A Missing Scientist and China’s Underground Nuclear Secrets

Hi everyone, welcome. Welcome to Lei's Real Talk. All right, it's the weekend edition of Lei's Real Talk, Lei's Saturday Night Live. Hopefully, I'm not competing with the World Cup. Well, actually, the game is over. Today's game is over. We're just waiting for tomorrow. All right, let's get to the bottom of the question. Was it an earthquake or was it a nuclear test? Deep beneath the mountains and deserts of China, the ground sometimes moves without warning. Seismic monitors detect a sudden shock. The signal is small, the location is remote, and to the outside world, it may look like nothing more than a minor natural earthquake. But what if it was not natural? What if the tremor came from a nuclear weapon detonated deep underground and deliberately engineered to escape detection? Such is not a pure fabrication. So, on July 13th, an exclusive Reuters report revealed a case that may expose one of the darkest secrets of Beijing. The most secretive struggles between the US and China is illustrated in that article. It's essentially a hidden war over underground nuclear testing. At the center of that story is a 54-year-old Chinese-born American seismologist. His name is Chen Youlin. Chen had been a naturalized American citizen for 13 years. In November 2024, after completing an academic visit to China, he arrived at Beijing's airport and prepared to board a flight back to Boston. He never made it onto the plane. Just before departure, Chinese state security agents took him away. He later disappeared into a secret detention facility and was charged with espionage. Now, according to his family, he was subjected to more than 100 rounds of interrogation. He was deprived of proper medical treatment or medication and adequate food. He reportedly lost 30 to 40 pounds in weight. So, you may ask, what did the Chinese state security want from him? He's a seismologist. Why interrogate him 100 times? While he was not carrying classified documents, his published research that his wife said was based on publicly available data, the real target may have been something far more valuable—the knowledge inside his head. He had developed a highly sensitive seismic algorithm, a kind of underground light detector capable of distinguishing a natural earthquake from a concealed nuclear explosion. So, even if a country attempted to muffle a nuke test deep beneath the earth and disguise it as a small tremor, his technology might still detect the difference. His research became extremely valuable to Beijing, and that leads to the real question behind the case. Was Beijing trying to find out how much the US can hear beneath the ground? Was it trying to learn whether secret tests at China's nuclear facilities could already be detected? Or was it trying to use China's knowledge to make future nuclear explosions even harder to find? The case has reached the highest levels of the US government. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly made China's release a top diplomatic priority. President Trump raised his name directly with Xi Jinping during their last meeting in Beijing. Why would the fate of one seismologist become an issue between the leaders of the world's two most powerful countries? Because this may not be an ordinary case. It may be part of a hidden nuclear arms struggle taking place beneath our feet. So, we're going to ask one unsettling question tonight. When the ground shakes in China, is it an earthquake or a nuke test? Before we answer that, let me first return to the scientist here, Mr. Chen Youlin. I have a better picture of him. There he is. Now, his field of research is highly specialised. He studies these seismic signatures produced by North Korea's nuclear tests. And you may think that's strange because North Korea is the country secretly detonating nuclear weapons underground. So, why would the Chinese be so interested in something related to North Korea? To understand the mystery behind those interrogations, 100 of them, we need to first understand how underground nuclear tests work. Since the international community adopted the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, it has become nearly impossible for any country to detonate a nuclear weapon on the ground. In the atmosphere or beneath the ocean without the world noticing. Satellites are watching from above. Radioactive particles drift through the air. Evidence will be detected almost immediately. So, if a country wants to secretly develop and test a new nuclear weapon today, its best option is to go deep underground and conduct an underground nuclear test. But can an underground nuclear test really remain completely undetected? The answer is, it's extremely difficult. The moment a nuclear weapon explodes beneath the ground, it creates an enormous shock or an enormous shock wave that rapidly travels outward. Seismic stations positioned around the world act like extraordinarily sensitive ears, listening for even the smallest movement beneath the earth. A natural earthquake and a man-made nuclear explosion leave very different seismic