right. China. but Switzerland? Israel? what is going on here?
I rather assumed they were able to re-invent them from scratch by the work of their own scientists. I mean, the US did it before the invention of the transistor and what I've heard about the USSR project is their espionage only helped them know the critical mass without needing so many test runs, so it doesn't seem like it would be implausible that Israel could do it themselves about 20 years later.
In 1965 NUMEC owner, Zalman Shapiro - in coordination with israeli intelligence, diverted 100 kg of 95% enriched uranium from the facility and shipped it to Israel. Enriching the material to weapons grade is the technically difficult part - which I would think israel would certainly not have the budget for given the size of its economy.
> which I would think israel would certainly not have the budget for given the size of its economy.
Hmm.
I'll buy that. I've seen a lot of wildly different cost estimates for separation work units, so I can only guess how much it might have cost at the time.
If it would have otherwise been the full Manhattan Project, I don't even need to guess, you're definitely correct they couldn't have afforded it: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=gdp+israel+1965
https://res.cloudinary.com/dbulfrlrz/images/w_1024,h_661,c_s... (from https://protonvpn.com/blog/5-eyes-global-surveillance).
Israel, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland are also missing from it
I hope someone with a better understanding of the details can jump in, but they are both Tier 2 (not Tier 3) restricted, so maybe there are some available loopholes or Presidential override authority or something. Also I believe they can still access uncapped compute if they go via data centers built in the US.