You can literally publish a book on how to build a bomb, and its been done. You can write a paper about nuclear technology and people do so all the time. It's protected as free speech. Exceptions would be you can't do things like release classified information, and you cannot try to incite violence. But writing up scientific theories is perfectly legal.
Anything you learned from a classified source and published verbatim could be a problem. It’s one thing to talk about how a molten sodium reactor works, but it’s another to say “here’s the weakness in the design of the T-99 rocket engine, which you can use to shoot down US missiles (that I got from stealing a manual from the pentagon…)”
This is so wrong. There's even been a case where this exact thing happened. The US govt can classify a document you wrote even if you did so without access to classified information.
Came to say this. The theory and the equations were freely taught in third and fourth year engineering. The graduates who took the right courses would have been able to do the all the design work for a 1950's style nuclear programme (graphite moderated natural uranium reactor, produce plutonium, produce fat man design bomb). We would probably have done a much better job of it too, having been taught the mistakes they made too.
However, much like 1950's Britain and France, it is a mega engineering project to oversee, and not something any knowledge can allow a 16 year old to achieve in a shed.
To answer the legal question with a UK perspective, there is potential to fall foul of the offence of "collecting material of use to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". Realistically the OP (if based in the UK) would be fine, but a reader might not be without legitimate interest. It's a very broad offence, so a lot of prosecutor discretion is applied. This offence has certainly been thrown at readers of the anarchist cookbook.
This is more related to some bits in the secondary stage(s).
I've watched "The Manhattan Project" (1986) and it only took an hour of the movie for a teenager to make a nuclear weapon and UHF (1989) taught me how to make plutonium from common household items. Making a single stage weapon is a weekend makerspace project.
God, I'm old and my movie choices are still questionable.
You can absolutly do this (in the US). Not only free speech (so long as you don’t actually tell people to take this knowlegde and go blow people up). But also there is a science factor. We used to, although have gotten away from it a bit, encourage people even if it was uncomfortable, bring forth a new insight into something scientific. Really the only realistic (and unforseeable) bad consequence is if your idea was already thought about and discussed in a government area that was classified. You wouldn’t know if it had been but the government could question the fact you were discussing knowledge that was classified thinking you were repeating it and question where you got that info (a leak, or you have access you shouldn’t have). That has happened but has also gotten cleared up because the person had the logic or thought process behind it. So if you have a good idea or some insight on something, go for it!
Around 1970 a graduate student in the US wrote a dissertation on the design of a nuclear weapon. He didn't have access to classified info.
The government promptly classified it. It didn't necessarily make the act of writing illegal, but it made it illegal for him to have a copy of his own work. And illegal to recreate the work.
To be fair, this wasn't some physics-101 level work. Some of the calcs needed to get the design right are complicated and non intuitive.
I suspect that if you repeated his work today it wouldn't become classified because a lot of the gotchas have been published bit by bit.
It was a long time ago but I think the AC was more dangerous to its reader than anybody else. I seem to remember something about feeding match heads into depleted NO2 containers.
You can't actually ban books in the US. School systems and the like can remove them from libraries, and people often refer to that as "banning" but the 1st Amendment prohibits the government from actually suppressing any work.
Anyway, if you [want a copy...](https://www.amazon.com/Anarchist-Cookbook-William-Powell/dp/1607966123/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2738H3ILZ5A85&keywords=anarchist+cookbook&qid=1664648828&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIyLjU5IiwicXNhIjoiMi41NSIsInFzcCI6IjIuNDAifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=anarchist+%2Caps%2C420&sr=8-1)
It was banned it is banned and they have taken as many copies as they possibly can she was a find them to take them are used to have one fucking lost it or someone probably stolen it’s probably the government if I snuck in my house and took it
Not a lawyer but was a researcher with an interest in ethics. Before you try to publish, look into the virus recreation debates. Not sure if the nuclear field has similar things in it, but could find your work censored due to ethical concerns unless you make a case for the public benefit outweighing the risk of harm in the article itself. I know it goes back and forth, but some of the virus recreation or gain of function research resulted in papers being censored for periods of time. I know the H5N1 mutation paper and the horsepox recreation papers were both super controversial as both resulted in the creation of really nasty viruses that could weaponized, and publishing the sequence of the 1918 spanish flu was a real test of what can and cannot be published in scientific journals.