fingerprints. So, they are different. An earthquake begins with sections of the earth crust slowly grind against one another and then suddenly rupture. The energy builds and is released through a more complex process, producing one type of pattern on what do you call that? It's called a seismograph. A nuclear explosion is different. It releases a devastating amount of energy almost instantly from a single point. So, it produces a much sharper and more abrupt signal. So, by studying these characteristics, scientists around the world can determine whether a seismic event was a natural earthquake or an underground explosion. Over the past several decades, North Korea has conducted six underground nuclear tests. Every one of them was detected by the national community. But for every weapon, there is eventually a countermeasure. And for every countermeasure, there's also a concealment. There is a technology known as decoupling technology. That term is now very popular with different shades of meaning, the word decoupling. But it was actually a technology developed during the Cold War. It's an extraordinary method of concealment for nuclear testing. And back then, it was highly technical. The word decoupling has a different meaning now. So, the idea is that if a nuclear weapon is buried directly inside an isolated hollow chamber, spherical chamber, deep underground, and suspending the nuclear device in the center of that space, meaning the nuke weapon is decoupled from the surrounding earth, it's detached, it's decoupled. Then when the device is detonated, this is where the physics changes. At the moment of the explosion, the most destructive shock or the most destructive shockwave first expands into the empty space inside the cavern. Instead of immediately striking solid rock, much of its force is buffered and absorbed as it moves through the open cavity. By the time the remaining energy reaches the walls of the cavern, the shockwave has already lost much of its strength. And the seismic signal that eventually passes through the rock and reaches the surface can be weakened by many times. So, it might look like, and in real practice, it might look like a minor natural earthquake with a magnitude of only two, so small that it attracts almost no attention. Scientists and intelligence experts have described this method of concealment as a kind of perfect crime beneath the earth. And the research conducted by our protagonist, Mr. Chen Youlin, may be precisely what could expose the perfect crime. In a paper published in December 2020, Mr. Chen examined the seismic magnitudes of North Korea's six known nuclear tests and studied how their seismic characteristics could be distinguished from ordinary earthquakes. Using large amounts of publicly available data, he developed an extremely sophisticated algorithmic model. You could think of it as a highly advanced light detector for the underground world. How sensitive is it? Even if a country used the most advanced nuclear silencing technology and attempted to disguise an explosion as a natural earthquake, Chen's algorithm might still be able to identify the tiny irregularities hidden inside the weakened seismic noise. It can reveal whether the event was actually an underground nuke test or not. Now, perhaps you're beginning to understand why the Chinese state or Chinese state security apparatus has interrogated him more than a hundred times. If this highly advanced underground light detector could expose North Korea's hidden nuclear tests, Beijing may have been wondering whether it could also detect China's own nuclear test signals. So, at this point, the story may sound like science fiction, but it's not science fiction. It's a real strategic concern. There have long been claims that nuclear-related facilities are hidden beneath the mountains of southwestern China. In fact, questions have been raised for years about some of the earthquakes that frequently occurred in the mountains or in the mountainous regions of western China. Were they entirely natural disasters or could some have been connected to underground nuclear activity? The most famous case is the devastating Wenchang earthquake in Sichuan in 2008. After the 2008 Wenchang earthquake, rumors emerged suggesting that the disaster might somehow have been connected to underground nuclear facilities or testing. So, let me tell you a little bit about the Wenchang earthquake. It took place at 2.28 p.m. on May 12, 2008. The magnitude was 7.9, and it ruptured the Longmen Mountains along the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. The shaking lasted for nearly two minutes and was felt across much of China and even in neighboring countries. It was China's deadliest earthquake since the 1976 Tangshan earthquake and one of the deadliest earthquakes of modern era. Officially, the official numbers recorded almost 70,000 confirmed deaths, while over 18,000 people remained missing and were presumed dead, bringing the total death toll to about 88,000. But I think that number is understated. There were more than 374,000 people injured, millions lost their homes, and