3 ms·
>Edit on downvotes - is my surprise at its declassification misplaced? Yes. If you think that this is even a fraction of the data and resources needed to repl
by serf 6y ago
>Edit on downvotes - is my surprise at its declassification misplaced?
Yes.
If you think that this is even a fraction of the data and resources needed to replicate that chain of events, then you probably seriously misjudge the difficulty faced with regards to the engineering and construction of such a device.
The teenager comment is somewhat hyperbole, I think -- but it's not necessarily wrong. The basic principals behind these devices have been public knowledge for as far as I can remember; diagrams of how they work have been in magazines like Scientific American since the mid 70s -- maybe earlier.
This "teenage knowledge" threat predates Wikipedia, that's for sure. I was sending away cash for nefarious science kits way before Wikipedia.
- jbay808 6y agoI don't think it's a fraction of the data and resources needed to pull it off. But if I were, say, Kim Jong Un, this video might give me enough of a sense of how many people, time, and budget I might reasonably allocate for this kind of project. That's not the kind of information that I'd likely get from Scientific American; also, even if I can find a blown-up schematic of a nuclear weapon in a magazine, no matter how detailed it is, I'll never be sure that some important "secret sauce" isn't left out of the image. Seeing hi-res footage of a real device is different in that regard.
- rsynnott 6y agoThis isn't showing you anything about the _manufacture_ of the warhead, though, and the design and manufacture is the hard bit. And today, it's mostly hard because it's _expensive_; the technology isn't all that secret.