Buying Goods To Make Nuclear Weapons On eBay, Alibaba, and Other Platforms 260
Lasrick (2629253) writes The blossoming of online Internet-trading platforms has at least one downside: insufficient inspectors and product controls when it comes to goods relevant to nuclear proliferation. "On Alibaba (and other platforms), one can purchase many of the specialized items needed for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. A short list of items advertised for sale on the site include metals suitable for centrifuge manufacturing, gauges and pumps for centrifuge cascades for uranium enrichment, metallurgical casting equipment suitable for making nuclear weapon 'pits,' and high-speed cameras suitable for use in nuclear weapon diagnostic tests. A company on an Alibaba-owned Chinese Internet-trading platform even posted an ad for the sale of the rare metal gallium, which the seller trumpeted could be used to stabilize plutonium." Although many companies have strict compliance procedures in place to help avoid proliferation, many do not. There are several procedures these platforms can put into place to minimize risk, and both national (and international) regulators have a role to play, as well as shareholders.
If so damn many people are making nukes (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why no booms?
Boom! [wikipedia.org]
Boom!! [wikipedia.org]
Boom!!! [wikipedia.org]
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Oh so North Korea bought their stuff from Alibaba and eBay?
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wrong, none of those countries had a secret program put together by means mentioned in article on shoestring budget. All of them had a public program put together by very well known and traceable means and materials, with huge facilities, costing 3 billion USD (for N. Korea) and up.
You have no point
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No boom today, boom tomorrow, there's always boom tomorrow.
BOOM!
Re:If so damn many people are making nukes (Score:5, Informative)
That and they keep the really useful stuff for booms tightly regulated.
You might be able to build a dirty bomb in your basement. However even building a gun type fission bomb is really really tricking. you need highly accurate tools in a specialized radiological enclosure to start with. You can't just spin a hunk of Uranium on a CNC lathe and get the shape you want. you would kill everyone working on the project long before they finished it.
As for Chemical weapons they regulate large quantity purchases. you can buy smaller amounts and fly under the radar but then you have to store until you have a large enough supply. again requiring strict controls.
Even large scale diesel bombs like timothy Macve(?) used are harder to pull off now.
Re:If so damn many people are making nukes (Score:5, Informative)
Um, uranium isn't all that radioactive or even dangerous to handle. The only reason people actually wear gloves when handling it is to keep contaminants like oils from the hand off of them. Sticking it on a lathe isn't going to make a bomb, though. You could make a pretty poor dirty bomb because breathing uranium dust isn't healthy (the skin stops alpha and beta emitters pretty well, but the lungs don't), but it also isn't the best emitter. In fact, with a dirty bomb you want something with a high alpha emission rate like polonium. Spent reactor fuel contains all kinds of actinides with high emission rates, so nuclear waste makes a much better dirty bomb than raw uranium.
As for getting fissile uranium out of pieces of uranium, well it isn't particularly hard, but it is time consuming. You basically dissolve the uranium into a solution and then run it in a centrifuge and the heavier stuff moves to the walls and lighter stuff toward the center. You then remove the lighter solution and repeat over and over again to get more purity. You need to do this to a certain level for a reactor and a much higher level for a bomb. If you wanted to take it one step further, you could use reactor level uranium and build a breeder reactor that converts uranium to plutonium and then make a plutonium bomb. Just to get it to reactor grade requires a lot of centrifuges and/or a lot of time... I think I read Iran has something like 77000 of them just to create fuel grade nuclear material.
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"You basically dissolve the uranium into a solution and then run it in a centrifuge and the heavier stuff moves to the walls and lighter stuff toward the center."
Not in liquid solution. You transform it into a gas, such as uranium hexafluoride [wikipedia.org]. Then you run the gas through the centrifuges, which is indeed a huge, energy-intensive operation. Then you have to convert the UF6 back into uranium metal, which is about as chemically messy as the initial conversion to UF6.