entire townships were buried beneath collapsed buildings and massive landslides. Now, the disaster became especially notorious because thousands of school children died when poorly constructed classrooms, later known as doufu zha, tofu-dragged school buildings, collapsed around them. So here are some pictures. Now, the CCP rejected offers of humanitarian assistance from the international community. At the same time, rumors began circulating about possible radiation leaks in the region, prompting some people to connect those concerns with Beijing's refusal to accept foreign aid. After the earthquake, a number of international reports suggested that the Longmen Mountains in Sichuan may have concealed highly classified underground nuclear projects and military protection facilities operated by the CCP. At the time, many outside observers began asking whether underground nuclear installations or even a chain reaction involving a nuclear storage site might somehow have contributed to the disaster. Radio Free Asia reported that... Actually, Nicole prepared slides for me showing these articles, but I think rather than showing the tiny, small front here, tiny, small print on the screen, I'm going to provide the links to you after this live stream because there's just an enormous amount of information out there about the earthquake in 2008. So I'll provide the link. There's a man by the name of Tan Zuoren, who was a rights activist who launched an investigation into the shoddy school construction exposed by the earthquake. And this Mr. Tan later said that while visiting Beichuan and An County, which were the epicenter, he found evidence of mysterious underground nuclear storage facilities in the area. Local residents also whispered that a nuclear explosion may have occurred underground at the same time as the earthquake. And there is a professor, his name is Guo Quan, I have a picture of him, there he is, who was an associate professor at Nanjing Normal University. He publicly wrote to the authorities demanding that they release a safety report on nuclear facilities in the disaster zone. He received no answer. Instead, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for subversion of state power. For years, the Chinese authorities remained deeply secretive about what had happened to the nuclear facilities in the Wenchuan earthquake zone. Then, on February 15, 2017, almost nine years after the earthquake, the subject resurfaced during a China national radio program, which was discussing China's nuclear industry development plan under the 13th Five-Year Plan. And the speaker was this Wang Yiren, and that was the picture from the radio show. We found the picture, so this was real. So Wang Yiren, who at the time served as deputy director of China's State Administration of Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense, and he was also the deputy chairman of the China Atomic Energy Authority. He appeared in the program and seemed to review more than the government had intended. He acknowledged that during the Wenchuan earthquake, a nuclear facility in Sichuan had faced a dangerous situation similar in some respects to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, although he said the crisis had been brought under control in time. According to Wang, the earthquake knocked out the power supply, a cooling pool was damaged, the water level dropped, and the reactor core was briefly at risk of being exposed. The danger was finally resolved only after emergency diesel generators were flown into the area and electrical power was restored. Okay, so that was his claim during the interview, but it raised an obvious question. According to publicly available government information, Sichuan has or had no commercial nuclear power plant. So what exactly was the nuclear facility Mr. Wang was referring to? Some media reports suggested that nuclear weapons storage sites and nuclear reactors may have been located near the epic center, which is Beichuan and An County. The two were among the areas hardest hit by the earthquake. In other words, many outside observers believe that the facility Mr. Wang described was not a civilian nuclear power station, but a military reactor connected to China's nuclear weapons program, possibly the High Flux Engineering Test Reactor operated by the Nuclear Power Institute of China. Chinese state media also had reported on emergency rescue operations at that reactor in 2008. Yeah, here's just a screenshot of the articles. And then what I found is that in 2011, on the third anniversary of the Wenchang earthquake, more than 30 members of the New York-based China Christian Democratic Party held a press conference in Manhattan. At the press conference, the group released the findings of an investigative report, which was like 500 pages long. And the investigation was conducted by some of its members over more than two years. They claimed that the severe destruction in Sichuan was caused not only by the geological earthquake centered in Wenchuan, but also by an underground nuclear explosion originating near the epicenter or epicentral area