Nuclear scientists as assassination targets (2012)
journals.sagepub.com
journals.sagepub.com
https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2021/01/06/from-the-archiv...
This article says hundreds of deaths https://asiatimes.com/2019/07/indias-vanishing-nuclear-scien...
'In November 1944, the OSS learned that Heisenberg planned to visit Switzerland the next month. Former major league baseball catcher and then OSS officer Moe Berg was dispatched to Zurich with orders that “Heisenberg must be rendered hors de combat” (out of action) if Heisenberg gave evidence that the German bomb effort was close to completion. Apparently Berg alone was to decide whether or not to kill Heisenberg.'
on edit: curious because Jewish spy, even in Zurich, during WW2, sounds dangerous.
“Berg received many requests to write his memoirs, but turned them down. He almost began work on them in 1960, but he quit after the co-writer assigned to work with him confused him with Moe Howard of the Three Stooges.”
Knowledge like that should be engaged.
- Leverage in persuading scientists to become sources for foreign intelligence agencies, or to participate in sabotage.
- Delays development.
- Disincentivizes nuclear weapons research as career path.
The US and Russia experienced something on the order of 15 known nuclear weapons accidents despite attempts a command & control designed to prevent such occurrences. This doesn't include the unknown amount of weapons grade materials lost/stolen; or the possibility a few finished weapons may have been sold. How many rolls of the dice, by how many additional actors, before the world's luck runs out? From a risk management perspective, if there must be nuclear weapons (realistically) then not every country is capable of stewardship and possession of such weapons.
One need not take sides between, say, Iran and the US/Israel to make an ethical case for extreme efforts to prevent developing nations from obtaining nuclear weapons. The same ethical argument, however, strongly argues for open-sourcing nuclear stewardship technologies so that gaps in proliferation prevention are bridged.
I’ve wondered about this as well. It seems to be me that it would actually be a net benefit to leak what you believe to be solid command and control procedures even to your enemies to avoid an accidental attack.
Climate change is a good example. It has been established that the rising sea level and bush fires proved to be challenges to many nations, but some developed nations see it as an unique opportunity to turn uninhabitable permafrost covered wasteland into arid soil that could be put to use.
With national interests in mind, I strongly suspect the nuclear stewardship may be susceptible to abuse skin to the UN security Council.
There are no two ways about it.
EDIT: I guess there are those who disapprove of Stuxnet because it probably violated some laws. I think it was awesome.
The problem with your plan, even from an amoral realpolitik perspective, is that the Iranian program cannot be prevented forever with 100% certainty. There's a possible future world where they end up with nuclear weapons after 30 years of assassinations, and that's the world where they'd be the most likely to make use of them. There are a lot of ways it could happen - maybe they build two plants and the west only gets one of them, maybe North Korea makes a donation to the cause. Maybe they set up a bunch of innocent scientists in the secret but not secret nuclear theory department and let their enemies waste time clandestinely assassinating their theory group while they manufacture the real weapon based on plans obtained elsewhere. When you're killing civilians, you're in a state of war, and although being in a state of war has had very indirect consequences for the US over the past 50 years, that's not guaranteed to go on forever.
Iran has about 80M innocent civilians living there. Even if you think of the leadership as holding them hostage (not too far from the truth for many countries...), that's a lot of hostages to sacrifice.
Do you realize that stating we must use "any means necessary" to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb is expressing the desire to obliterate a sovereign nation? What means are acceptable for preventing your possible aggression?
>We can, in fact, ensure that they are incapable of making nuclear bombs. A country with stone-age technology is not going to be enriching nuclear fuel.
So you're fine killing however many millions of Iranians to prevent them from having the potential to kill a large number of people.
Shure there is, countries follow their national interest.
Beyond that - all it takes for Russia or China to provide Iran with nuclear weapons would be Israel or US pushing it too far.
Actually, that may already be something past the point - at this point an attack against Iran will be interpreted as an attack or prelude to attack against Russia or China.
We're pretty much in the nuclear nightmare scenario right now, with everybody's hands poised over the trigger.
EDIT: Somehow I didn’t know about Reagan’s providing nuclear technology to Saddam. I’m going to have to read up.
Both laws are of about the same significance.
No they aren't in any conceivable universe. I know US or other powerful countries can be and often are bullies to the weaker if its convenient for them, but even strong countries need good friends. And that's one hell of a stupid short-sighted way to lose them, sometimes for good.
It's one thing to learn of one's acquaintance being assassinated and quite another to find that, while you were on holiday, your company has had a nuclear accident and neither it nor the half-mile hole around it can be entered for another year, all the people are gone and your paycheck will likely be delayed for months at the very least.
Here I do not understand the end game, stalling tactics until there is a U.S administration willing to goto war with Iran?
US driven regime change has a rather poor track record. This week in particular.
This tactic has been successful for the Israelis against the Egyptian missile program in the '50s, after significant setbacks.
So I understand why it appears to be a last sort extreme measure. Risky, difficult to get right but sometimes successful.
I personally think that next batches of new weapons - killer drones, biological warfare, etc... could easily get more "effective" than nuclear weapons. So it's not like it's a static world where the atomic bomb is the ultimate one. It's nations fighting to keep an edge over others in a dynamic setting where older weapons will eventually lose their relevance.
Soon they will switch from nuclear scientists to virologists and microbiologists.
While the OP is about nuclear scientists, i think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull#Death assassinated by Israel for building the space gun for Saddam fits the story too.
I think also somewhat related - i.e. it isn't only enemies who target strategic scientists - after having developed hypersonic missile (Mach 6) in the recent years, Russia put several top scientists and engineers who worked directly either on the project or its key technologies in prison on charges of spying. As the charges are outright bogus - one guy for example was convicted for publishing a scientific article describing results of his unclassified research funded by a European grant (and nobody said a word nor when he received the grant and was doing the work, nor later when the article was making its way through peer-review/publishing/etc. and for quite some time afterward) - it looks to me like they are preventatively making sure that the tech would have no chances to leak by putting those key people in prison once the tech got done in such a wrong way while also sending clear message to the rest.