The nuclear reactor route to transform i
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Um, ammonium nitrate is an oxidizer, and can't explode in its own - it needs something to oxidize. Like, say, home heating fuel, or diesel fuel - the latter of which McVeigh used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:If so damn many people are making nukes (Score:5, Informative)
Oh yeah, the "dual use" bull. Do you have any faint idea how complicated it has become to get some chemicals? Because someone somehow found some way to use it either to make stuff you can smoke or stuff that makes other stuff go up in smoke. In the meantime we're sitting here with more and more useless stuff for PCB etching. Oh, and we're not talking about such elusive stuff like LAH (which is surprisingly easy to get compared to its "usefulness"), just try to get some HCl or H2O2 in Europe today.
Dual use my ass. Name any chemical and I'll find a way to make a bomb out of that crap. By that logic, you can't sell anything anymore. But I guess it only applies when Mr. Ordinary wants to buy some chemicals to avoid paying some corporation thrice the price because they slap a brand label on some chem mix. Then it's suddenly ok.
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When are we going to start controlling the production of urine?
Urine can be used to make gunpowder.
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Except they DO make meth out of it. That you don't have the recipe doesn't mean it isn't true. Go look it up.
And US manufacturing went down after those laws came in, and foreign imports went up. So it didn't really change the price on the street. Clearly the drug war is failed.
But that has nothing to do with the fact that it IS an ingredient in multiple meth recipes.
Fucking joke is right, smoke another bowl and do a web search ganjadude
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but I stand my my point regardless if you can make meth with it. How about instead of regulating things that could potentially be used to make bad things, we simply go after people who actually DO bad things. Stop inconveniencing the majority because of a very VERY small minority
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fair enough, I should have been more specific. Anything with pseudoephrine has been behind the counter for years. I'm talking about a lot of stores now have a blanket policy on any cold medicine regardless of ingredients
but I stand my my point regardless if you can make meth with it. How about instead of regulating things that could potentially be used to make bad things, we simply go after people who actually DO bad things. Stop inconveniencing the majority because of a very VERY small minority
Many cough formulas contain dextromethorphan, a mild dissociative that can be abused recreationally. When they check IDs for over-the-counter stuff, they're probably trying to screen out robotripping teenagers, not people cooking meth.
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Now to be serious for a minute, give me whatever you have under your kitchen sink and 10 minutes and I'll blow up your toilet. Drain cleaners ought to be banned by the logic of H2O2 can be used to make bombs, sure its a potent source of oxygen for chemical reactions but so are many other house hold chemicals. And lets not forget how damned easy it is to make nitroglycerine. You might not survive it but its not like its hard to do, and the c
Re:If so damn many people are making nukes (Score:4, Interesting)
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Maybe not in the 60s, but in the 50s you could get radioactivity experiment kits [scientificamerican.com].
Mine had a small vial of iodine crystals, too... (Score:2)
Get you a meth lab charge nowadays. Used to buy potassium nitrate and permanganate in pound canisters from the local druggist too.
KMn04 and glycerin are hypergolic, BTW.
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When Feynman was a kid he played around dipping his hands in benzine as part of his "chemistry magic" show.
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/c... [cancer.org]
You know, most of the things they stopped putting in chemistry sets are dangerous to handle, and not just if you eat it. Is it really so "cool" that it is worth getting cancer?
And you can still buy strong acids at art supply stores. I worked with acids for etching glass in middle school in the 80s, and that stuff is still available now.
It may very well be that customers
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That said, I tend to you agree with your conclusion: the real losers are industry and research.
Except industry and research still have access. The chemicals aren't banned, they're restricted to business use. All you have to do buy them is... be industry, or be doing research.
Honestly it sounds like you tripped and fell over the anti-policy propaganda, and are arguing against something different than what the policy actually is. And from your comment, I can't even tell that you would be against the real policy if you had heard it explained accurately.
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Given enough pressure even Argon can be turned into something that causes trouble.
The point is that yes, these things can be used to build bombs. Or drugs. Simply for the same reason they are useful for non-drug, non-bomb related uses: They are powerful oxidizing agents, powerful reducing agents or versatile solvents. They react well with various other chemicals and hence are very useful for various purposes.