of Beichuan. The group presented what he described as evidence of the long-term effect of a nuclear explosion triggered by the May 12 earthquake. And here are some of the highlights the group presented. First, the group alleged that nuclear contamination caused by physical reactions among local residents. After the earthquake, some people reportedly suffered a rapid deterioration in their eyesight. The group also claimed that more than 130 pregnant women lost their unborn babies, while dozens of pregnant women suffered. I think the 130 was in Beichuan, and then there are another dozens of pregnant women in a place called Dujiangyan suffered stillbirths. And then secondly, researchers at Sichuan Agricultural University found that the immune systems of pigs in the disaster area declined sharply 13 days after the earthquake, followed by a large outbreak of swine fever among local herds. Third, the group pointed to the post-earthquake landscape. Roads and utility by comparison, utility poles in that area remained largely intact during the magnitude eight. So they say roads and utility poles in Beichuan were completely destroyed. By comparison, during the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, which measured a magnitude of eight, which is more severe, roads and utility poles remained largely intact. So they argue that it's a different type of forces. They say that these are characteristics associated with an explosion, but not an earthquake. And they also said mainland Chinese media reported that people were thrown more than one meter into the air. And as a result, people got scared. They were holding each other's hands, trying to prevent themselves from being thrown upward into the air again. And they also said that a geological report by the China Geological Survey confirmed the occurrence of mud, it's called liquefaction, during the earthquake. They claim that only the extreme heat generated by a nuclear explosion could have caused this phenomenon. Basically, mud is being liquefied. And then the next point they made is they cited a seven-minute CNN video of the earthquake broadcast on May 19th of that year. They encouraged viewers to compare that footage with the videos of underground nuclear explosion on YouTube by searching for the keywords, underground hydrogen explosion. And they claim that the sounds and surface changes seen in the Beichuan earthquake resembled those produced by the underground nuclear blast. What we still do not know is the exact sequence of the events. Did natural tectonic activity cause the earthquake, which then triggered explosions inside the CCP's underground nuclear facilities? Or did an underground nuclear explosion triggered the seismic activity? That question remains at the center of the controversy. Whatever the ultimate truth about the Wintra earthquake or controversy is, Beijing now appears to be pursuing a much more sophisticated method of underground nuclear testing using the decoupling technology. On February 6th, America's top State Department official for arms control, Thomas DiNano, told the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva that China had secretly conducted a yield-producing nuclear test on June 22nd, 2020. According to Washington, the test took place in the broader Loughner region of Xinjiang, where China conducted all 45 of its acknowledged nuclear tests between 1964 and 1996. And then the Chinese foreign ministry responded as expected, firmly denying the accusation and dismissing it as a smear. Eleven days later, another State Department official reviewed more details. He said a remote seismic station in Kazakhstan had detected a tiny magnitude 2.75 event associated with the Loughner region. So the American officials argue that the magnitude of 2.75 may sound insignificant, but that's precisely the point. China may have detonated the device inside a massive underground cavity using the decoupling technology to suppress the seismic waves and disguise the true force of the explosion. So the U.S. therefore suspects that China was accelerating the development of smaller tactical nuclear weapons. Now, if Beijing wanted to avoid openly violating international norms and treaty, it had only one option, that is to conduct the secret underground nuclear test using a seismic silencer. So when you understand that background, then Mr. Chen Youlin's case begins to look very different. This is obviously not an espionage case. This is Beijing's attempt to seize critical scientific technology. And there's a guy whose name is Eric Lepson, who's a former U.S. national security official and senior advisor to the hostage advocacy group, which is called Global Reach, which is assisting Mr. Chen's family. He offered a disturbing explanation. According to him, the more than 100 interrogations Mr. Chen endured may have served two deeply sinister purposes. The first was to probe America's capabilities and discover the outer limits of its underground hearing. After digging so many supposed silencing chambers, Beijing may still have been uncertain whether the Americans already know how advanced had