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Buying Goods To Make Nuclear Weapons On eBay, Alibaba, and Other Platforms
Lasrick (2629253) writes The blossoming of online Internet-trading platforms has at least one downside: insufficient inspectors and product controls when it comes to goods relevant to nuclear proliferation. "On Alibaba (and other platforms), one can purchase many of the specialized items needed for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. A short list of items advertised for sale on the site include metals suitable for centrifuge manufacturing, gauges and pumps for centrifuge cascades for uranium enrichment, metallurgical casting equipment suitable for making nuclear weapon 'pits,' and high-speed cameras suitable for use in nuclear weapon diagnostic tests. A company on an Alibaba-owned Chinese Internet-trading platform even posted an ad for the sale of the rare metal gallium, which the seller trumpeted could be used to stabilize plutonium." Although many companies have strict compliance procedures in place to help avoid proliferation, many do not. There are several procedures these platforms can put into place to minimize risk, and both national (and international) regulators have a role to play, as well as shareholders.
Why no booms?
NOT making nuclear weapons...
the food eaten by the people working on making nuclear bombs is an item that can lead to proliferation. This is just scare-mongering to increase inspection of incoming parcels... so the government can charge import duties and taxes.
Oh, and we're protecting you from people who build nuclear bombs in their garage, yup.
What nonsense.
Mostly random stuff.
If you're a nuclear scientist or engineer, your activities are more closely watched than anyone else's save the president of your country.
Why stop it?
Getting the government involved in regulating the site to preemptively prevent these transactions is stupid. Instead there should be a streamlined process for getting a warrant, and then you go after people who purchase the material. While mailing them a large cache of something that looks like the product but isn't and that has a locator.
If you ban the sale altogether you just push it underground. If you use it to gather data you have actionable intelligence.
Gallium is used a lot in semiconductor manufacture and I'm pretty sure it's not that hard to get.
Hell, a Google search for "pure gallium" has pulled up quite a few prospects.
You'd have a much harder time getting a hold of the plutonium.
Next up a story on how people can easily obtain a microscope suitable for biological warfare.
problem is, almost everything has the potential for dual-use. thorium for tube filaments for audiophools and ham radio power tubes. plutonium for.... yeah, that's it, degradation deep-space power modules, right. there might be room for a law to allow the customs boys to bring you questionable materials, and inspect the delivery address... .
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
It is the only way we will ever be safe.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Well yea Gallium can be used to stabilise Pu, it is after all a potent neutron absorber....
This is not a metal you want anywhere near your fissile core.
Kind of cool stuff however, it melts right around body heat, so amusing to play with, but as a nuclear material its major use is preventing big piles of corium from accidents from going critical.
An interesting obsevation about the black market as applied to nuclear matters: If I have some Pu for sale I stand about an 80% chance that any given attempt to close a deal will result in a swat team and men from the intellegence services wanting a word.
The same thing applies if I am a buyer, no effective market can exist under these conditions.
However, given that presumably everyones intel agencies run stings of both types the result must surely be that much of the time you get two intellegence agencies swatting each other....
Now the ready availibility of copper vapour lasers and narrow line width dyes, that might actually be a worry (There is approximately a 0.5nm difference in the photon energy required to ionise U235 compared to U238 as a hexafloride, this is explotable at least in experimental plants), 1950s tech not so much (There are probably easier ways to get there these days).
Regards, Dan.
Yeah, because buying 'high-speed cameras suitable for use in nuclear weapon diagnostic tests' is the hardest part of building your own enrichment installation. How the hell this ended up on /. ?
So Chinese manufactures sell materials that could be used to make nuclear bombs and it goes unchecked. Are we supposed to be surprised or scared into giving up more liberties in the name of a false sense of security?
Millions of uranium centrifuge parts sold openly:
http://www.alibaba.com/country...
Somebody call Colin Powell!
time to background check people who buy golf balls and have TSA at driving rage.
Gallium 99.99% Pure 20 Grams 4n Even Melt in Your Hand ... â Specialty Non-Ferrous Metals ......
www.amazon.com â
Amazon.com
Beyond that: Gallium causes almost all metals to corrode on contact. Do let this touch any metals. Gallium will also 'wet' glass and quartsâ"meaning it will stain
The technology to actually manufacture nuclear weapons is starting to close in on a century old. What prohibits their manufacture is ultimately a combination of international pressure, expense, and engineering difficulty. If your country doesn't have a bullet train then it probably doesn't have nuclear weapons for much the same reason or else because it has specifically chosen not to manufacture them (the fact any money from western nations would quickly evaporate makes a strong incentive). If you're going to worry about people getting hold of galium and high speed cameras, you're just being ridiculous. Anyone who could even have a shot at building a nuclear weapon also has enough resources to easily obtain those sorts of items, no matter what international restrictions are applied.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Sorry, this is pretty much BS scaremongering.
