#NuclearWeapons #History #Geopolitics #AtomicBomb #ColdWar #MilitaryHistory #WorldPolitics
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00:00Today, there are 10 countries that have developed nuclear weapons capable of destroying the world.
00:05Some did it through forced alliances, others by spying and betraying.
00:09But it all begins with a country, a secret project, and a race against time.
00:14In 1938, German scientists discovered that an atom could be split,
00:19releasing a colossal energy through a chain reaction.
00:23They had found nuclear fission, a phenomenon that would change the planet's fate.
00:28They were playing with fire, and soon they would pay dearly.
00:32The following year, Einstein, concerned about the destructive potential of this discovery,
00:36sent an urgent letter to President Roosevelt.
00:38The message was clear.
00:40If you don't act now, someone else will.
00:42The government took note, and while the Second World War was devastating Europe,
00:47the United States embarked on a secret project that would consume 1% of its gross domestic product.
00:52They called it the Manhattan Project, but they didn't do it alone.
00:55Scientists from the United Kingdom and Canada also participated, all focused on the same goal.
01:02To create the most powerful weapon on the planet before the Germans.
01:07Germany didn't lag behind, and as Einstein warned, started its own nuclear program.
01:12But before it could progress too much, the first major twist happened.
01:16In May 1945, the Nazis surrendered.
01:20But in July, while American President Truman was meeting with Stalin and Churchill in Potsdam
01:26to decide the future of Germany, something else was happening.
01:30At that precise moment, Truman received a direct call from the New Mexico desert.
01:35That's where they conducted the first test of the atomic bomb, and it had been a resounding success.
01:41The United States already had the bomb, and the tension was immediate.
01:45Truman hinted to Stalin with ambiguous phrases, such as,
01:49Someone who wants to show power without revealing too much.
01:52But Stalin already knew.
01:53He had spies inside the Manhattan Project, and that silent betrayal infuriated him internally.
01:58Even so, it did not stop him.
02:00One month later, the United States dropped two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
02:05and Japan's surrender was almost immediate.
02:08The Americans laughed and went on with their lives without imagining what was coming.
02:14Because what seemed like the end of the conflict was actually the beginning of something much bigger.
02:19A global race to match or surpass the power that the United States had just demonstrated.
02:25And the first to respond would be its own most distrustful ally, the Soviet Union.
02:30Which, when it saw with its own eyes the power of the bombs dropped by the United States and Japan,
02:35there was no turning back.
02:38The Soviets accelerated their research like never before.
02:41They had something others did not.
02:43A deeply infiltrated espionage network in the U.S. nuclear project.
02:48They obtained data, plans, and key technical advances.
02:51But there was a problem.
02:53They feared that this information was fake, sent by double agents to sabotage them from within.
02:57They decided not to trust blindly and did the work twice.
03:02On one hand, they built a bomb based on the stolen designs, and on the other hand,
03:07they conducted their own independent research, even using German scientists captured after the war.
03:13The combination was effective.
03:15In 1949, much earlier than the United States imagined,
03:19the Soviet Union successfully detonated its first atomic bomb at the Semi-Polatinsk test site in Kazakhstan.
03:27That day, the world stopped having a single nuclear superpower, and the Cold War had just begun.
03:34Armed with it, an arms race without precedent in human history.
03:40United Kingdom
03:41One would think that among allies, there are no secrets.
03:44That if one country shares intelligence, the other will respond with gratitude.
03:48But in the nuclear game, there are no friendships.
03:52Great Britain was, in fact, one of the pioneers in nuclear research.
03:55In 1940, while struggling to survive the German bombings, he launched his own program, Tuba Lois.
04:03There, they gathered British, German, Austrian, and Polish scientists, many of whom were fleeing from Nazism.
04:10But due to the lack of resources and the urgency of the war,
04:14the United Kingdom decided to hand over all its research to the United States,
04:19merging it with the Manhattan Project under the so-called Quebec Agreement.