U.S. seismic monitoring technology become. Then Mr. Chen, an expert on that subject, who understands one of America's most sophisticated detection algorithms, arrived in China. What the Chinese may have wanted to know through those repeated interrogations was, one, can your algorithm see through what is happening here in China, possibly beneath the mountains in Sichuan or beneath Lop Nur? And how large would we have to make the underground chamber? How long would we have to keep the explosive yield before your instruments became blind and deaf? Beijing may have been trying to map the limits of American detection capability so that its future concealment efforts would become safer and more effective. And the second motive was technological theft, using Mr. Chen's knowledge to improve China's own nuclear silencer. It's almost like a thief kidnapping a security expert or kidnapping an anti-theft security expert. The thief is not interested in stealing the money the expert has at home. What he wants is to have the expert review exactly how the newest anti-theft lock works. Once the thief understands how the security system detects an intrusion, he can design a way to open the lock without ever triggering the alarm. So that's the logic here. And once Beijing understands Mr. Chen's detection technology, it can potentially redesign its underground silencer to defeat that technology. And that may be the reason why Mr. Chen remains in detention after so many years. However, the Trump administration has pushed his case into the center of U.S.-China diplomatic negotiations. On March 19th, Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed off a document designating Chen Yonglin as a U.S. citizen who had been wrongfully detained. According to Chen's wife, Chen is currently the only American detained in China who has been formally designated by Washington as wrongfully detained. Once a case receives that designation, it's formally saying that the other country is engaging in hostage diplomacy. At that point, responsibility for the case moves beyond normal diplomatic channels and is elevated to the office of the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs. And when President Trump visited Beijing in May, he reportedly raised Chen Yonglin's name, demanding that China release him. According to reports, Xi Jinping smiled and promised that he would personally look into the matter. But Mr. Chen still has not been released. Time is running out. The next summit is coming up. It's expected to be in September if it happens. I doubt it will happen in September, but who knows? So do you think Chen Yonglin will make it home safely before Xi Jinping arrives in D.C. in September or even in the future? Type one if you think he is, type two if not, type three if you're not sure. Actually, to be honest with you, I found so much information about the truth of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. There has been so much investigation done by China's citizen journalists about possible nuclear leaks or explosions at the time of the earthquake. I may make a video in my Looking Glass channel just to give you more complete information. I touched on the subject, but I have more information to present. I just ran out of time because this one is more about the scientist Chen Yonglin who's being detained in China and what's happening between Sino-U.S. relations. But when it comes to the 2008 earthquake and exactly what happened, there's just so much information that people have already discovered, and yet mainstream media is not reporting it. So I may be forced to make a video on that subject. So if you please do so. Now, let me play music. Our team wrote a song, and I got inspired by a couple of things. First, I have a good friend who is a world traveler who has been recently dealing with a health issue. He also told me that he's thinking about moving to Thailand. Now, I have a number of fans who have written to me in the past couple of years who have expressed the same interest. Actually, some of them have already moved to Thailand. One moved to Vietnam. Anyways, so I don't know. I wrote this song. This song is dedicated to all my super busy guy friends who may be pondering the meaning of life or going through transition. Yeah, that's what I will say. So let's play the music. Let's see what you think. All right. Let me remove this. Remove. Let me add this too. You've crossed a thousand highways, chased the sun from shore to shore. You've gathered all they promised. Yet still you search for something more. You've held beauty in your arms. Watch the stars in distant lands. Yet every morning finds you with another map inside your hand. Tell me, traveler, what do you hope to find? You've crossed the world a hundred times. Yet still you roam at night. One evening by the water, far beyond the roads you'd known, the wind moved softly through the reeds. And for once you stood alone. The lake lays still before you. The fading daylight turned to gold. And there upon the distant shore stood a shadow you could not hold. She spoke no words. The water carried her light. Only circles