Nuclear Terrorism: Weapons for Sale or Theft?

Nuclear Terrorism: Weapons for Sale or Theft?: "The Theft of an Intact Nuclear Device

Roughly 30,000 nuclear weapons exist worldwide. Several hundred weapons are vulnerable to theft by terrorists or criminals who might sell them to terrorist organizations. It is clear that some such groups are interested in acquiring a nuclear device: Aum Shinrikyo and al-Qaida have both actively sought to purchase a weapon.

It seems improbable that a state would deliberately provide a nuclear weapon to a terrorist group. Fear of retribution from the attacked state and international community, potential loss of control over the nuclear-armed terrorist group, and a reluctance to surrender nuclear weapons to another party due to the intrinsic difficulty of acquiring them all mitigate against such state sponsorship. Nevertheless, North Korea's February 2005 announcements that it possesses nuclear weapons and intends to build more underscore particular concerns in this context, given that state's history of selling missile technology to other states. More likely than state sponsorship, however, is the possibility that military or scientific elites in some states might be willing, for ideological or financial reasons, to provide nuclear weapons, materiel or expertise to terrorist organizations."