So your choice is either to accept that these substances can be used for unlawful purposes and find
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The point is that yes, these things can be used to build bombs. Or drugs. Simply for the same reason they are useful for non-drug, non-bomb related uses: They are powerful oxidizing agents, powerful reducing agents or versatile solvents. They react well with various other chemicals and hence are very useful for various purposes.
Hey... SpaceShip One was basically powered by burning superballs... butadiene "rubber".
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So your choice is either to accept that these substances can be used for unlawful purposes and find a way to observe their use, or you accept that you can't do jack anymore yourself and are reduced to a consuming drone.
Your choice.
Most of this stuff can be ordered through a chemistry supply store in small quantities suitable for experimentation, but you have to fill out a bunch of paperwork and explain some real reasons why you want it. It turns out, very few of the kids trying to buy it are trying to learn chemistry. Usually it is Beavis and Butthead trying to blow something up, and they didn't pay attention in chemistry well enough to describe the right experiment.
I buy controlled chemicals for wild mushroom identification (the fle
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Not quite. The secondary uses for guns are pretty small compared to the primary one 'putting big bloody holes in things'.
Where as peroxide has an awful lot of uses, one of them just happens to be explosive.
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So you'd say that we should ban the sale of bomb making materials, do I get that right?
Ok, let's see what I can come up without spending time to ponder. Petrol, drain cleaner, natural gas, fertilizer, battery acid, glass cleaner and with a bit of electricity, water.
Let's ban all that, ok?
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Europe is far from perfect. Especially now that we're working hard on eliminating everything that sets us apart from the US. Maybe in an attempt to keep them from attacking us, after all I heard the Terrorist hate us 'cause we have it so much better than they do.
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Sigh. Not this argument again.
Non-proliferation agencies are important. No one's doubting that. But that's NOT the reason - at least not the main one - that people don't have nukes. The main reason is that you need to process shit-tons of uranium ore. You can't hide a uranium enrichment program. Nor can you hide a plutonium breeding program.
On the other hand, if you DO manage to get your hands on some sweet, sweet plutonium (of the weapons-grade type), perhaps by buying it off some rogue state, it's incredi
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You can't hide a uranium enrichment program. Nor can you hide a plutonium breeding program.
But you CAN hide tons of enriched uranium, and plutonium, which have "gone missing" from those programs over the years.
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And sexy spandex underpants to fill their leisure time with enjoyment!!!
You know what else that stuff can be used for (Score:5, Insightful)
NOT making nuclear weapons...
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And meanwhile, an Australian can't sell for instance a Dutch (Philips) made photomultiplier tube on ebay. I can 't get some FET transistors from TI they told me, because they couldn't really identify me. Strangely enough, the next day the FET's were in the mail...
Oh, well, next time i'll buy Chinese, German, Dutch or Japanese. But not from an American company.
And which country has the most problems with weaponry, by far?
Re:You know what else that stuff can be used for (Score:5, Interesting)
This. A billion times this.
You have NO idea what I went through last time buying some chemicals for my PCB work. It seems that buying HCl, H2O2, Isopropyl alcohol and Acetone was kinda asking for it, but I honestly didn't know. Well, now I do. And I got a new door, too...
And yes, those things are used exactly for what I said. HCl and H2O2 for etching, Acetone for cleaning the PCB of photoresist and the alcohol to dissolve the soldering flux.
But now I know what else you can do with that crap. Thanks law enforcement, I wouldn't even have thought about that!
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At least in my part of the world you can buy all that stuff for cash at Home Depot. You don't need really high concentration H2O2 or HCl for PCB etching, the pool chemicals work fine.
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Over at Sciencemadness we had several members telling their stories of law enforcement encounters. Not all were completely unpleasant, actually.
In another post you mentioned that you were in Europe. Not every European country (not even every EU country) has the same rules regarding chemical purchase. Portugal is rather relaxes, and here in Finland at least sulfuric acid ("battery acid") and H2O2 are relatively easy to purchase.
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You don't really strike me as the type that knows nothing about improvised explosives.
The fact that you apparently know your way around circuit boards is icing on the cake.
