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Notes -
Watching Dune and rereading the Dune Encyclopedia (see screenshot) has me thinking - how could a private citizen start accumulating / creating a stock of family atomics? Would it even be possible with Bezos level wealth in the modern day, considering the problems of sourcing the materials/expertise without facing legal sanction?
I've read estimates that North Korea spent in the ballpark of 1.5-2 billion USD to develop its nuclear capacity in the last 50 years, I wonder if it would be possible for someone without the state capacity of a nation to do it privately. At the risk of being put on a list somewhere, I'd have to say it would be pretty awesome to have some 'family atomics'. Like having a big ass gun to deter criminals/home invaders, except this gun can be pointed against nation-states.
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You'd have to start by building your own financial system. Nobody actually has $1bn, they have various contractual legal agreements that entitle them to $1bn that is actually in the possession of various other entities (most of which only possess them in a complex web of transactions going back to the US Federal reserve). It would be comically easy to prevent an individual like Bezos from accessing his wealth once it were found out that he was engaged in building a nuke.
It might be possible to purchase the first one, and from there become a state. But that's a different animal altogether.
100% agree, but get more creative?
How much money would you need to avoid that failure state (prevention of access to your capital)? If that requires something other than money, how much money does it take to acquire that something? Etc.
North Korea did it operating largely using nascent cryptocurrency tech to fund and hide its transactions, but is that really feasible currently with tighter KYCs?
North Korea’s program predates crypto, they just dealt with the Pakistanis. The Pakistani ISI is probably better surveilled by the US today, though, and would probably sell out an American anyway.
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