People are continually drugged by means of regular injections so that they can never realize their potential as humans. They are told where to live, when to eat, whom to marry, when to reproduce and which job they will be trained for.

Everyone is assigned a counselor who acts somewhat like a mentor, confessor and parole agent. All violations against “brothers” and “sisters” must be reported at a monthly confession meeting.

In this society, children learn to pray to their gods: “Christ, Marx, Wood and Wei, lead us to this perfect day, Marx, Christ, Wei and Wood, make us happy, make us good.”

That’s enough about the novel’s plotline to make my point – it was more horror than science fiction. The science exists – it is what gets done with it that is more horror than fiction.

A news report that has just come to my attention is even more horrible than fiction. It is about a young North Korean man named Shin Dong Hyuk who recently escaped from a prison camp in North Korea’s infamous “Total Control Zone,” and it immediately brought Ira Levin’s novel to my mind.

North Korea’s prison camps are divided into two zones. One is the “Revolutionizing Zone” where those of little threat to Pyongyang’s regime are “re-educated.” After a period of forced labor, they may eventually be re-integrated into society.

Then there is the “Total Control Zone.” This is where those deemed incorrigible are sent. Once banished to the Total Control Zone, it is a life sentence. Until now, nothing was known in the outside world about the Total Control Zone.

Shin Dong Hyuk was born in the Total Control Zone. His parents were inmates. Here’s a brief description of this world and how he came to be in it.

His parents were given the “highest reward” possible for inmates “fortunate” enough to be considered “exemplary.” Two exemplary inmates are selected for “marriage” and permitted to share a “marriage cottage” for five days. They are then separated, but permitted another five days on special occasions like the Great Leader’s birthday.

Shin Dong Hyuk was the product of one such union.

At age 11, he was separated from his mother and put in a barracks with others his own age. He says his only memories were the windows covered with plastic and regular meals of corn and cabbage soup.

When Shin was 13, his mother and brother were caught trying to escape. They were publicly executed. His brother was shot and his mother strangled to death. Shin was forced to sit in the first row and watch.

At his mother and brother’s execution, he testified that he could only remember one emotion toward them – fury! Why? Because he knew rules. The zone leaders would punish him to atone for his family’s sins.

Shin was subsequently tortured in many ways, including being barbequed over a grill to the point of near death while skewered with a meat hook near the groin to hold him still. Then one of his fingers was amputated above the knuckle.

He said this sort of thing was all he knew or expected. In the only world he ever knew, that was the appropriate punishment. In his world, children were routinely beaten to death in front of him for stealing five grains of rice. He had no concept of another world in which civility and caring existed.

In 2004, he met a prisoner who had escaped to China, but had been recaptured and repatriated. He was the first to tell him that such another world existed. So in January 2005, motivated “more by curiosity” than anything else, Shin joined his new friend in a fresh escape attempt.

Shin made it. His friend didn’t. He was electrocuted trying to get by the security wire. Shin had to crawl over his dead friend’s body to shield himself from the electric current. He eventually managed to make his way into China where he sought refuge at South Korea’s consulate in Shanghai. His testimony there stunned even human rights groups well-acquainted with North Korean barbarity.

Actually, it should stun the entire civilized world – even a world already acquainted with such North Korean practices as stringing repatriated prisoners together by jamming a stiff wire through their collarbones. This is a practice so repulsive that anyone assigned to turn over a defector to the North Koreans considers it a disciplinary detail.

I don’t believe that Ira Levin could have crafted a more horrifying fictional reality.

There is a very important lesson Western leaders should learn from this unveiling of the North Korean leadership’s sadistically cruel, psychotic minds. People with a mentality like this should never be allowed to have their finger on the trigger of nuclear tipped ICBMs, especially with the range to hit the USA and Europe.