The threat of nuclear terrorism is bigger than you think

What are the risks? First, that terrorists could steal a complete nuclear weapon, like SPECTRE in the James Bond thriller, “Thunderball.” This is hard, but not impossible. The key risk is that the outside terrorists get insider help: For example, a radical jihadist working at a Pakistan weapon storage site. Or the Belgian base just outside Brussels where we still stash a half-dozen nuclear weapons left over from Cold War deployments. Or the Incirlik air base in Turkey where we keep an estimated 50 weapons just 200 miles from the Syrian border.

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Second, terrorists could steal the “stuff” of a bomb, highly enriched uranium or plutonium. They cannot make this themselves — that requires huge, high-tech facilities that only nations can construct. But if they could get 50 or 100 pounds of uranium — about the size of a bag of sugar — they could construct a crude Hiroshima-style bomb. ISIS, with its money, territory and global networks, poses the greatest threat to do this that we have ever seen. Such a bomb brought by truck or ship or FedEx to an urban target could kill hundreds of thousands, destroy a city and put the world’s economy and politics into shock.

Third, there is the possibility of a dirty bomb. Frankly, many of us are surprised this has not happened already.

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