04:23That agreement promised that both countries would share the final discoveries,
04:27and more importantly, that they would never use those weapons against each other.
04:32But when they finally developed the bomb in 1945, the United States broke the deal without warning.
04:39They didn't share the results or allow access to the technology.
04:42They kept it all.
04:43So Great Britain, betrayed but determined, resumed their program on their own and had something very valuable on their side.
04:51They controlled most of the world's uranium.
04:54Thanks to that, and the fact that they already had much of the work advanced,
04:59they managed to successfully complete their first test in 1952, known as Operation Hurricane.
05:06The detonation took place on the Montebello Islands, north of Australia.
05:11With that, the United Kingdom became the third country in the world with nuclear weapons,
05:16and also the first to have been betrayed by its best ally.
05:19But it would not be the last.
05:21France did not want to be left behind.
05:23After all, it had already contributed scientists to the Manhattan Project itself.
05:29But after the war and with Europe in ruins, its focus shifted mainly to nuclear energy,
05:34until something changed.
05:36In 1956, the humiliation of the Suez Crisis happened.
05:41France, along with the United Kingdom and Israel,
05:44attempted to regain control of the Suez Canal in Egypt.
05:48But the United States and the Russians intervened diplomatically,
05:52and France was left sidelined.
05:54That moment marked a before and after.
05:57The French leaders understood that if they wanted to be considered a great power again,
06:02they could not depend on anyone.
06:04They needed their own deterrent capability, and that meant one thing.
06:09Nuclear weapons.
06:10President Charles de Gaulle personally led this decision.
06:13He declared that a sovereign France must be able to defend itself alone,
06:19even from its own allies if necessary.
06:23This meant distancing from NEO and American supervision.
06:27France, without access to Anglo-Saxon information,
06:30had to develop its arsenal almost completely independently.
06:33But they had something that would be key, natural uranium from their colonies in Niger, Gabon, and Madagascar.
06:41With this resource, and despite being economically devastated, the French scientists worked tirelessly.
06:48In 1960, in the middle of the Sahara Desert, within the territory of the French colony of Algeria,
06:54they carried out their first successful nuclear test.
06:58It was the country's first nuclear explosion,
07:01and the most powerful ever conducted by a nation,
07:04on their first attempt up to that point.
07:06But they didn't stop there.
07:07In 1968, France also detonated its first hydrogen bomb,
07:13marking its full entry into the exclusive club of nuclear superpowers.
07:18They did it on their own, without relying on anyone.
07:22And that's why, since then, their strategy has been clear.
07:25Total strategic independence.
07:28China was initially seen by the Soviet Union as a promising ally during the Cold War.
07:33However, both nations shared a communist ideology and a deep distrust of the West.
07:39So, at first, the Soviets offered their help generously.
07:44During the 1950s, the Soviet Union shared with China materials,
07:49technical knowledge, and assistance in nuclear development.
07:53It seemed that the Asian giant was on its way to having its own bomb,
07:57with Moscow's full support.
07:59But then something broke.
08:00When Nikita Khrushchev started his de-Stalinization process,
08:05the Chinese leader Mao Zedong saw it as an ideological betrayal.
08:10He considered that the new Soviet direction was too soft on capitalism,
08:15a sign of weakness.
08:17The relationship between both powers deteriorated rapidly.
08:21In retaliation, Khrushchev ordered the immediate withdrawal of all Soviet aid
08:26to the Chinese nuclear program.
08:27China was left alone, but instead of giving up, it doubled down.
08:33During the Great Leap Forward and the instability of the Cultural Revolution,
08:37the communist regime decided to prioritize the development of nuclear weapons.
08:42Above all else, they invested enormous resources,
08:46even as millions of citizens starved.
08:48And they achieved something extraordinary.
08:51In 1964, China detonated its first atomic bomb in the desert region of Lopnoor.
