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Notes -
Not launch codes; PAL codes.
Permissive Action Links (and their Russian equivalents) are designed for paranoia against literally this scenario - someone with physical control of the weapon activating it. The weapon is designed in such a way that it is impossible to remove or bypass the PAL without rendering the weapon useless (basically, other stuff breaks first).
To turn a PAL-protected nuke into a working nuke (without the code), you have to disassemble it and remanufacture the physics package. This is easier than somebody acquiring nukes ex nihilo, because you can at least recover the weapons-grade plutonium* and as such you can skip the actinide acquisition, nuclear reactor and reprocessing plant. But it's not trivial; you still need the actual bomb-manufacturing plant.
*This is somewhat more complicated if the PAL fired one of the lenses, because then the core will have been pulverised by the (conventional) explosion. My limited understanding, though, is that they aren't generally rigged to do that on tamper; it's more a deliberately-triggered self-destruct.
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