1. The absolute hardest part about building a nuke is getting fissile material, not "secrets" or information. 2. Nobody who studies nuke issues (and doesn't have a contract with the Pentagon) has any strong faith that ballistic missile defense would work in a real-world crisis.https://twitter.com/Mantia/status/1013559718759956481 …
-
On 1: I foggily recall an undergrad publishing plans for an atom bomb in the late 70s or early 80s. It was a bit of a scandal, but... You couldn't get the key parts, as you note.
He didn't publish them, but he wrote it as an undergrad thesis. Still turned into a news story. (And his "design" probably wouldn't have worked. But that's beside the point.) The "student figures out nuke secrets!" story has been a journalist trope since **1946**, as an aside.
