Identifying Nuclear Scientists Willing To Sell Their Knowledge

Harperdog writes "This is an interesting piece on U.S. programs most people don't know about: programs to identify and win over nuclear scientists who might be willing to sell their know-how to non-nuclear countries. Fascinating discussion, and points to the alleged Russian scientist who is reported to have sold information to Iran. How could he have been stopped?"

Comments

How could he have been stopped?

[c0lo]

Someone please explain: why should he have been stopped?

Re:How could he have been stopped?

[Anonymous Coward]

Free trade is only for big businesses. What would the world come to if ordinary people could start monetizing their assets? On the other hand, if you need an explanation why it happened anyway: the Iran nuclear scare is going to fill the coffers of "defense" companies worldwide. They can't wait for us to go to war against Iran.

Re:How could he have been stopped?

[Gordonjcp]

This is the thing, though. Iran would benefit from having a nuclear weapon not because it could defend itself *directly* from the US but because they can start waving it at Israel if the Yanks start getting mouthy.

The Iranian government is presumably nervous about the US coming over and "liberating" them with the same level of wholesale destruction and slaughter as in Iraq and Afghanistan. They've also got the Israelis who just love to herd Arabs into ghettos and kill them. Why *wouldn't* you want a nuke, with neighbours like that?

Re:How could he have been stopped?

[c0lo]

The theory is that the more countries and NGO that have nuclear weapons, then the more likely they are to be used.

Strange theory... last I know of, the only time a nuclear weapon was used in a war was at a time only one nation has had the technology.And they used it twice. And I heard/read some arguing that their use was gratuitous, just for showing some muscles.

Re:How could he have been stopped?

[dkleinsc]

Counterargument:
1. Iraq had no nukes. The US falsely claimed they did, and then used that as an excuse to blow them to smithereens.

2. North Korea has nukes, as well as a military much weaker than Iraq did. The US has generally rattled sabers but left them alone.

Re:How could he have been stopped?

[Anonymous Coward]

Laser guided bombs to try and minimize casualties of non combatants mean nothing to you? Check out how other countries deal with insurgents and militias, look up grozny. Better yet, look up rwanda or serbia where european UN troops stood by and let the people there to protect, get massacred. It seems that the rest of the world likes to either A: blow the town to hell even with civilians, or B: stand around and watch them die.

"wholesale destruction and slaughter" was what japan did to china and SEA. You are either purposefully trying force a lie into being believed, or you are truly ignorant to the meaning of those words and the appropriate situations they apply.

Re:How could he have been stopped?

[ciderbrew]

Let me almost fix that for you :).
Counterargument:
1. Iraq had no nukes AND OIL. The (G1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 Nth economic clubs) which the US is one of claimed they did, and then used that as an excuse to blow them to smithereens. This got a lot of Tax money moving around the system. War does pay well and it only kills poor people.

2. North Korea has nukes; but not as much oil, as well as a military much weaker than Iraq did. The US has generally rattled sabers but left them alone. When oil starts running ooohhhhh it's on baby.

Re:How could he have been stopped?

[TheRaven64]

North Korea also has China as an ally. Invading North Korea would effectively mean declaring war on China (just as invading Poland prevented the UK from remaining neutral in the second world war). That's far more important than the nukes that NK claims to have (as I recall, they only had one test, which was underground and didn't appear to cause any detectable increase in radioactivity - I was in the USA at the time, and it was amusing that the test was front page news, but when the lack of radioactivity was discovered it was on the BBC but completely absent from the US news sources that had been trumpeting the test).

Re:How could he have been stopped?

[AmiMoJo]

They were tests. Little was known about the effect on humans, animals, farmland and cities. They could easily have used their bombs on unpopulated islands or sparsely populated areas to for Japan to surrender (in fact one of the biggest factors in the decision was the threat of nuking Tokyo), but that wouldn't have told the much more than they already knew from tests on American soil.

The US was aware that other countries were trying to develop nuclear weapons and was naturally worried about the effect they would have on US cities. The two bombs they dropped used different designs because they were trying to maximise the amount of data they could collect. Many non-military targets such as Kyoto were considered but in the end they decided that they should at least make some effort to claim they were attacking ports and manufacturing.

Before the US became involved in the war they were against the targeting of civilians by British bomber raids on Germany. The British did it anyway in the grounds that the situation was desperate, even if it did violate the laws of warfare. That justification has been debated many times, but at least there was justification. Okay, in a conventional war more US soldiers would have died, but there was no chance of Japan invading the US or winning the war. Bad times indeed.