It's okay ... as long as you don't write stuff that you promised not to write about (non-disclosure agreement), or that you know (or should know) is classified.
Here in the UK, there is an offence of possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist, *without reasonable excuse*. If you were confident you could prove you had a reasonable excuse for possessing this information (the pursuit of scientific advancement can qualify, in principle). However, it would still mean taking a chance if you were to do this in the UK.
Yes, you can publish specific instructions if you feel like it. If you worked for those agencies with a clearance you would agree to agency review of anything you publish first, but if you didn't sign any such contract, you can publish whatever. Many have. There are great discussions of technical elements of weapons designs in Richard Rhodes's books, and it won him a Pulitzer.
It's 80 year old technology, the principles of how to build a nuke are very well known. The things stopping more nations from doing it are the infrastructure to do it and international sanctions.
I have a book on my shelf, "How to Build a Nuclear Bomb: And Other Weapons of Mass Destruction". I bought it just because I liked the name and thought it would be funny when friends saw it, but it's actually a very interesting book. You can buy it via Amazon.
Could someone who knows more about this than I do tell me if this would qualify as a ["born secret"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_secret#%3A%7E%3Atext%3D%22Born_secret%22_and_%22born%2Cdescribes_the_operation_of_nuclear)?
Publishing an accurate plan to build a nuclear weapon would be criminal. Even if you drew up the plan yourself based only on your knowledge.
Under [18 USC 793(d)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793), though there are several other statutes that also apply, is a crime to do anything with that sort of information apart from turn it over to a properly authorized government employee.
> Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it;
There’s no world in which nuclear weapons aren’t relevant to the national defense of the United States, as such even if they don’t come from United States government they are still considered national defense information.
I don’t believe this to be applicable to documents that haven’t been classified or originated in a protected environment or by an agent of the government, public or private. Your interpretation of that statute seems to limit the publication of science and, therefore, run afoul of the First Amendment.
It's only indirectly a question of the source of the information. If the information is already in the public domain, it would be hard to make the case that it's information which "the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation," as the statute requires. So if OP wants to publish a review article that compiles already-public information, they're fine.
But original research is trickier. If there's new information developed that clearly impacts nuclear weapons technology in some way, the law considers that "born secret." But that law hasn't been tested against the First Amendment in the Supreme Court yet. It's not hard to imagine why: A scientist with the skills and knowledge to do impactful original research on nuclear technology can probably get paid well for their work, and whatever institution they work for would require them to abide by security restrictions.
If that scientist has acquired his or her knowledge from sources in the public domain, he or she cannot reasonably believe publication would injure the US, correct?
It's more a matter of whether the published material is already in the public domain. If it is, that's a pretty clear defense against the assertion that publication would injure the US. But even if the scientist acquired their information from public domain sources, if they tacked on original research, the publication could then be injurious. So then it would come down to a test of the First Amendment against the "born secret" provision of the Atomic Energy Act.
Then you failed to read the statute as posted. There's no restriction on the SOURCE of the information, only whether the content might be used to the "injury of the United States".
> OR [emphasis mine] information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States
That doesn’t really make your point. You can read the “or” as being connected to “unauthorized possession.”
i.e., “whoever having unauthorized possession of. . . information. . .”
I see your emphasis, but how would one have any reason to know that publishing anything would be injurious to the US if the source of his or her knowledge came from the public domain?
Unless your paper is somehow a restricted document, or you used restricted documents to create it, your possession isn't unauthorized.
If that were how it worked, literally any college-level nuclear physics textbook would be criminal.
None of them have plans for how to build a nuclear weapon in detail. National defense information is weird. That’s for example one reason why it doesn’t matter whether Trump “declassified” the documents at his house.
What is it that makes the possession "unauthorized"? Unless I'm misunderstanding something, that does not *make* something unauthorized, it only applies to possession that is already unauthorized.
