How Every Country Got Nuclear Weapons Explained – YouTube Dictation Transcript & Vocabulary

1.we all know the story of how the United States was the first to develop the nuke but today there are now 10 countries around the world that have successfully created them some helping each other but most in secrecy involving a lot of spying rivalry and betrayal each of them have a story just as interesting as the US's Manhattan Project but are rarely told we're going to go through the full timeline of how the 10 countries raced each other to build this technology and also the other countries that came close and might soon be added to the list The Story begins in 1938 when German scientists first discovered nuclear fishing the ability to split atoms releasing massive energy through a chain reaction the following year Albert Einstein would warn the US of the dangerous possibilities in weaponizing this technology the United States was famously the first to create nuclear weapons after a long and secretive operation against the backdrop of the second world war scientists from the US UK and Canada collaborated in the Manhattan Project they spent nearly % of the US's entire GDP on the effort as they were racing the Germans who were also working on their own nuclear program but to much less success Germany had surrendered by May 1945 but in July while President Truman was at the Potsdam Conference with Stalin and Churchill planning what to do with Germany Truman was secretly informed that the Trinity test in New Mexico was successful and they now possess the most powerful weapon Humanity had ever seen Truman told Stalin that the US was about to use this weapon on the Japanese although at the time Stalin was already working on his own nuclear weapons project and had spies within the US's Manhattan Project internally he was secretly Furious that the Americans had beaten them to making this bomb the following month in August the US Unleashed fat man and little boy on Japan forcing their surrender ending the war but starting a new race around the world for everyone to catch up the Soviet Union was second to obtain the technology having started as early as 1941 after noticing German British and American Amer scientists stopped publishing papers on nuclear fish and they suspected they were also working on creating weapons the program was accelerated rapidly after seeing the Americans nuclear attack on Japan and while they had a lot of information from spying on the US programs they were worried of potentially being fed misinformation from double agents because of this they didn't trust the stolen American design so they still ended up doing a lot of their own research using many captured German scientists they built their own project while also using the United States is designs to check it was correct earlier than the US expected in 1949 the Soviets successfully completed the rds1 test in Kazakhstan the US no longer had the Monopoly on this technology and this would create the Cold War arms race with the United States to stockpile as many nukes as possible the third country was the United Kingdom now you might assume that the us would have helped them as they were key allies fighting side by side in both world wars and in theory America would want to empower their good friends in Europe but this was not the case the UK pioneered a lot of the groundwork on nuclear weapons before the US with a project called tube Alloys starting in 1940 they did this with the help of German Austrian and polish scientists that were fleeing Germany at the time but due to limited resources fighting the second world war Britain handed over all of their work to the US merging it with what would become the Manhattan Project and providing a significant amount of research under the Quebec agreement stating that the US and UK would share the technology once completed and not use it on each other but in 1945 when the US successfully tested and used its nukes they also terminated the agreement and didn't share the final results to Britain keeping it to themselves this prompted the UK to resume its own nuclear program and this was done quickly as they had already done a lot of the work and controlled most of the world's uranium the UK successfully completed its first test called operation hurricane in 1952 at the monteo islands just above Australia meanwhile after the Soviets had developed nukes much faster than expected in 1949 the us immediately began work on a newer type called thermonuclear weapons unlike the standard atom bomb which uses fishion to split atoms these use Fusion to combine atoms the same process that happens inside stars and these are significantly more powerful than atom bombs scientists like Oppenheimer who led the Manhattan Project warned the us not to develop these because of the extreme danger to Mankind and where this nuclear arms race was going but despite this President Truman gave the go-ahead to continue in 1952 the United States successfully completed Ivy Mike the first test of a hydrogen thermonuclear bomb over 450 times more powerful than the one dropped on Nagasaki the Soviets then completed theirs in 1955 called the RDS 37 and the UK completed theirs in 1957 called operation grapple because of this new threat of hydrogen bombs the us then decided to resign a nuclear agreement with the UK the following year in 1958 the fourth country was France who already had a few scientists working on the Manhattan Project and started their own nuclear program after World War II collaborating with Israel but mainly focusing on energy instead of weapons that was until after the embarrassment of the Suz crisis and increasing tensions between