Buying a piece of metal that could be made into a centrifuge doesn't mean that you will actually succeed to make one. There is a lot of specialized equipment needed for that which is tightly controlled (try to export a high precision CNC machine, for example!).
Most of this gear has lots of legitimate uses as well. Not to mention that if someone really wanted to obtain this sort of gear, I cannot imagine them shopping for it on Alibaba or eBay - they would be spending a ton of money for a product of unknown quality possibly from a mom&pop shop somewhere in China that sells everything from rubber bands, dresses up to car accessories, that is assuming it isn't a scam in the first place. There are better ways of obtaining it - e.g. through shell companies abroad acting as middlemen to avoid embargoes or from friendly nations.
And before someone pulls out the "terrorist building nukes" bogeyman - that requires a lot more than building a few centrifuges from stuff bought on Alibaba. There are plenty of simpler, cheaper and easier accessible methods to wreak havoc than trying to build a nuke that even countries like Iran didn't succeed in so far, despite vastly bigger resources than some lunatics in a cave possess.
"metals suitable for centrifuge manufacturing,"
Scare monger much?
... and there are other more dangerous sites.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Do these people really think Iran or North Korea is going to be buying their nuke parts at Alibaba or Amazon? I'm pretty damn sure they just smuggle them from Russia or manufacture it themselves. UN inspectors aren't hand inspecting every single box and bag that goes in and out of Iran or North Korea, I doubt would be difficult for the Iranian government to smuggle stuff. North Korea is already infamous for smuggling methamphetine.
Most of the products they list are facepalm-worthy. 7075 aluminum and carbon fiber composites are practically standard issue in aerospace applications. High speed cameras have hundreds of other uses. Gallium is usually sold in small quantities for kids screwing around with a low-melting temperature metal (it melts in your hand). Their only moderately convincing example is maraging steel, but that's also used for fencing swords. Valves and gauges are used in all kinds of things.
If some shady company, like recently founded with no customers or products, was buying huge quantities of maraging steel, 7075 aluminum, carbon fiber, ultra-high-pressure PTFE valves and gauges, et cetera, it may be time to get suspicious. But otherwise, this is just stupid alarmism. I suppose that's just the BAS doing what they do best.
Let's clearly separate the cases
a) You are an institution which is powerful/rich enough to build (AFAIU they were talking about the raw metals here) operate a isotope enrichment plant, breeder reactors, and compose these to a *working* nuclear device (Ahem even countries like North Korea or Iran take a while for this): It's very likely that you were able to contact sellers of these required equipment without the internet (and doing so via the internet may get you on a list of the NSA to watch)
b) You are a terrorist organisation with a moderate amount (~0.5-1B Dollar), but no backing infrastructure: Good luck in powering up the centrifuges without anybody noticing; you have to buy the plutonium directly.
Yes, absolutely i agree, and listening to the swedish scientist, all eatable should be banned immediately. Everything is poisonous, especially when you eat a truckload of it. We must stop this madness!
Aren't a lot of these used for far more than nuclear weapons? Centrifuges are used for purification in many chemical processes, gallium is used in semiconductors, etc... And high speed cameras, gauges and pumps? Seriously? This seems pretty idiotic. What are you gonna do? Outlaw high speed cameras or certain alloys?
Now!
Stones used in stonings in Iran.
We old (in)continentler (european) stopped delivering sodiompenthatol to the U.S. because of its use in executions.
Stop delivering stones to Iran.
The funny thing about nuclear weapons is.
You need the fucking key ingredient!
Uran or Plutonium
And yes when you have that you can enrich it!
But when I remember correctly the Uranium content of the best ton of uranium ore was about 0,3%.
And the amount of centrifuges to increase the concentration is enormous.
Now you need to put that Caterpiller Truck also on the list.
No fucking idiot without a big organisation can do that.
We should track lathe and mill buyers first, because these are the tools weapons of person destruction are built off.
How in the world did such a stupid topic get on slashdot? Is there NO moderation whatsoever??
We arrange all our 'special' purchases over a secure p>p network and pay in bitcoin.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Why are people so busy trying to kill each other?
