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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   35499 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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How easy is it to smuggle a nuke, and how long would it remain viable once smuggled?

My impression of nuclear prevention and watchfulness is that it takes a lot of science and infrastructure to refine uranium into a usable state for weapons, and you can't really build all of that stuff without a lot of commotion that foreign powers will notice.

But lots of nations already have all of that infrastructure, and the country wanting nukes only needs the end product. If country A without nukes allied with country B with nukes, would country B be able to use their own infrastructure to do most of the work and then secretly pass them enough weapons grade uranium and/or assembled nuclear warheads to stick into missiles that everyone else thinks are non-nuclear? And then several years later when it became relevant they announce "Tada! We have nukes!"

Or would this be immediately caught while happening and result in massive international penalties for countries A and or B?

There is a rumor that Saudi Arabia put up a lot of the funds for the Pakistani bomb project, and as a result has an agreement that they could get a shipment of nukes if they ever decided to ask for them.

@MathWizard

It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.

There’s nothing preventing such a transfer. The problem is, if whoever you gave them to uses them, the victim is probably going to hold you liable for that and respond accordingly. And second, who would you trust with that, long term? Alliances sour, governments change and maybe in forty years they are pointed at you.

According to wiki, it's not just a rumour- it's the opinion of the CIA and the Mossad, has been confirmed by at least one Pakistani ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and is treated as fact by NATO.

Isn't there probably some deal where Pakistan will sell a nuke to Saudi Arabia if Iran tests one already on the books?

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