How was the USA/Russia able to build nuclear weapons in the 1940s, but countries today aren’t able to just as easily?
In: Technology
The short answer: it’s not. That they *can’t*, it’s that the powers that already have such weapons won’t allow them to do so, and act quickly to isolate and disable state actors that aren’t close allies who attempt.to implement a weapons programs. The process is well understood, but still has very specific, difficult steps if it’s going to be achieved.
There are a bunch of reasons to do this. For one, it’s fucking *dangerous* for more actors to have access to a trigger that basically deletes humanity l. For another, it severely restricts the military options of the state actors who DO have the weapons already.
Which is what makes the North Korea situation fucking amazing. They were able to develop a delivery system at the cost of a couple photo ops.
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