When North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile on July 4, 2017, followed weeks later by a hydrogen bomb, the speed of its progress caught U.S. intelligence by surprise. That shock, as Lauren Cho explains in her analysis for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , was not a one-off failure but part of a recurring pattern that has left Washington reacting rather than anticipating.

Cho writes that North Korea has repeatedly outmanoeuvred U.S. agencies through two main tactics — deception and exploitation of bureaucracy. The regime shows what it wants the world to see, hides what it must, and manipulates timing to shape foreign perceptions. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence, slowed by rigid systems and old assumptions, often misreads the signals.

This is not new. From the 1994 Ag

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