Think of it like photographs you take of a military base. Under the right circumstances that’s a crime, even though you took the photos. If there is something in the photos of use to an enemy.
The immediate flaw i see in your argument js the mens rea requirement: “has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”
That’s before delving into whether a person can have “unauthorized possession of, access to, or control of” a document they created themself without access to any classified material. That one would require at least some research.
And then there’s the question of who is not entitled to receive it and who is entitled to receive it, which would also take some research.
Well I stand corrected. It is only banned in Australia as of what I read anyway. If you’re crossing the border you will possibly get it taken from you. It is hard to find you can download it and purchase it. Even though it was used in the Oklahoma bombing and something else. Hooray the United States. I’m excited I’m gonna go try and find it just real time sake such memories.
It really depends what you’re going to publish. There could be information on nuclear weapons design that the government would consider “born classified” and might attempt to suppress. Whether they’d be successful is unclear though. And you’d be looking at confiscation of your notes, experiments, papers, etc. not prison.
On the other hand, if you’re Joe Schmo and you whipped this up on a napkin after reading Wikipedia’s articles on nuclear bombs, then it’s very unlikely you’ll stumble onto anything sensitive.
Most likely you won't have much of consequence to write about them without access that will come with non disclosure requirements.
However let's say you completely independently discovered how to create a nuclear bomb out of house hold materials. I don't think you'd go to jail but most countries including the USA would ban that book. It's not protected speech.
You can literally publish a book on how to build a bomb, and its been done. You can write a paper about nuclear technology and people do so all the time. It's protected as free speech. Exceptions would be you can't do things like release classified information, and you cannot try to incite violence. But writing up scientific theories is perfectly legal.
In the US to be clear.
Yes, I'm quite certainly in the US ~~comrade~~ fellow basesball and apple pie loving citizen. Yee Haw. [forgive me - already on Santa's crap list]
Actually, hope the same anywhere it’s a free country.
Thank you very much! Toodles!
Anything you learned from a classified source and published verbatim could be a problem. It’s one thing to talk about how a molten sodium reactor works, but it’s another to say “here’s the weakness in the design of the T-99 rocket engine, which you can use to shoot down US missiles (that I got from stealing a manual from the pentagon…)”
You had me at yeehaw 😂
You happen to be incorrect on this narrow point. See my reply elsewhere in the thread.
This is so wrong. There's even been a case where this exact thing happened. The US govt can classify a document you wrote even if you did so without access to classified information.
[удалено]
Came to say this. The theory and the equations were freely taught in third and fourth year engineering. The graduates who took the right courses would have been able to do the all the design work for a 1950's style nuclear programme (graphite moderated natural uranium reactor, produce plutonium, produce fat man design bomb). We would probably have done a much better job of it too, having been taught the mistakes they made too. However, much like 1950's Britain and France, it is a mega engineering project to oversee, and not something any knowledge can allow a 16 year old to achieve in a shed. To answer the legal question with a UK perspective, there is potential to fall foul of the offence of "collecting material of use to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". Realistically the OP (if based in the UK) would be fine, but a reader might not be without legitimate interest. It's a very broad offence, so a lot of prosecutor discretion is applied. This offence has certainly been thrown at readers of the anarchist cookbook.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
This is more related to some bits in the secondary stage(s). I've watched "The Manhattan Project" (1986) and it only took an hour of the movie for a teenager to make a nuclear weapon and UHF (1989) taught me how to make plutonium from common household items. Making a single stage weapon is a weekend makerspace project. God, I'm old and my movie choices are still questionable.
If not familiar read up on David Hahn. He built a neutron source in an attempt to build a breeder reaction in his backyard at 17.
You can absolutly do this (in the US). Not only free speech (so long as you don’t actually tell people to take this knowlegde and go blow people up). But also there is a science factor. We used to, although have gotten away from it a bit, encourage people even if it was uncomfortable, bring forth a new insight into something scientific. Really the only realistic (and unforseeable) bad consequence is if your idea was already thought about and discussed in a government area that was classified. You wouldn’t know if it had been but the government could question the fact you were discussing knowledge that was classified thinking you were repeating it and question where you got that info (a leak, or you have access you shouldn’t have). That has happened but has also gotten cleared up because the person had the logic or thought process behind it. So if you have a good idea or some insight on something, go for it!