08:58The whole world was surprised, but that was not all.
09:01Only 32 months later, China succeeded in testing its first hydrogen bomb,
09:07becoming the fastest country to transition from atomic fission bombs
09:11to thermonuclear fusion bombs.
09:15And he did it without external help.
09:17From that moment, the Chinese doctrine was clear.
09:21An independent, deterrent nuclear force
09:23aimed at resisting pressure from both the West and its former Soviet allies.
09:29Israel has one of the most secretive and yet revealing histories in global nuclear development.
09:34No country has been as ambiguous or as calculated with its nuclear program as Israel.
09:41To this day, it has never officially admitted to having nuclear weapons.
09:46Nor has it denied having them.
09:48They simply do not talk about it.
09:50But the story behind it is anything but silent.
09:53Since the 1950s, Israel secretly collaborated with France,
09:58sharing research and scientific talent.
10:00Thanks to that agreement, the French helped build a covert nuclear facility
10:06in the middle of the Negev Desert, near the city of Dimona.
10:11Officially, it was a research center for energy.
10:14Unofficially, things were very different.
10:17In 1963, the then United States President Kennedy
10:21began to seriously suspect that Israel was developing nuclear weapons,
10:27demanded full access to the facility to confirm its use was purely peaceful.
10:33But Israel did not yield.
10:36For years, they allowed only inspections carefully guided by false routes.
10:42They even hid underground tunnels
10:44where the real operations were conducted out of the inspector's sight.
10:48Internally, the Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion,
10:52was obsessed with acquiring the bomb.
10:54He saw it as an absolute guarantee of survival for the country,
10:58surrounded by enemies since its inception.
11:01This strained relations with the United States,
11:03and although Kennedy strongly pressured,
11:06his assassination that same year changed everything.
11:09His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson,
11:12took a much more relaxed stance,
11:13and the Israeli program continued without major obstacles.
11:17It is believed that Israel managed to develop nuclear weapons around 1967,
11:22although it was not until 1986 that the world had the first major confirmation,
11:27and not through diplomatic means.
11:30That year, an Israeli technician named Mordechai Banunu,
11:34who had worked at the Damona facility,
11:36fled the country,
11:37and leaked a huge amount of documents and photographs to the British press.
11:42The evidence was undeniable.
11:43Israel had an active nuclear arsenal,
11:46and it was suspected that it included thermonuclear weapons,
11:50not just atomic ones.
11:52But the story doesn't end there.
11:54Banunu was tricked by a Mossad agent,
11:56who lured him to Rome under the false promise of a romantic date.
12:01There, he was kidnapped, drugged, and secretly transported back to Israel.
12:05He was tried behind closed doors.
12:07He was sentenced to 18 years in prison for espionage and treason,
12:11of which he spent more than a decade in solitary confinement.
12:14Until today, he lives under severe restrictions.
12:17He cannot leave the country, speak to the press, or go near sensitive areas.
12:22And although Israel still does not officially confirm its program,
12:26the Banunu case and the systematic silence surrounding it speak for themselves.
12:31India has always been interested in nuclear energy.
12:34Since the 40s, it has worked on reactors and atomic technology,
12:38but with a supposedly peaceful goal,
12:40to produce energy, not weapons.
12:42But there was a problem.
12:44India was surrounded by dangerous rivals.
12:47China, which already had nuclear weapons,
12:50and Pakistan, with which it had several conflicts.
12:53And after India lost a war with China in 1962,
12:57it became clear that nuclear deterrence
12:59could be the only way to prevent another defeat.
13:02So, a double strategy began.
13:05While they said everything was for peaceful purposes,
13:08they secretly began using foreign resources and technology to build a bomb.
13:13The most curious thing is that many of those resources
13:15came from countries like Canada and the United States,
13:19which had given them reactors and fuel,
13:21in theory only to generate electricity.
13:24India used part of that to build a bomb.