Re:How could he have been stopped?

[Shoten]

The theory is that the more countries and NGO that have nuclear weapons, then the more likely they are to be used.

Strange theory... last I know of, the only time a nuclear weapon was used in a war was at a time only one nation has had the technology.And they used it twice. And I heard/read some arguing that their use was gratuitous, just for showing some muscles.

Actually, there's another theory...that the more countries (and in particular, the more unstable countries) have nuclear weapons, the more likely they are to fall into the hands of an actor where deterrence does not come into play. The best current example of this is Libya, who fortunately gave up their nuclear program before the recent rebellion and subsequent chaos. It isn't at all difficult to imagine that if weapons-grade material or even a nuclear weapon itself were somewhere in Libya during the uprising that there wouldn't be forces trying to locate and seize it that would be far more likely to use a nuke than a nation-state (which can be nuked in return). This is the real nightmare scenario, these days. As you've accurately pointed out, deterrence is remarkably effective at keeping nation-states from using nuclear weapons on each other, but when you put a weapon into the hands of a group that many countries are trying to hunt to extinction anyways, there isn't much to deter them.

Re:How could he have been stopped?

[Chrisq]

Islam is an evil religion that tells them to kill non muslims. They would use it if teh could get away with it.

Sorry, whatever protection you have against terrorists is highly inefficient. The only reason you aren't dead is because no-one rellay wants to kill you. So no, you are wrong. Most muslims are good people that doesn't want to kill anyone.

Exactly. Chrisq's commentary is based on utter ignorance. There was a large Gallup study about the Muslim community, the largest ever conducted about this topic, published as a book in 2008. In a nutshell, the study shows that Muslims are as peaceful as other people and share amazingly many views with e.g. most Americans. And, not very surprisingly, the very small militant minority among them is primarily motivated by political -- not religious -- reasons just like most other militants.

How about 28% of British Muslims wanting to make Britain an Islamic state or 6% of British Muslims thinking that the tube bombings were wholy justified That is over 170,000 muslims in the UK would like to see us killed. Sorry for ignorantly objecting to it.

Re:How could he have been stopped?

[Chrisq]

Yes, you remain ignorant.

The first study you cite is irrelevant; you could just as well ask all British Christians whether they want the UK to be a Christian state and will probably get over 60% approval.

Regarding the second study, it's a small study conducted on behalf of the telegraph and I wouldn't be very surprised if it weren't representative at all / not drawn from a proper and large enough random sample (i.e., basically I suspect it is meaningless crap). The Gallup survey is representative for 90% of the world's population of Muslims and was conducted all over the world. If Muslims in England were indeed so much more violent than anywhere else in the world then you should perhaps ask yourself what them so violent in the UK. Is it their dislike for tea?

Anyway, your original statement remains as ignorant as before, whether you like it or not, because it was about Islam in general, i.e. all Muslims and not just the ones in the UK, and the Gallup study has clearly shown that Muslims are about as violent as Christians.

Say what you want, despite the larger number of Christians in the UK we haven't had them setting of bombs on public transport in the name of their religion, trying to blow up aircraft, and driving burning vehicles into airports. They don't disrupt remembrance day services, hold banners saying "Freedom can go to hell", and "Britain will become an Islamic state" or "those who insult Jesus will be killed". There aren't reports of Christians killing relatives for marrying the wrong person or leaving Christianity every week. They don't demand that areas with lots of Christians become "Christian law" areas and say they will violently punish people who don't dress the way they like. Muslims do all these things.

Re:How could he have been stopped?

[Anonymous Coward]

They've also got the Israelis who just love to herd Arabs into ghettos and kill them.

That is just the most ignorant thing I've read all day (although it is early here). If Israel 'loved' killing them there would be a lot more dead. Compare the number of Arabs killed by other Arabs to the number killed by Israel. The number killed by Israel is miniscule in comparison. Yes there's a lot of problems over there, but making up information, pretending that what's obvious isn't true, and misplacing the blame isn't going to get anything solved.

Re:How could he have been stopped?

[delt0r]

They have not shown themselves willing to play by the rules of international discourse.

This is also true of the US.

Re:How could he have been stopped?

[Alioth]

So all the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland (where Christians are killing Christians over trivial differences in their religious beliefs) doesn't count?

Everybody should have the weapons

[rim_namor]

It's being shown time and again that strong countries do not get attacked. All countries need to understand that it is really in their best interest to get nuclear weapons fast. Libya made a huge mistake for example, so did Iraq. I think at some point Iran will have their weapon - good for them.