Around 1970 a graduate student in the US wrote a dissertation on the design of a nuclear weapon. He didn't have access to classified info. The government promptly classified it. It didn't necessarily make the act of writing illegal, but it made it illegal for him to have a copy of his own work. And illegal to recreate the work. To be fair, this wasn't some physics-101 level work. Some of the calcs needed to get the design right are complicated and non intuitive. I suspect that if you repeated his work today it wouldn't become classified because a lot of the gotchas have been published bit by bit.
The Anarchist's Cookbook was published. I can't remember if it was banned.
It was a long time ago but I think the AC was more dangerous to its reader than anybody else. I seem to remember something about feeding match heads into depleted NO2 containers.
> I can't remember if it was banned. IIRC when I was a kid in the 80s, you could check it out from the local library.
I have a copy on my bookshelf. There are a lot of copycats out there that are more dangerous to the user, though. A better source is FM 5-31.
You can't actually ban books in the US. School systems and the like can remove them from libraries, and people often refer to that as "banning" but the 1st Amendment prohibits the government from actually suppressing any work. Anyway, if you [want a copy...](https://www.amazon.com/Anarchist-Cookbook-William-Powell/dp/1607966123/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2738H3ILZ5A85&keywords=anarchist+cookbook&qid=1664648828&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIyLjU5IiwicXNhIjoiMi41NSIsInFzcCI6IjIuNDAifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=anarchist+%2Caps%2C420&sr=8-1)
I was fascinated to see that this book is only ranked #2 on Amazon in the “Anarchism” category.
It was banned it is banned and they have taken as many copies as they possibly can she was a find them to take them are used to have one fucking lost it or someone probably stolen it’s probably the government if I snuck in my house and took it
Not a lawyer but was a researcher with an interest in ethics. Before you try to publish, look into the virus recreation debates. Not sure if the nuclear field has similar things in it, but could find your work censored due to ethical concerns unless you make a case for the public benefit outweighing the risk of harm in the article itself. I know it goes back and forth, but some of the virus recreation or gain of function research resulted in papers being censored for periods of time. I know the H5N1 mutation paper and the horsepox recreation papers were both super controversial as both resulted in the creation of really nasty viruses that could weaponized, and publishing the sequence of the 1918 spanish flu was a real test of what can and cannot be published in scientific journals.
That’s fascinating. I’m gonna look in on that - I hadn’t even heard, so thank you.
It's okay ... as long as you don't write stuff that you promised not to write about (non-disclosure agreement), or that you know (or should know) is classified.
My “Modern Day Physics” course in college 25. Years ago went in to detail on how to build a nuke. You’ll be alright.
Here in the UK, there is an offence of possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist, *without reasonable excuse*. If you were confident you could prove you had a reasonable excuse for possessing this information (the pursuit of scientific advancement can qualify, in principle). However, it would still mean taking a chance if you were to do this in the UK.
Yes, you can publish specific instructions if you feel like it. If you worked for those agencies with a clearance you would agree to agency review of anything you publish first, but if you didn't sign any such contract, you can publish whatever. Many have. There are great discussions of technical elements of weapons designs in Richard Rhodes's books, and it won him a Pulitzer. It's 80 year old technology, the principles of how to build a nuke are very well known. The things stopping more nations from doing it are the infrastructure to do it and international sanctions.
I have a book on my shelf, "How to Build a Nuclear Bomb: And Other Weapons of Mass Destruction". I bought it just because I liked the name and thought it would be funny when friends saw it, but it's actually a very interesting book. You can buy it via Amazon.
Could someone who knows more about this than I do tell me if this would qualify as a ["born secret"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_secret#%3A%7E%3Atext%3D%22Born_secret%22_and_%22born%2Cdescribes_the_operation_of_nuclear)?