Not unless you live in the US or have a shit ton of cash. The only affordable real* high speed camera on the market right now is the Edgertronic who has a strict "will not sell to anyone outside of the US" policy. I know because I tried to get one into Canada directly and through 3 different HS camera vendors, they all refused to even try to import but offered to sell me low resolution 500fps toys for 10-20grand.
*before some one says 'iPhone' 240fps is no where near "high speed," under 1Kfps really doesn't get you much detail for anything other than sports and wildlife.
I can go down the street to Walmart and Lowes, and for under $100, buy materials to seed my yard with OMG !! landmines. Probably won't kill you, but it will slow you down.
Should we close those stores as well?
(well, probably, but not for those reasons)
A company on an Alibaba-owned Chinese Internet-trading platform even posted an ad for the sale of the rare metal gallium
Oh no! Not the "rare metal" gallium!
How could something so dangerous and rare be sold to the general public?
Code name, Amazon Prime
http://www.amazon.com/Gallium-99-99%25-Pure-20-Grams/dp/B00BSRAH5M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414958244&sr=8-1&keywords=gallium
I used it to make a novelty heart, which melted in her hands.
Most of this gear has lots of legitimate uses as well. Not to mention that if someone really wanted to obtain this sort of gear, I cannot imagine them shopping for it on Alibaba or eBay.[...]
I'm trying to become a rationalist, so here's (my take on) the fallacy.
Police learn that "all drug labs use chemicals", so they think "all chemicals are intent to make drugs". If they see your home laboratory, you'll be arrested and have all your chemicals confiscated - even if you don't have the complete drug-making kit. I know of one home lab where this is exactly what happened. Frequently, having a scale is considered sufficient evidence of drug dealing.
I've read several news reports of people being arrested for having "bomb making materials" where the kit was incomplete - in one case a box of [glass] canning jars in the back of a vehicle along with a bag of fertilizer. No fuel oil (for ANFO), nothing that could be a fuse, no apparent intent, and no apparent target. A guy's life got completely fucked up for no apparent reason.
Another example: explosives are delivered by rocket, so rockets will be used to deliver explosives. We have to ban model rocketry!
Sexual harassment is done by ribald speech, therefore all ribald speech is sexual harassment. (Even if there's no threat?)
Other examples too numerous to mention.
This is formally the Fallacy of the Reversed Conditional, and it's used in lots and lots of news articles to stoke fear and promote the writer's agenda.
It's a problem in Bayesian probability. Consider whether the following reversals are valid or invalid:
Probability that someone carries a purse, given that they're a woman (high or low), probability that someone is a woman, given that they're carrying a purse (high or low)? Is reversing this conditional valid?
Probability that John is dead, given that he was executed (high or low), probability that John was executed, given that he is dead (high or low)? Is reversing the conditional valid?
Two examples of reversed the conditionals, but only one is valid when reversed.
We need to sort through the bias and clever manipulation of innuendo, and consider the arguments on their merits. Owning any of the cited tech is not evidence of bomb-making, and invasive tracking laws will not help stop nuclear proliferation.
The fallacy is used for a reason: they want to impose invasive tracking for other reasons, using your emotions against you.
Don't be fooled.
Christ, Iran already has the fissionable material and the fucking centrifuges and still hasn't produced a weapon. We're really worried about somebody buying shit on eBay and making it in their basement?
Let them build nuclear warheads. That is pretty much the whole point of the 2nd amendment. I really don't give a shit if a few cities get wiped off the map as long as I can maintain my sovereignty as an individual.
why do you hate free trade?
Shit. You can get all that at Harbor Freight!
gallium spoons
Some things, like fissile materials and chemical elements that the buyer can't reasonably purchase in elemental or ore form without raising eyebrows, probably should be regulated.
Everything else, from gas centrifuges on down, can in principle be created by any country or organization with the know-how, the money, and the ability to hide its activities from the outside world without arousing suspicion. After all, the United States developed its WWII nuclear program almost from scratch and even the things that it didn't develop itself it could have done so in principle once it had access to the raw materials (uranium ore, iron ore, a sufficient supply of energy and people, etc.).
"Parts and Supplies for the next babies boomers' generation"
Achille Talon
Hop!
How much is stuff set up to fail by three letter agencies in US/UK? And contrary to popular scare mongering, making a nuke is not easy, even a simple gun type assembly. Delivering it to the target is a another very large hurdle. For those interested, I do recommend this book
Weapons don't kill people.