And the fact that you write crappy logic like that indicates that you're both a troll and one of those people who thinks anyone who's heard of The Anarchist's Cookbook should be in jail.
sheesh
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Yes, I spent some time reading about it. I wanted to be sure I don't buy "questionable" material anymore, at least not at the same time.
There is a fair lot of stuff that can be used to blow crap up. When you think about what an explosion actually is, it's not really so surprising anymore. All it takes is rapid expansion. Preferably by turning a solid into a gas.
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So basic knowledge of chemistry now makes you a national security threat?
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Knowledge of something does not imply acting upon that knowledge. I know how to operate an automatic rifle and yet I haven't gone on a killing spree.
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Yep. It's just another anti-China story. Look how bad Alibaba and all those Chinese eBay sellers are, helping terrorists build their nuclear bombs.
Well, by that logic (Score:5, Insightful)
the food eaten by the people working on making nuclear bombs is an item that can lead to proliferation. This is just scare-mongering to increase inspection of incoming parcels... so the government can charge import duties and taxes.
Oh, and we're protecting you from people who build nuclear bombs in their garage, yup.
What nonsense.
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why stop it?
Getting the government involved in regulating the site to preemptively prevent these transactions is stupid. Instead there should be a streamlined process for getting a warrant, and then you go after people who purchase the material. While mailing them a large cache of something that looks like the product but isn't and that has a locator.
If you ban the sale altogether you just push it underground. If you use it to gather data you have actionable intelligence.
Re: Why? (Score:2)
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"Getting the government involved [...] is stupid"...
then
"process for getting a warrant"
Eh what? From a private corporation I guess?
"then you go after people who purchase the material"
Who "you"? You and the horsemen of the free market????
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The GP basically described an FBI investigation.
Except, the FBI exists in a world where we ban the unregulated sale of things like anthrax, plastic explosives, rocket launchers, children, dual purpose precursor chemicals, radioisotopes, and a million other things.
Gallium Rare? (Score:2, Insightful)
Gallium is used a lot in semiconductor manufacture and I'm pretty sure it's not that hard to get.
Hell, a Google search for "pure gallium" has pulled up quite a few prospects.
You'd have a much harder time getting a hold of the plutonium.
Gallium is also a dopant in chipmaking (Score:4, Informative)
problem is, almost everything has the potential for dual-use. thorium for tube filaments for audiophools and ham radio power tubes. plutonium for.... yeah, that's it, degradation deep-space power modules, right. there might be room for a law to allow the customs boys to bring you questionable materials, and inspect the delivery address... .
Re: Gallium is also a dopant in chipmaking (Score:2)
Re: Gallium is also a dopant in chipmaking (Score:4, Insightful)
Thermometers. They don't make them out of Mercury any more, due to toxicity. Most analog thermometers are now alcohol based, but Gallium is used in quite a few.
I won't even bother listing all the uses for pumps and pressure gauges. This article is clearly trolling.
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Why would you go through all the effort needed to make a bomb out of water if you can use gasoline or (better) LPG for that? Those are already explosive and nobody is going to care why you are buying 60L provided it first goes into the fuel tank of your car.
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I agree with that.
I think the time has come to prohibit everything (Score:2)
It is the only way we will ever be safe.
Gallium? (Score:3)
Well yea Gallium can be used to stabilise Pu, it is after all a potent neutron absorber....
This is not a metal you want anywhere near your fissile core.
Kind of cool stuff however, it melts right around body heat, so amusing to play with, but as a nuclear material its major use is preventing big piles of corium from accidents from going critical.
An interesting obsevation about the black market as applied to nuclear matters: If I have some Pu for sale I stand about an 80% chance that any given attempt to close a deal will result in a swat team and men from the intellegence services wanting a word.
The same thing applies if I am a buyer, no effective market can exist under these conditions.
However, given that presumably everyones intel agencies run stings of both types the result must surely be that much of the time you get two intellegence agencies swatting each other....
Now the ready availibility of copper vapour lasers and narrow line width dyes, that might actually be a worry (There is approximately a 0.5nm difference in the photon energy required to ionise U235 compared to U238 as a hexafloride, this is explotable at least in experimental plants), 1950s tech not so much (There are probably easier ways to get there these days).