the US and Soviets prompted France to want their own deterrent strategy and to retain their place as a great European power the United States was much more against the idea of France having nukes than Britain as France had a slightly different policy on how they could be used so France developed them almost completely independently the French President Charles deal spearheaded the effort and stated that nuclear weapons were essential for France to be a truly Sovereign and great power he also wanted strategic independence from NATO and the United States they sourced uranium from its colonies in nier Gabon and Madagascar which was a huge help and despite being in Ruins after the second world war the French scientists worked tirelessly they successfully carried out their first test in 1960 called the jerbo Blue in the French colony of Algeria in the Sahara Desert and then its first Hydrogen Bomb in 1968 China would be the fifth country on the list wanting their own nukes as a deteran against the US initially they received a lot of help from the Soviet Union as they saw China as a useful Ally but as kushev began desalinized China's chairman ma denounced Cru chev's more cautious approach to the West as being too soft and not in line with the true communist principles this led to a rift between the two Nations as kushev withdrew all its help from the Chinese program leave them to do the rest of the work alone China continued their development with impressive speed especially considering they were dealing with the challenges of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution significant resources were poured into the effort and they also discovered large deposits of natural uranium which massively helped in 1964 the Chinese successfully detonated their first atomic bomb in the large dried up Lake of the Ln region called project 596 and only 32 months later they tested their first Hydrogen Bomb which is impressive as this is the fastest any country has ever gone from fishing to Fusion bombs the sixth country was Israel who is the only nation in the world to never actually acknowledge possessing nuclear weapons and have never declared they exist so nobody knows exactly when or how many were created but lots of details have leaked as mentioned the Israelis were working with the French since the ' 50s on nuclear energy and France helped Israel build a secret nuclear facility in the neev desert which became a problem in 1963 as as US President Kennedy became concerned the Israelis were developing nuclear weapons JFK was strongly opposed to this and demanded the US be allowed to inspect the facility to ensure it was being used for energy and not bombs Israel repeatedly denied and delayed the US demands only allowing careful staged inspections while concealing hidden underground facilities that were later revealed to be creating weapons Israeli Prime Minister and found David benguan was reportedly obsessed with obtaining nuclear weapons and it created a rift with the United States who weren't close allies at the time this called off as JFK's successor Lyndon B Johnson was much less aggressive on preventing Israel's nuclear weapons program which is believed to have been completed around 1967 but Israel's nuclear capabilities had been rumored and speculated all throughout the 60s the big Revelation came later in 1986 morai vunu an Israeli technician who worked at that neev nuclear Research Center fled Israel and leaked to the British press a massive amount of photos he took personally and documents detailing what the facility was really being used for he was then kidnapped by Israel's mad in Rome after being lured there by a female Massad agent he believed he was going on a date with he was idated and brought back to Israel where he was sentenced to 18 years in prison for Espionage and treason in a behind closed doors trial he's currently under significant restrictions to his speech and travel and has been rearrested many times for parole violations speaking to the press and attempting to leave Israel it's also believed from his leaks that Israel has developed thermonuclear weapons the seventh country on the list is India who like many others expressed the need to have this latest technology after the second world war mainly for deterrence and protection from Pakistan and China research began in the 1940s but would take several decades to complete the process this was accelerated after India lost a border war with China in the Himalayas in 1962 to stop Chinese aggression it had first been developing nuclear energy getting supplies for its reactors from countries like Canada and the US while secretly using them to develop weapons the first test was successfully completed in 1974 code named smiling Buddha in the desert of Rajasthan in which they called a peaceful nuclear explosion this test Drew worldwide condemnation and sanctions as India was using a Canadian reactor provided for energy purposes and because they refused to sign the nuclear non- proliferation treaty this is where countries agree to set rules to limit the spread and use of such weapons however India did deliberately refrain from fully weaponizing the technology into Warheads while theoretically researching the means to weaponize in case they needed to in the future most Indian politicians were opposed to creating activated nuclear weapons so it was a slow process that wouldn't be completed until the '90s the eth country to develop nuclear weapons was South Africa which is one of the most unique stories it possessed one of the world's largest reserves of natural uranium which is a key ingredient and had been supplying it to the US UK France and