13:26In 1974, in the Rajasthan desert,
13:30they conducted their first nuclear test.
13:32They called it the Smiling Buddha.
13:34And the strangest thing is that they claimed it had been a peaceful nuclear explosion.
13:39Obviously, no one believed them.
13:41The world reacted with condemnation and sanctions
13:44because India had broken the agreements,
13:47used technology for military purposes,
13:49and had not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,
13:53an international agreement that seeks to prevent the creation of more weapons of this type.
13:58For years, the country kept a low profile.
14:01They didn't say whether they had active weapons or how many,
14:04but they kept investigating.
14:06And in 1998, they no longer hit it.
14:10India carried out five new nuclear tests,
14:12this time clearly military.
14:15They included a much more powerful thermonuclear bomb than the previous ones,
14:19and made it clear that the country had a functional arsenal.
14:22Indeed, they adopted an official no-first-use policy,
14:25which means they would only use their weapons if they were attacked first.
14:29But this decision sparked an immediate reaction,
14:32because their neighbor Pakistan was not going to lag behind.
14:36They lost a war against India,
14:38which ended with the independence of East Pakistan, now known as Bangladesh.
14:42The country was left fractured, defeated,
14:44and with a nuclear threat on the other side of the border.
14:48Then, Prime Minister Zulfiqar said a phrase
14:51that would mark the destiny of the country.
14:53If India builds the bomb,
14:55we will eat grass or leaves,
14:57even go hungry,
14:58but we will make our own.
15:00And he meant it.
15:01When India carried out its first nuclear test in 1974,
15:05the Pakistani government launched a secret operation to catch up with them.
15:10They didn't have the resources or the technology,
15:13but they had Abdul Qadir Khan.
15:15This scientist worked at a uranium enrichment plant in the Netherlands.
15:19And while everyone trusted him,
15:22Khan stole top-secret plans on how to make nuclear centrifuges.
15:27Afterwards, he returned to Pakistan with all that information.
15:30That was the real beginning of Pakistan's nuclear program.
15:34But they were not alone.
15:35China, which also had tensions with India,
15:38decided to help Pakistan.
15:39He provided them with materials,
15:41guidance, and even plans for an atomic bomb.
15:44It was a strategic partnership.
15:47Arming Pakistan meant putting pressure on India from two fronts.
15:51Meanwhile, the United States watched but did not intervene.
15:55Why?
15:55Because they needed Pakistan as a key ally
15:58to fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
16:01So, even though they knew they were advancing their nuclear program,
16:05Washington looked the other way.
16:06Finally, in 1998, everything exploded literally.
16:11India conducted five nuclear tests that year,
16:15including a thermonuclear bomb.
16:17And just three weeks later,
16:19Pakistan responded with five of its own detonations
16:22in the mountains of Rashko,
16:24officially becoming the ninth country with nuclear weapons.
16:28But their approach was different.
16:30While India adopted a no-first-use policy,
16:33Pakistan made it clear that it was willing to use its bombs,
16:37even if it wasn't attacked first.
16:39That detail set off alarms worldwide.
16:42And what's more unsettling is that,
16:44according to statements from Indian officials,
16:47this threat has been effective.
16:48India has avoided military retaliation in several conflicts
16:52for fear of provoking a nuclear attack from Pakistan.
16:55But that's not the end of the story.
16:57In 2004, Abdul Qadir Khan,
17:00the same scientist who stole the plans in Europe,
17:03confessed on television that he had sold nuclear technology
17:06to North Korea, Iran, and Libya,
17:09countries that are not part of the non-proliferation treaty.
17:12The world was stunned.
17:14Pakistan had not only developed its own bomb,
17:17but had also become an illegal exporter of nuclear secrets.
17:21Since then, Khan was placed under house arrest.
17:25Even though the government denied being involved in their actions,
17:28the stain remained forever.
17:30South Africa.