Regards, Dan.
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That's the thing, gallium is not that exotic and has recreational uses. Casting equipment?! A staggering range of uses for thousands of years.
BTW "stabilize" is in the metallurgical sense. If the open literature is correct, and I hope it is full of booby traps for bomb makers, plutonium is less of a nightmare to put into controlled shapes if alloyed with gallium.
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Suggesting a potent neutron poison as a component of the alloy strikes me as being a fairly obvious one of those traps, the critical mass for a spherical PU assembly is also quoted differently in different literature (I have not bothered doing the maths to figure out which one is correct for a non reflector based design), but it is pretty much highschool level sums.
Now getting the tamper design right and manufacturing sufficiently homoginous compression charges, not often discussed in the civil literature.
N
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OK, how about we not infringe your right to bear 17th century muskets as long as you make it yourself, make your own bullets and gunpowder?
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Actually, you should not infringe his right to bear the state of the art weapons, the same ones that the military has.
18th century muskets and rifles were state of the art in 18th century - both the military and private individuals used the same weapons.
Yawn (Score:2)
So Chinese manufactures sell materials that could be used to make nuclear bombs and it goes unchecked. Are we supposed to be surprised or scared into giving up more liberties in the name of a false sense of security?
Centrifuge parts (Score:3)
Millions of uranium centrifuge parts sold openly:
http://www.alibaba.com/country... [alibaba.com]
Somebody call Colin Powell!
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Boy Scouts can :-P
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org]
Quote:
A Scout in the Boy Scouts of America, Hahn conducted his experiments in secret in a backyard shed at his mother's house in Commerce Township, Michigan. While his reactor never reached critical mass, Hahn attracted the attention of local police when he was stopped on another matter and they found material in his vehicle that troubled them and he warned that it was radioactive. His mother's property was cleaned up by the Environmental Protection Agency
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"Radioactive Boy Scout" only succeeded in perhaps giving himself a dose of radiation about half of max allowed nuke plant worker for a year. Do you know how much americium it takes to make a spherical critical configuration? Over 100 lbs., and so extracting a third of a microgram from each of a pile of smoke detectors isn't really taking steps toward that goal.....
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He radiated 5 blocks the breeder got out of control.
He fucked himself up go see photo of his face now
He used radium from antique clocks found a vial of radium in a clock he also had a neutron gun from beryllium and he used to start the reactor, and over days it got hotter and before it got critical he dismantled and panicked.
The government labeled his house a Superfund cleanup site.
But it was enough to build dirty bomb. If he would have taken the radiated source and ground it down and sprayed over a salad b
time to background check people who buy golf balls (Score:2)
time to background check people who buy golf balls and have TSA at driving rage.
1940s technology (Score:3)
The technology to actually manufacture nuclear weapons is starting to close in on a century old. What prohibits their manufacture is ultimately a combination of international pressure, expense, and engineering difficulty. If your country doesn't have a bullet train then it probably doesn't have nuclear weapons for much the same reason or else because it has specifically chosen not to manufacture them (the fact any money from western nations would quickly evaporate makes a strong incentive). If you're going to worry about people getting hold of galium and high speed cameras, you're just being ridiculous. Anyone who could even have a shot at building a nuclear weapon also has enough resources to easily obtain those sorts of items, no matter what international restrictions are applied.
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Actually I think having bullet trains and having nuclear weapons are anticorrelated.
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Lump of metal != centrifuge (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, this is pretty much BS scaremongering.
Buying a piece of metal that could be made into a centrifuge doesn't mean that you will actually succeed to make one. There is a lot of specialized equipment needed for that which is tightly controlled (try to export a high precision CNC machine, for example!).
Most of this gear has lots of legitimate uses as well. Not to mention that if someone really wanted to obtain this sort of gear, I cannot imagine them shopping for it on Alibaba or eBay - they would be spending a ton of money for a product of unknown quality possibly from a mom&pop shop somewhere in China that sells everything from rubber bands, dresses up to car accessories, that is assuming it isn't a scam in the first place. There are better ways of obtaining it - e.g. through shell companies abroad acting as middlemen to avoid embargoes or from friendly nations.