Good for them. They should get as many as they can possibly put their hands on. You get fucked in the ass if you can't fight back, that's what we really know today, everything else is bullshit.

Re:Everybody should have the weapons

[jpapon]

But I am for everybody having a nuclear bomb. Every single person. Unfortunately it's impractical, but every state should have their bombs.

I'm assuming that's just hyperbole, because nuclear weapons are only a deterrent for mentally stable people. If someone has no problem sacrificing themselves to blow others up, the whole idea of MAD and deterrence breaks down.

Re:Everybody should have the weapons

[Anonymous Coward]

It would also make the world a very quiet place. With a healthy green glow.

Knowledge isn't the problem.

[satuon]

Lack of knowledge isn't what prevents most countries from building a nuclear bomb, lack of uranium and plutonium is.

Easy identification

[mseeger]

I would bet 100% of nuclear scientists are willing to sell their secrets. So the identification is the easy part.

The only question is: at what price? One will spill for a drink at the hotel bar, the other only when offered critical medical services for his sick child.

Re:Easy identification

[TheRaven64]

What kind of scumbag would be willing to murder the entire world (including their child), in order to 'save' their child?

No one. But most people would accept a small risk of lots of people they don't know dying to save someone they do know. It's part of the pack / tribe mentality shared with a lot of other mammals.

No proof.

[siddesu]

There was nothing close to believable evidence for most of the "damning" allegations in the report, no sufficient information to justify taking them seriously even while reading the 20 odd pages. Most of the report was based on stuff that was shown by "one member state", and it happens to be the same member state that manufactured "evidence" for the war against Iraq. Excuse me if I delegate it to the trashcan without more extraordinary and unambiguous evidence than a table in yellow, orange and red.

From the rest of the report it was only evident that a) Iran has not succeeded in buying weapons tech or plans, b) Iran does not even have the fundamental science to develop weapons and c) all their efforts invariably end up in a brick wall.

Finally, while I keep hearing these scary stories about everyone and their dog develop nuclear weapon based on Russian know-how, it is, as a Russian combinator would say, a medical fact that ALL non-NPT nuclear programs except the Chinese are based either on US or NATO expertise.

Will we get a break from these scary, but largely baseless stories?

Re:And the Libya example.

[SpzToid]

Sure I'm feeding the AC trolls here, but I'll reason that once Gaddafi gave up his nukes everything turned around for the better, as far as he was concerned. It wasn't until his people turned against him, and he chose to fight them, that things turned out badly for him.

Knowledge is hard to contain

[Anonymous Coward]

I teach on a Nuclear Reactor physics masters course. We teach students from all over the world - I've had Saudi and Iranian students in the past. Everyone who graduates our course could have a decent stab at building a bomb. Why is this myth that the physics of constructing a nuclear weapon is a well kept secret? You could teach yourself, easily, from publicly available materials.

The countries that the US and allies want to prevent from acquiring weapons are only held back by the lack of availability of the fissile materials. The physics is well known and the engineering is fairly straightforward.

Re:And the Libya example.

[khallow]

No - it wasn't until he suggested to the African states (especially oil rich Nigeria) that they drop the US dollar and accept gold or some other commodity in exchange for oil.

Ah, that explains the French actions then. They're always looking for an excuse to boost US power.

Neils Bohr and making an atomic bomb

[wfstanle]

The matter of putting the knowledge of building an atomic bomb ando actually producing an atomic bomb is a wholly different matter. The facilities to make one are enormous. Before Neils Bohr was aware of the Manhattan Project he stated the opinion that ( I am paraphrasing) making an atomic was theoretically possible but to make one you would have to make a factory the size of an entire nation. When he later became a member of the Manhattan Project he toured the facilities and then stated (again I am paraphrasing)... I said that making an atomic bomb would require a factory the size of an entire nation and that is exactly what you have done! (He was probably talking about a nation the size of Denmark, his home.)

Granted, the knowledge of how to build an atomic bomb is easy to master. In fact, it is easier to prematurely detonate a "Little Boy" type bomb than to actually deliver one to a target and THEN have it go off. An implosion type bomb ("Fat Man") is much safer as far as premature detonation. There still is the high explosive component of such a bomb which can go off prematurely. The chances that the resulting conventional explosion will cause a nuclear explosion is quite small. The explosion would be like a "dirty bomb" going off.

PS. If you are interested in the history behind the Manhattan Project, I highly recommend reading "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes. It is easy reading and I understand that it is fairly accurate.