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Comment by Brybry | Hacker News Reader

Japan is a bit different in that its constitution renounces the ability to make war[1], including maintaining forces to make war.

They sidestep around the issue (probably a bit illegally) with their self-defense forces but there are some purely offensive technologies, like nuclear weapons, that even that sidestepping has yet managed to work around.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_9_of_the_Japanese_Cons...

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Japanese politicians in the past have made the case that having a nuclear deterrent would be legal, and the country has the material, tools, and knowledge to build a MIRV ICBM immediately if TSHTF. In general, the population is against war and nuclear weapons because of what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I think that would change quickly if China invades Taiwan (for example).

Not only that, but Japan and South Korea, and a few other nations, have (and long have had) the ability to assemble working nukes in very little time because the hard part they have already solved: making weapons grade fuel. I mean, there's a famous nuclear accident in Japan where some workers mixed too much plutonium solution in buckets and it went critical, and that was in the 70s. They have tons of plutonium from breeding reactors. They almost certainly have designs for nuclear devices, and probably even a stockpile of parts. It would be a matter of months to assemble them and the fuel.

>purely offensive technologies, like nuclear weapons

This is absolutely not true. Nuclear weapons have many non-weapon usages, and they would be really good for those, too. Like excavations, shutting down runaway oil well fires, protecting against stuff striking earth, etc.

Deterance, is also (kind of) defensive purpose.

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