North Korea's public relations announcement (via a test detonation) that it had nuclear weapons, is a great demonstration of the proliferation of dangerous knowledge beyond the realm of major states. We can expect more demonstrations in the near future as Iran, spurred on by the example of North Korea and the opportunity afforded by the US embroiled in Iraq, replicates the process. It won't stop there. Insecurity caused by the growth in global multi-polarity will drive the process. We can expect to more entries into the nuclear club over the next decades, by states that hitherto have avoided developing these weapons.
As we are finding with Iran, the problem isn't just the ownership of the weapon (although that matters), it is the knowledge of the process necessary to make it. Any disruption of the physical assets through bombing or sabotage can at best only delay the inevitable, if both the knowledge and the will to do it are left intact.If we take the long view of this, the process we see at work at the state level with nuclear weapons foreshadows a more interesting trend line. This trend dictates that the knowledge of technologies that enable mass destruction/death/disruption will inevitably fall within the capability horizon of organizations with increasingly lower levels of complexity. Soon, the level of organizational complexity required for weapons of this type will descend below the level of a state. In short, dangerous knowledge will continue to proliferate and eventually reach organizations that are willing to use these weapons.
While non-state entities that develop this capability may be more vulnerable to physical intervention than states, they do have attributes that work in their favor that will make detection increasingly difficult (bordering on impossible). Further, since knowledge of the process will increasingly define the danger (particularly since many of the weapons that are on our future docket are increasingly defined by the manipulation of information rather than physical assets), it will become increasingly easy to transfer and resuscitate the original danger if those involved are not completely sealed off.
How we answer the problems of North Korea and Iran will be an important harbinger of our ability to deal with this larger trend. I suspect that we won't adapt well. NOTE: Drivers of the proliferation of dangerous knowledge:- Rapid advances in dangerous (particularly self-replicating) technologies.
- Ubiquitous global education in sensitive subjects. Increasing pool of actors.
- Tool improvement. Moore's law.
- Knowledge/information transfer. Internet.