All those items and materials have legions of legitimate uses in science and manufacturing; only an ignoramus would accept the absurd allegations of summary or article.
it's a dark humour commentary, but..
People buying this stuff online aren't exactly MacGyvers
They're more likely to purge the Gene pool of their own Genes or end up sterilizing themselves
Then they're more likely to become a one-hit wonder selfie bomb
At best they might make a dirty bomb, rather than a Nuclear Reactor or self sustaining reaction
On the other hand, removing the tools won't prevent the work from occurring, but any sufficiently bright person capable of such an endeavor, is also more likely to survive the Gene purge and go on to found a Microsoft or Google
The idea that crowd sourcing fundamentalism, which rejects science and anything that isn't Cookbook science could end up wiping out a specific pool of people isn't very credible.
You mean, like is combined with arsenic (a deadly poison) to use for all sorts of evil things like LEDs and high speed transistors for things like cell phones?
And you can combine it with that nitrogen stuff that is part of so many explosives. And use it for (wait for it) even brighter LEDs!
Wow. That's some real exotic stuff there. Certainly wouldn't want any of that in the world.
Yeah, this is the sort of BS I'd expect out of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. It's sad they've figured out that submitting everything to Slashdot is a way to shovel their message.
US support through their shills is plenty enough. Ask Holland, Israel and Pakistan, in any order.
My lucky rabbit's foot protects Earth from extinction level asteroid impacts. And I generously provide this service for FREE! Contrast this with the fatcats that demand endless grants, six figure salaries, and so on for "anti-proliferation", whatever that is.
The level of stupid in the world is astounding.
... all I got was a shiny bomb case full of pinball machine parts.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Get you a meth lab charge nowadays. Used to buy potassium nitrate and permanganate in pound canisters from the local druggist too.
KMn04 and glycerin are hypergolic, BTW.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
While we all love our polonium encrusted static master brushes, americium drenched smoke detectors, tritium and radium enhanced time pieces... what I really want for Christmas this year are a matching pair of plutonium powered hand-warmers.
None of this boiling water to recharge leaky sodium acetate bags made by the lowest bidder, intentionally throwing our smartphones into thermal overload or the mess left behind by paper envelopes filled with iron filings.
Not only do plutonium hand warmers guarantee many years of gentle continuous warmth none of your friends will hassle you to borrow them.
This all seems to be connected to the rise of China.
China is rising. Oh no, let's claim there isn't enough water. And we can restrict their growth that way. Oh, but let's actually enforce it in the West only and let China do whatever
China is still rising. Oh no, let's say global carbon emissions are too high and restrict energy consumption.Oh, but let's actually enforce that only in the west and let China do whatever.
OhChina is still rising. Oh no, let's curtail internet freedoms, and restrict global internet neutrality so that market activity is curtailed that way. Oh, but let's actually enforce that only in the West, and China can do whatever.
You guys can read into this however you want. But I see a pattern, it's the relentless rise of China and the fall of the west, thanks mainly to feeble bough and paid for congressmen and women in the US and other places.
That some materials can be used for bombs does not mean it has only such uses.
This premise of stopping weapons by keeping anything that can be used for weapons illegal
winds up in, or before, the stone age. You want to live like that? If not, stop posting things
like this article.
Bought stuff on Alibaba. Mostly radio gear. But the prices cannot be beat. I've even bought electronic components on there.
OMG, aluminum tubes everywhere. They could be used for anything from olympic batons to centrifuge tubes, a backpack frame, a dune buggy, or a chair, obviously these are just too useful and must be banned. The horror. The horror.
I'm still in university, and I might want to do grad work in semiconductors. I hope I don't need special permissions to get a hold of gallium, which is a pretty innocuous material (unless you're an aluminum can).
The problem with nukes is one of usefulness. As you say using safe material to make something useful is very hard to do. Using unsafe material is difficult to use because it is so unsafe.
Like TNT... its technological advance wasn't explosive force, but rather safe handling. Nitroglycerin which was used prior, made a good boom, but it was usually the guy with the short straw that got to deploy the stuff.
Like the theft (unintentional or not) of a radioactive material a little while ago, not sure if they ever caught the guys, but authorities expected that they would all be dead in about 3 days anyway after exposure.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2...
I guest that explains the spam I get for fully refurbished copper from the D.R.C. ?
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Funny, makes it sound hard to get. I bought 20 grams off amazon
http://amzn.to/1xUgtF8
last yule for the grandkids to play with! (it melts in your hand)
The article seems overblown.