There’s a scene near the end of the Tom Clancy book The Sum of All Fears in which U.S. scientists examine radioactive fallout from a nuclear detonation on U.S. soil and are able to identify the facility that processed the uranium that powered the bomb. As it turns out the facility was in the USA.

Hold that thought.

The recent announcement from Russia that they had launched a hypersonic missile against Ukraine reminded me of some sketchy incidents that occurred during the Obama administration. The first was in Geneva in 2009 when then-secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov a button with the word “Reset” written on it, along with the Russian Cyrillic version of the word. The button was of the type that is used in factories to trigger an emergency equipment stop. It turns out that the Russian word was misspelled and that it actually said “overload.” Clinton and Lavrov had a good laugh about it and rumor has it that the button is now on permanent display in a Russian museum as a symbol of American foolishness.

Fast forward to 2010. The FBI gathered evidence that Russian nuclear energy officials were engaged in bribery, extortion, and kickbacks to gain a foothold in America’s nuclear energy dealings. Knowing this, the Obama administration nevertheless approved the Rosatom/Uranium One deal which gave Russia control over 20% of U.S. uranium resources. Who was Secretary of State at the time? That’s right. Hillary Clinton. Evidently there was nothing illegal about the deal. But who got the short end of the stick?

Not so coincidentally, Russian energy officials had channeled millions of dollars to the U.S., which benefitted the Clinton’s charitable foundations at the same time that Hillary was serving on a committee that granted favorable decisions to Moscow.

Fast forward again. A Russian donor to the Clinton Foundation (seems like a theme) named Viktor Vekselberg was working on project called the Skolkovo Innovation Center, aka “The Skolkovo Project.” This was supposed to be the Russian equivalent of Silicon Valley. Building on their “Reset” with Russia, the U.S. State Department lobbied U.S. investment partners to help the Russian State Investment Fund identify American tech companies worthy of Russian investment. They attracted firms such as Google, Intel, and Cisco and many more who made major financial contributions to Skolkovo. By 2012 Skolkovo had 28 “Key Partners” from Russia, America and Europe.

And what do you know? Of those 28 key partners, 17 made financial commitments to the Clinton Foundation, totaling tens of millions of dollars, or they sponsored speeches by Bill Clinton.

In one of those, Bill Clinton received $500,000 for a 90-minute speech in Moscow from Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank with ties to Uranium One. Renaissance Capital executives just so happened to contribute $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.

As it turns out, the Skolkovo Project was involved in defense-related work, including -- wait for it -- hypersonic missile technology. An FBI spokesperson is on the record stating that, ““The [Skolkovo] foundation may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research development facilities and dual-use technologies with military and commercial application.”

The U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Program at Fort Leavenworth issued a report in 2013 about Skolkovo saying that it was “A vehicle for worldwide technology transfer to Russia in the areas of information technology, biomedicine, energy, satellite and space technology, and nuclear technology.”

Hypersonic missiles travel at speeds of Mach 5, or 3,710 mph. Some of them are maneuverable, which means that not only are they going incredibly fast, they’re evasive. They’re capable of carrying various payloads such as non-explosive loads, conventional explosives, or nuclear warheads. Even a non-explosive payload impacting at over 3,000 mph is going to leave a mark.  

Stopping a hypersonic missile poses unique challenges, and the U.S. is busily working on techniques to do just that, from missiles to directed energy weapons.

All of this raises two questions in my mind. First, why should Russia, or any nation for that matter, go to the trouble of spying on American research labs and attempt to steal their intellectual property if they’ll simply hand it over in exchange for cash? The second is, God forbid that if the U.S. or one of our allies is nuked, will the bomb be fueled by U.S. uranium and carried in a missile whose technology was delivered to our enemy by a former Secretary of State?

Image: AT via Magic Studio