And before someone pulls out the "terrorist building nukes" bogeyman - that requires a lot more than building a few centrifuges from stuff bought on Alibaba. There are plenty of simpler, cheaper and easier accessible methods to wreak havoc than trying to build a nuke that even countries like Iran didn't succeed in so far, despite vastly bigger resources than some lunatics in a cave possess.
Reversed conditional (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of this gear has lots of legitimate uses as well. Not to mention that if someone really wanted to obtain this sort of gear, I cannot imagine them shopping for it on Alibaba or eBay.[...]
I'm trying to become a rationalist, so here's (my take on) the fallacy.
Police learn that "all drug labs use chemicals", so they think "all chemicals are intent to make drugs". If they see your home laboratory, you'll be arrested and have all your chemicals confiscated - even if you don't have the complete drug-making kit. I know of one home lab where this is exactly what happened. Frequently, having a scale is considered sufficient evidence of drug dealing.
I've read several news reports of people being arrested for having "bomb making materials" where the kit was incomplete - in one case a box of [glass] canning jars in the back of a vehicle along with a bag of fertilizer. No fuel oil (for ANFO [wikipedia.org]), nothing that could be a fuse, no apparent intent, and no apparent target. A guy's life got completely fucked up for no apparent reason.
Another example: explosives are delivered by rocket, so rockets will be used to deliver explosives. We have to ban model rocketry!
Sexual harassment is done by ribald speech, therefore all ribald speech is sexual harassment. (Even if there's no threat?)
Other examples too numerous to mention.
This is formally the Fallacy of the Reversed Conditional [wikipedia.org], and it's used in lots and lots of news articles to stoke fear and promote the writer's agenda.
It's a problem in Bayesian probability. Consider whether the following reversals are valid or invalid:
Probability that someone carries a purse, given that they're a woman (high or low), probability that someone is a woman, given that they're carrying a purse (high or low)? Is reversing this conditional valid?
Probability that John is dead, given that he was executed (high or low), probability that John was executed, given that he is dead (high or low)? Is reversing the conditional valid?
Two examples of reversed the conditionals, but only one is valid when reversed.
We need to sort through the bias and clever manipulation of innuendo, and consider the arguments on their merits. Owning any of the cited tech is not evidence of bomb-making, and invasive tracking laws will not help stop nuclear proliferation.
The fallacy is used for a reason: they want to impose invasive tracking for other reasons, using your emotions against you.
Don't be fooled.
eBay and Alibaba are for babies ... (Score:3)
... and there are other more dangerous sites [theatlantic.com].
Nonsense (Score:2)
Let's clearly separate the cases
a) You are an institution which is powerful/rich enough to build (AFAIU they were talking about the raw metals here) operate a isotope enrichment plant, breeder reactors, and compose these to a *working* nuclear device (Ahem even countries like North Korea or Iran take a while for this): It's very likely that you were able to contact sellers of these required equipment without the internet (and doing so via the internet may get you on a list of the NSA to watch)
b) You are a t
Stop the proliferation of stones to Iran ! (Score:3)
Now!
Stones used in stonings in Iran.
We old (in)continentler (european) stopped delivering sodiompenthatol to the U.S. because of its use in executions.
Stop delivering stones to Iran.
The funny thing about nuclear weapons is.
You need the fucking key ingredient!
Uran or Plutonium
And yes when you have that you can enrich it!
But when I remember correctly the Uranium content of the best ton of uranium ore was about 0,3%.
And the amount of centrifuges to increase the concentration is enormous.
Now you need to put that Caterpiller Truck also on the list.
No fucking idiot without a big organisation can do that.
We should track lathe and mill buyers first, because these are the tools weapons of person destruction are built off.
darknet (Score:2)
We arrange all our 'special' purchases over a secure p>p network and pay in bitcoin.
Walmart sells landmines! (Score:2)
Should we close those stores as well?
