It's clearly false, too -- a multinational corporation or large research university could make a weapon more effectively than North Korea or Pakistan, if they w

It's clearly false, too -- a multinational corporation or large research university could make a weapon more effectively than North Korea or Pakistan, if they wanted to -- the only limitation would be hiding the work, but that wouldn't be too hard. Jihadis living in caves probably couldn't, true. I wonder if a multinational could hide purchases in enough companies to avoid being identified. Even more interesting would be using something like decentralized task markets and subcontracting to have a group of agents/companies/etc. build you a bomb without them knowing they're building a bomb. Things like "provide an HPC cluster" "simulate high-energy physics for a research paper" "high precision timing circuit" "high accuracy 3d machining for arbitrary purposes" etc. could all be contracted fairly blindly.