potentially the Soviet Union and Israel most of which was intended for peaceful energy reactors but it's likely some also ended up being used for weapons since 1948 South Africa had created a nuclear energy program but by the 1960s and '70s they shifted interest into weapons due to the increased Soviet influence that was spreading in Namibia and Angola as well as this the apartheid regime Drew worldwide condemnation causing South Africa to become politically isolated and without many allies for protection in 1977 they created a testing facility in its Kalahari Desert and nearly detonated a bomb but when a Soviet satellite spotted it and reported this to the US the backlash and international pressure stopped the test in 1979 us satellites detected a double flash of light in the Prince Edwards Islands controlled by South Africa in the Indian Ocean this was called The V incident and is widely believed to have been a joint nuclear test by Israel in collaboration with South Africa they likely allowed Israel to test its weapons there in exchange for South Africa gaining some of this research for its own program who didn't have functional weapons yet at the time by the mid 1980s it had created six nuclear bombs roughly the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima and it's believed to have achieved this with the help of Israel likely in exchange for its large uranium supplies South Africa maintained deliberate ambiguity around its weapons never admitting to having nukes similar to Israel to act as a deterrent from hostile Nations but by the '90s as the Soviet Union collapsed its need for protection from communist threats dissipated and with the apartheid regime coming to an end it feared handing over nuclear weapons to the next incoming government so it opted to be the first nation in history to dismantle and dispose of its nukes and then admitted to the world that it had actually possessed them the designs were destroyed and the enriched uranium was locked in a nuclear facility Vault although in 2007 armed Intruders breached the facility and came close to stealing the materials before being stopped and there are still fears today about this weaponized uranium falling into the wrong hands pakist would become the ninth country beginning the process in the 1970s after losing a war with India their biggest rivals in 1971 causing East Pakistan to become Bangladesh their prime minister said that if India builds the bomb we will eat grass or leaves even go hungry but we will get one of our own after India conducted its smiling Buddha test in 1974 the race was on to catch up Abdul Kadir Khan was a Pakistani scientist who while working at the Dutch nuclear facility stole top secret intell Ence on how to enrich uranium and brought them back to Pakistan which was a main Foundation to their nuclear weapons program they also had significant help from China Who provided expertise materials and blueprints to develop a bomb this was because China wanted another Ally against India also being one of its Rivals and saw the benefit in arming Pakistan the US did little to stop Pakistan's nuclear weapons program initially underestimating their capabilities but also because Pakistan was a key Ally against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the US didn't want to risk their Alliance and often turned a blind eye despite mounting evidence that Pakistan were using the US military funding to develop weapons in 1998 India detonated five nonp peaceful Warheads including a thermonuclear bomb just weeks later in response Pakistan also detonated five bombs underground in the rasco mountain range successfully completing their first ever test and making them the latest nuclear armed Nation while India operates a no first policy meaning they are only for deterrence and to be used in retaliation to such weapons being used on them Pakistan operates a first use policy preserving the right to use them however it sees fit and indicated it would use nukes against India even if no nuclear weapons were used on them while this policy concerns many nations that has proved successful for Pakistan leading to a weaker response from India in their many conflicts since out of fear of how Pakistan might respond an Indian military spokesperson said that pakist stand's threat of nuclear first use has deterred India from seriously considering conventional military strikes Abdul Kadir Khan the man mentioned earlier for stealing the Dutch nuclear Blueprints and dub the father of Pakistan's nuclear program confessed in 2004 that he had been involved in illegally selling nuclear weapons technology to North Korea Iran and Libya seeing as none of these countries are a part of the nonproliferation treaty it drew worldwide concern about the uncontrolled spread of this technology North Korea became the 10th and final country so far to develop nuclear weapons the North Korean founder Kim ilung saw nuclear weapons as crucial to ensuring his regime's survival and asserting its power to the world to deter longtime rival South Korea and the US in the 1950s the Soviet Union initially helped them develop their first nuclear research facilities for peaceful energy purposes with many North Korean scientists being trained in the Soviet Union both China and the Soviets refused North Korea's many requests to help them develop weapons and towards the 1970s North Korea focused on building their own nuclear program using its own large natural uranium deposits which proved essential as they didn't need to rely on sourcing it from any other country by the 1980s the us became aware that North Korea was using spent nuclear energy fuel on creating weapons then in the '90s North Korea signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty despite secretly building weapons and delaying inspections from the international atomic energy agency in 1994 the US offered them light water reactors which would allow for peaceful nuclear energy production while making it very difficult to use them for making weapons like their current graphite reactors were the North Koreans initially agreed to this deal but ultimately broke down in 2002 due to a lack of trust between the two countries the US accused the North Koreans of secretly enriching uranium violating the agreement this led North Korea to officially withdrawing from the non-proliferation treaty and continuing its weapons program as well as well as the initial help from the Soviets in the ' 50s on energy they also had some limited help from China but most importantly Pakistan as mentioned earlier which was crucial to their development in 2005 Kim Jong ill claimed to have possessed functional nuclear weapons and the next year in October 2006 they completed their first successful nuclear test although it was so small at an estimated .5 kilotons experts believed it didn't go off correctly and may have malfunctioned in 2009 while Kim Jong 's Health was r ly deteriorating in what's believed to have been a show of strength they detonated a second much more powerful bomb and a third in 2013 then in 2016 and 17 it tested its first thermonuclear bombs now while those are the 10 countries that have made their own nuclear weapons there are lots more that hosted nukes from other countries under alliances for protection and deterrence during the Cold War the United States held nuclear weapons in Belgium Germany Italy the Netherlands Turkey Greece Denmark's Greenland South Korea Japan the Philippines Taiwan Canada Morocco and Puerto Rico although some of these were brief and some of them only had vehicles that contain nuclear weapons although most of these were removed towards the end of the Cold War us nukes still remain today in Belgium Germany Italy the Netherlands and turkey the Soviet Union also stored significant amounts in their Soviet republics with the most being in Ukraine and others being inside bellarus lava Lithuania and Estonia Georgia and Armenia Kazakhstan usbekistan turkistan and as well as briefly in Cuba all of these were since removed and dismantled with the collapse of the Soviet Union although in 2023 Russia again provided bellarus with an estimated 130 Warheads there are also several other countries that were working on developing their own nuclear weapons but abandoned the work due to International pressure or lack of resources these include Argentina Brazil Sweden Romania Algeria Libya Iraq Iran Egypt Syria Taiwan and Japan many of these countries were actually very close to successfully developing the technology notably Iraq Syria and Iran who each made significant progress but all had facilities destroyed or sabotaged by Israeli missiles and cyber attacks Iran is widely speculated to be the next Nation closest to developing nukes but their rival Israel being the only nuclear armed country in the Middle East is very keen to prevent this Saudi Arabia's leader Muhammad bin Salman has also said multiple times that without a doubt if Iran gets them then they will too the Saudis are already working on a nuclear energy program and certainly have the funds and means to create weapons Japan is considered to be one of the most capable countries in the world that could very easily create nuclear weapons if they wanted to they have some of the most advanced nuclear energy technology and large stockpiles of enriched uranium but they currently employ a policy of pacifism both Argentina and Brazil will also extremely close to completing their development having created the infrastructure and Technology but interestingly Mexico proposed the Treaty of tatco declaring the entirety of Latin America to agree to not having nuclear weapons and every country in the region eventually signed it except for French Guyana because it is technically a territory of France which is a nuclear armed country although the territory is still considered part of the treaty and France does not store nuclear weapons there there are also similar treaties in place around the world since then which have agreed not to host develop or test any nuclear weapons such as the raratonga treaty covering the South Pacific the pelandaba treaty covering the African continent the semi platanis treaty covering Central Asia the Bangkok treaty covering southeast Asia and the Antarctic treaty which prohibits any military activity however while these treaties are useful most of the world's nuclear armed States store their nuclear weapons inside submarines which means they are everywhere and anywhere secretly hidden inside the oceans at any given time this acts as one of the strongest deterrence as even if a country's launch facilities were completely destroyed the submarines lie ready waiting to retaliate and are impossible to destroy creating nuclear weapons is an extremely expensive and conspicuous process as we saw in the 1979 a incident even a very small explosion in the middle of the Indian Ocean hidden under cloud cover back in the' 70s was picked up by a us satellite so you can imagine the level of surveillance today day with the sophistication of satellites even when that submersible imploded at the bottom of the Atlantic the US Navy still detected it so it is very hard to have a secret nuclear program without the world knowing but while those are the 10 Nations that completed the process it's likely only a matter of time until more are added to the list [Music]