I bought the book One Point Safe years ago, but the issues raised remain highly relevant today. A serious risk exists that terrorist organizations and, ultimately, terrorist-states, could obtain Russian nuclear material or weapons. The Council on Foreign Relations pointed out in a report on loose nukes that Russian authorities admitted that within a three-year period, "they have broken up hundreds of nuclear-material smuggling deals. In October 2001, shortly after the World Trade Center attacks, a Russian nuclear official reported having foiled two separate incidents over the previous eight months in which terrorists had 'staked out' a secret weapons storage site."
The book One Point Safe warns that the collapse of the Soviet Union left thousands of warheads and hundreds of tons of plutonium sitting virtually unguarded, presenting the world with a terrifying nuclear threat. The book quotes the head of the Russian nuclear weapons program complaining that weapons hurriedly evacuated from the former colonies were left "sticking out of warehouse windows."
One Point Safe goes on to report that (now-retired) General Evgeni Maslin, who was the chief custodian of Russia's nuclear weapons, said openly, "What is theoretically possible and what we must always be prepared for is train robbery, attempts to seize nuclear weapons in transit."
Horribly poor nuclear security has existed for more than nukes in transit. Frank von Hippel, a former assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology, once toured the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow and was appalled to find weapons-grade uranium, enough for several atom bombs, stored in simple high school lockers, merely guarded with a padlock. It turned out that nobody at Kurchatov had even taken an inventory of the uranium as of the time von Hippel conducted his tour, according to the authors of One Point Safe.
These massively dangerous risks are highlighted in an exciting new novel by Tim Jacobson,
The Kurchatov Penetration
. In that thriller, an American computer hacker develops an artificial-intelligence technology that falls into the hands of the Russian mafiya, which they use to pursue the interception of plutonium in transit, with the hope of selling the bomb-grade material to Iran.
The catastrophe of September 11, 2001, pales in comparison to the massive destruction and widespread deaths that could be wrought by a terrorist-state possessing nuclear weapons. Books like One Point Safe,
Red Mafiya
, and The Kurchatov Penetration highlight the very real threat to world security that exists when nuclear weapons technology lies exposed to falling into the wrong hands.
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