17:31For decades, nobody imagined that a country from the Southern Hemisphere
17:35could join the nuclear club.
17:36But South Africa had one of the largest reserves of natural uranium in the world.
17:41That detail alone already gave it an advantage.
17:43During the 1950s and 1960s,
17:46they began developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,
17:49exporting materials to powers such as the United States,
17:52United Kingdom, and France.
17:54But something changed in the 1970s.
17:57With Soviet influence increasing in Namibia and Angola,
18:00and the international isolation caused by the apartheid regime,
18:04South Africa began to fear for its survival.
18:06Without reliable allies and increasingly condemned in global forums,
18:10the country changed direction.
18:12It began secretly developing nuclear weapons.
18:16In 1977, it built a test site in the Kalahari Desert and was about to detonate a bomb.
18:22But a Soviet satellite detected it and alerted the United States.
18:26The international pressure stopped the test, at least officially.
18:30Two years later, in 1979,
18:34a U.S. satellite detected a double flash in a remote area of the Indian Ocean,
18:39near the Prince Edward Islands.
18:41This event, known as the Vela Incident, remains a mystery,
18:45but many experts believe it was a joint nuclear test between Israel and South Africa.
18:51South Africa provided the location and secrecy.
18:54Israel provided the technology.
18:56Both were winning.
18:58By the mid-1980s, South Africa had already built six nuclear bombs,
19:03similar in power to the one dropped on Hiroshima.
19:06And although it never admitted to having them at the time,
19:09it maintained a deliberate policy of ambiguity,
19:12trusting that the mere suspicion of possessing them would be enough to deter any enemy.
19:17But then the world changed.
19:19With the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union,
19:22the main communist threat disappeared.
19:25And in addition, apartheid was coming to an end.
19:29The white government knew that it would soon be replaced by a democratic administration.
19:34And here something unprecedented happened.
19:36Instead of transferring that nuclear power to the new government,
19:40South Africa made a drastic decision.
19:42Dismantle all its nuclear weapons before the transition of power.
19:47They did it in secret.
19:48They destroyed the designs, sealed the enriched uranium in a vault, and hid everything.
19:54Only in the 1990s, with a new government, did the country publicly admit that it had nuclear weapons and had
20:00voluntarily eliminated them.
20:02It was the only country in history that made atomic bombs and then destroyed them on its own initiative.
20:09However, even after that, the danger did not completely disappear.
20:13In 2007, an armed group managed to infiltrate the facility where that uranium was stored.
20:19They were just a few meters away from stealing enough material for a dirty bomb before they were finally stopped.
20:25Today, South Africa is officially nuclear weapon-free.
20:29North Korea did not always seek nuclear weapons.
20:32In the 1960s, with the help of the Soviet Union, a program was started to generate nuclear energy, not weaponry.
20:39But over time, the regime saw something clearly.
20:43Having an atomic bomb was the best way to avoid being attacked.
20:46So they began to secretly work on converting that peaceful program into a military project.
20:53In 1994, they left the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a direct signal that they wanted to manufacture weapons.
21:01Yes, in 2006, they conducted their first underground nuclear test.
21:06Although that first bomb was weak and possibly partially failed, they made it clear that they had already crossed the
21:12line.
21:12Since then, North Korea has conducted several more tests, each more powerful and has also developed long-range missiles.
21:19Some of these missiles could, in theory, reach South Korea, Japan, Guam, and even parts of the United States.
21:27The regime says that all of this is to defend against foreign invasion.
21:31But it has also used these weapons as a strategy for international pressure.
21:35They threaten, test bombs, and then ask for negotiations or benefits.
21:40And even though the country lives in extreme isolation and with a very weakened economy,
21:45its nuclear program remains active and increasingly advanced.
21:49Today, nuclear weapons are the main reason no country dares to invade North Korea.
21:55They're his shield and also the foundation of his power.
21:57We'll base it on the center of our começar challenge.