My last book, “Confront and Conceal,” detailed the secret American-
and Israeli-led cyber attacks on Iran’s nuclear program using the Stuxnet worm, a sophisticated self-replicating malware computer program aimed at the kind of industrial equipment that controls nuclear facilities, among other sites.
A Eureka Moment for Two Times Reporters: North Korea’s Missile Launches Were Failing Too Often -
By DAVID E. SANGERMARCH 6, 2017
WASHINGTON — Times Insider delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how news, features and opinion come together at .
In the Washington bureau, Bill Hamilton, who oversees national security reporting, turned his editing talents to helping us shape a narrative
that mixed news, analysis and a long history of efforts to deal with a North Korean program that has bedeviled the last five presidents.
In documents and interviews, we found plenty of evidence
that North Korea was a target; the hard scientific problem was determining whether the cyber and other electronic attacks — and not engineering incompetence or insiders working for the West — were actually responsible for the failed launches.
It also meant going through those discussions about the program again, this time with a new administration
whose key officials had barely had time to understand their new jobs, much less develop a Korea strategy.