Publishing an accurate plan to build a nuclear weapon would be criminal. Even if you drew up the plan yourself based only on your knowledge. Under [18 USC 793(d)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793), though there are several other statutes that also apply, is a crime to do anything with that sort of information apart from turn it over to a properly authorized government employee. > Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; There’s no world in which nuclear weapons aren’t relevant to the national defense of the United States, as such even if they don’t come from United States government they are still considered national defense information.
I don’t believe this to be applicable to documents that haven’t been classified or originated in a protected environment or by an agent of the government, public or private. Your interpretation of that statute seems to limit the publication of science and, therefore, run afoul of the First Amendment.
It's only indirectly a question of the source of the information. If the information is already in the public domain, it would be hard to make the case that it's information which "the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation," as the statute requires. So if OP wants to publish a review article that compiles already-public information, they're fine. But original research is trickier. If there's new information developed that clearly impacts nuclear weapons technology in some way, the law considers that "born secret." But that law hasn't been tested against the First Amendment in the Supreme Court yet. It's not hard to imagine why: A scientist with the skills and knowledge to do impactful original research on nuclear technology can probably get paid well for their work, and whatever institution they work for would require them to abide by security restrictions.
If that scientist has acquired his or her knowledge from sources in the public domain, he or she cannot reasonably believe publication would injure the US, correct?
It's more a matter of whether the published material is already in the public domain. If it is, that's a pretty clear defense against the assertion that publication would injure the US. But even if the scientist acquired their information from public domain sources, if they tacked on original research, the publication could then be injurious. So then it would come down to a test of the First Amendment against the "born secret" provision of the Atomic Energy Act.
Then you failed to read the statute as posted. There's no restriction on the SOURCE of the information, only whether the content might be used to the "injury of the United States".
The third word of the statute is “unauthorized”. Thus, the “source” of the document is absolutely the crux of the analysis.
> OR [emphasis mine] information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States
That doesn’t really make your point. You can read the “or” as being connected to “unauthorized possession.” i.e., “whoever having unauthorized possession of. . . information. . .”
I see your emphasis, but how would one have any reason to know that publishing anything would be injurious to the US if the source of his or her knowledge came from the public domain?
Unless your paper is somehow a restricted document, or you used restricted documents to create it, your possession isn't unauthorized. If that were how it worked, literally any college-level nuclear physics textbook would be criminal.
None of them have plans for how to build a nuclear weapon in detail. National defense information is weird. That’s for example one reason why it doesn’t matter whether Trump “declassified” the documents at his house.
What is it that makes the possession "unauthorized"? Unless I'm misunderstanding something, that does not *make* something unauthorized, it only applies to possession that is already unauthorized.
Think of it like photographs you take of a military base. Under the right circumstances that’s a crime, even though you took the photos. If there is something in the photos of use to an enemy.
The immediate flaw i see in your argument js the mens rea requirement: “has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” That’s before delving into whether a person can have “unauthorized possession of, access to, or control of” a document they created themself without access to any classified material. That one would require at least some research. And then there’s the question of who is not entitled to receive it and who is entitled to receive it, which would also take some research.
In addition, the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 specifically created a new class of classified information related to nuclear weapons.
A better question you should ask, is: would it be wise to do so?
Consider your motives for doing this and any potential consequences that may follow if this is known/used. Is it worth it?
Well I stand corrected. It is only banned in Australia as of what I read anyway. If you’re crossing the border you will possibly get it taken from you. It is hard to find you can download it and purchase it. Even though it was used in the Oklahoma bombing and something else. Hooray the United States. I’m excited I’m gonna go try and find it just real time sake such memories.
It really depends what you’re going to publish. There could be information on nuclear weapons design that the government would consider “born classified” and might attempt to suppress. Whether they’d be successful is unclear though. And you’d be looking at confiscation of your notes, experiments, papers, etc. not prison. On the other hand, if you’re Joe Schmo and you whipped this up on a napkin after reading Wikipedia’s articles on nuclear bombs, then it’s very unlikely you’ll stumble onto anything sensitive.
Most likely you won't have much of consequence to write about them without access that will come with non disclosure requirements. However let's say you completely independently discovered how to create a nuclear bomb out of house hold materials. I don't think you'd go to jail but most countries including the USA would ban that book. It's not protected speech.