Known nuclear tests by regional nuclear powers: India: 6 Pakistan: 6 North Korea: 6 Israel: 0 or 1 South Africa: 0 DPRK can probably stop where it is and still be fine.
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I give you RSA and Israel.
Right, I mean, we know they haven't tested (much???), but the question is how much confidence you could have. Part of the Nixon admin "bargain" with Israel was that without testing, you couldn't REALLY be thought of as a nuclear power b/c of low confidence in capability.
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(Which was always a fig-leaf argument, to be sure. But I also think increases in cheap computation make this argument especially unconvincing today in a way it might not have been in 1960s-1970s.)
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(If you want to be scared/impressed by what some clever physicists can do with cloud computation and some knowledge of open-source info about nukes, check out
@rscottkemp 's more recent work!)
End of conversation
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