Nuclear espionage
States are also limited in their ability to make public the information regarding nuclear weapons by non-proliferation agreements.
During the Manhattan Project, the joint effort during World War II by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada to create the first nuclear weapons, there were many instances of nuclear espionage in which project scientists or technicians channeled information about bomb development and design to the Soviet Union.
These include: Most Soviet spies were properly convicted, but several evaded indictment due to a lack of evidence.
The same goes for his associate Clarence Hiskey who was able to live the rest of his life out in the United States even though he was questioned by the FBI several times.
The investigations described in the report eventually led to the arrest of Wen Ho Lee, a scientist at Los Alamos, initially accused of giving weapons information to the PRC.
[4] In January 2004, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan confessed to selling restricted technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea.
Khan had previously been indicated as having taken gas centrifuge designs from a uranium enrichment company in the Netherlands (URENCO) which he used to jump-start Pakistan's own nuclear weapons program.
Pakistan's government claims they had no part in the espionage, but refuses to turn Khan over for questioning by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran has stated that their reason for nuclear research is for solely nonmilitary purposes such as for agricultural, medical, and industrial advancements.
This did not last long before IAEA started to get test readings that showed Iran had enriched uranium over eighty percent.
That let the world know that Iran had the capability to enrich to a level great enough to produce a working nuclear weapon.
This allows them to perform cyberattacks much like North Korea has done to either gain access to nuclear weapon plans or get them as ransom.
The attack by the United States and Israel was a malware called Stuxnet that was sold to Iran which eventually caused severe damage to their nuclear program There are other reasons it is believed that Iran may use cyberattacks to acquire the missing link to their nuclear weapons development.
[5] This new cyber aspect of espionage has led to many efforts by nuclear weapons welding countries to scour their systems to try to find weak spots where there are venerable.
This led then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to officially declare India as a nuclear power.
[7] The objective of the mission was for the 14 climbers to work in unison to place a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG), powering a detector on the peak of Nanda Devi, thus allowing the U.S. to spy on China.
[9] The attack happened earlier that year in September, but the NPCIL was hesitant to go public with the news, stating that a cyberattack on the facility was not possible.
It's not clear what information was stolen at the time, but top officials related to the incident are not convinced that future attacks will be prevented.