on the surface widened through the night. You watched the ripples widening across the darkening bay. As if they knew a road you'd somehow lost along the way. And for a moment you forgot where you were going. Tell me, traveler, what do you hope to find? You've crossed the world a hundred times. Yet left yourself behind. The stars you've chased are fading. The night is drawing near. You've searched the world for everything. Have you ever searched for you? You've crossed the world a hundred times. You've followed every road in sight. And there beside the water, beneath the moonlit blue, for the first time in your life, silence spoke to you. Silence spoke to you. All right. All right. What do you think? Okay. Well, let me first of all thank the people who gave me super stickers. We have Mani Kaila. Do you know about the Serbian railway station that collapsed? Many people died. The station was built by CCP money. I didn't know that. I knew about the railway accidents in Malaysia, right? It was the first week that it was putting, that was opened, that it was putting to use and it failed. So I didn't know about the Serbian railway station. Is that the same thing or a different incident? Yeah. You know, the Chinese do not want to buy anything made in China. So if the Chinese don't trust their product, why would others trust them? That's my question. Well, thank you. Not Mike Stewart. Mao Xinyu farted. Well, thank you for the support, my Canadian friend. Thank you. All right. Okay. Let's see. Oh, I want to mention that the video that we released this week today in the Looking Glass channel is about Everest. Someone survived six days. And that story really is very touching. And I said to myself, I have to do a video about that because make sure you watch until the end. I think the second half of the video is far more enlightening than the first half. The first half is just the technical explanation of how he survived. The second half drills down. It's more insightful. So hope you'll like it. Nicole, if you can copy the link here, I'd appreciate it. We have Pam Quek from Singapore, I believe. Well, thank you. Okay. People have voted threes, a lot of threes, a lot of twos. Not a lot of ones. So people either don't know or don't think he'll be coming home before Xi Jinping comes. Not a lot of people believe that he can come home. Yeah. Unfortunately, I agree with you. I think Xi Jinping will not let him go. Two, one and a half. There are people one and a half. All right. Okay. So tomorrow is the World Cup. Who do you think will win? I think Argentina will win. I think Argentina will be the third team in the history of the World Cup to win two games or two, yeah, two World Cup consecutively. Well, the first one was Italy in the 1930s, and the second one, the second team was Brazil. And I think they will make history this year. I think the momentum is on their side. Yeah, that's what I think. I don't know. Anyway, let's see what people say. People say, you love the song? Love this. Lei, please dance a little. I was dancing all day today when I was reviewing the MV. Chris spent a lot of time editing this MV, and I listened to it over and over again. In the end, I had to dance. Otherwise, anyways, beautiful song. All right. I'm glad you like it. Silence. Lovely song. I like it. Okay. All right. Yeah. All right. Let's see. Questions, comments? I don't see anything. I think people are just, people say, hello. Okay. Beautiful, thought-provoking lyrics. Thank you. That's what I spend a lot of time on. I think with AI, I mean, AI handles the music part, right? It's really the concept. It's really the concept in songwriting. It's not so much the music. Before AI, I think it's all music. You hear a song, you say, wow, it's a beautiful song. You don't even pay attention to the lyrics. Now with AI, I think music becomes a tool. I think the lyrics or the mood or the idea that the song presents is more important. Yeah. Because AI handles the music. So that's what I try to write a song with a story to tell. Yeah. Okay. Someone said, well-written. Many Argentines have Italian surnames. All right. Someone says, agreed. Okay. AI, do you write the lyrics? I write the lyrics. Yes. Our team produced the song. We do research. I have a concept. And sometimes Nicole helps me doing research. And then I finish the lyrics. And Chris handles the music part. He usually sends us multiple versions. And sometimes it's really hard to pick the one that we like. Sometimes there's one version that stands out. It's the clear winner. Sometimes it's really hard to tell. But every time I think our team is pretty much unanimous when it comes to picking the song that we like. So yeah. Boycott China, love to love baby is the only song I can think of during your show. Oh, the song. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. That's all for tonight. I don't have any other things. And you don't have any questions for me. How about we end it here? Enjoy the rest of your weekend. I hope your team wins the World Cup tomorrow. I hope my team will win the game tomorrow. All right. I'll see you next week. Bye.