(well, probably, but not for those reasons)
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You know that IS the whole point of a land mine (or any type of IED) right? Not to kill but to maim, slow down, drive up the expenses and bring down the morale of your enemy.
Gallium?! (Score:2)
A company on an Alibaba-owned Chinese Internet-trading platform even posted an ad for the sale of the rare metal gallium
Oh no! Not the "rare metal" gallium!
How could something so dangerous and rare be sold to the general public [amazon.com]?
I got gallium from my black market contact... (Score:3, Interesting)
Code name, Amazon Prime
http://www.amazon.com/Gallium-99-99%25-Pure-20-Grams/dp/B00BSRAH5M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414958244&sr=8-1&keywords=gallium
I used it to make a novelty heart, which melted in her hands.
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I used it to make a novelty heart, which melted in her hands.
That's really cool. Was it hard to work with?
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Nope, I just microwaved some water in a bowl, then I placed the container of gallium in the bowl of warm water, it melted in a minute or so, and I poured it into a mold. Takes quite a while for it to melt at body temperature, so you'll have to hold hands for a while. :)
We are dumb (Score:2)
Advertisment (Score:2)
How much is fake? (Score:2)
How much is stuff set up to fail by three letter agencies in US/UK? And contrary to popular scare mongering, making a nuke is not easy, even a simple gun type assembly. Delivering it to the target is a another very large hurdle. For those interested, I do recommend this book [amazon.com]
sensationalist rubbish (Score:2)
All those items and materials have legions of legitimate uses in science and manufacturing; only an ignoramus would accept the absurd allegations of summary or article.
The Rare and Dangerous Metal Gallium? (Score:2)
You mean, like is combined with arsenic (a deadly poison) to use for all sorts of evil things like LEDs and high speed transistors for things like cell phones?
And you can combine it with that nitrogen stuff that is part of so many explosives. And use it for (wait for it) even brighter LEDs!
Wow. That's some real exotic stuff there. Certainly wouldn't want any of that in the world.
Yeah, this is the sort of BS I'd expect out of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. It's sad they've figured out that submitting
You don't need eBay to develop nukes (Score:2)
US support through their shills is plenty enough. Ask Holland, Israel and Pakistan, in any order.
Ban everything!! (Score:3)
The level of stupid in the world is astounding.
The last time I bought nuclear materials online... (Score:2)
... all I got was a shiny bomb case full of pinball machine parts.
Atomic hand warmers (Score:2)
While we all love our polonium encrusted static master brushes, americium drenched smoke detectors, tritium and radium enhanced time pieces... what I really want for Christmas this year are a matching pair of plutonium powered hand-warmers.
None of this boiling water to recharge leaky sodium acetate bags made by the lowest bidder, intentionally throwing our smartphones into thermal overload or the mess left behind by paper envelopes filled with iron filings.
Not only do plutonium hand warmers guarantee many y
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If you're a nuclear scientist or engineer, your activities are more closely watched than anyone else's save the president of your country.
Kim Kardashian is President?
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Sarah Palin came close.
Just because it's your worst nightmare doesn't mean you should discount the possibility completely.
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Why are people so busy trying to kill each other?
Video games.
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Design flaw(s).
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Gallium causes almost all metals to corrode on contact.
Mostly just Aluminum. It also forms room temperature eutectics with other metals, but that's the only commonly used one.
On a related note, it's illegal to bring gallium onto an airplane, due to corrosion concerns.
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country? any individual person is more like it.
uranium isotopes are too hard. just convert u238 into pu239 with fast neutrons from a fusor. all it takes it electricity and time, and then you can separate the fissile from the matrix chemically, which is much easier.
making a fission bomb is incredibly easy, once you have enough pu239. i mean it is century-old physics, achievable with your great-grandfather's technology. c'mon.
it is a lot of electric however. i recommend investing in a hydro station.
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hahaha: no, your homemade fusor will never output sufficent neutrons to change any amount of metal you could weigh on a scale
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Arrest him!
Why? It's only copper!
OK... wait, is that tin over there! EXECUTE THE CRIMINAL SCUM! He could make bronze weapons with those!