AQ Khan supplying materials and know how to NK, and being hailed officially as a national hero suggests there ought to be a line between Pakistan and North Korea.
North Korea invented it all?
NK developed on its own, without espionage?
What’s “adversarial assistance”?
Data: the unsung hero of decision making!
1) the Dutch and Canadians have nuclear weapons? Or do the different sized dots mean different things?
2) why is South Africa in the neutral rather than Western bloc?
3) how is “adversarial assistance” defined?
There’s nothing surprising here. It follows other geopolitics pretty closely.
Excellent Job OP, might also be interesting to do a sequel examining all the nations that failed to develop a complete design, and how they were assisted by the established powers.
My one quibble would be the UK arguably started its nuclear weapons development in 1940 through Tube Alloys, but I get why you showed it the way you have.
Completely glosses over Canada’s involvement in the Manhattan Project. The US would not have had nukes when they did without us. We’re still cleaning up the plutonium waste.
Which makes the entire graphic suspect and unreliable. Downvoted.
We can draw a yellow line from China and Pakistan to North Korea most likely
Interesting that there’s no mention of the Apollo affair where 300-500 lbs of enriched uranium were stolen in the 60s from a US company near Pittsburgh. It’s widely believed that the uranium ended up in Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
A not so talked about aspect of the Second World War and the period immediately after is actually how much the US and UK didn’t get a long. Churchill and FDR got along well which smoothed over a majority of the differences, but man there were a lot of people in FDRs administration and after who straight up wanted to curb the British as much as possible.
What is “adversarial assistance”?
Ukraine should be on here. It’s the only other nation to ever disarm. Look where it got them.
Netherlands and Canada don’t have their own nukes. Some lines are dubious. Others seem to be missing. There’s also no breakdown between speculative and proven.
The Soviets famously freaked out by the Chinese getting nuclear weapons when Mao said that China was a very important ally for a thermonuclear war since given their huge population, they were sure to have some survivors.
Didn’t the UK’s nuke development start before the war though?
I thought it only got transferred to the US due to the war.
Did Dutch helped Pakistan, or they stole it from them?
The whole point of this chart is ruined if you don’t say where the Canadian spies etc got their info from…
Also what the heck is “adversarial assistance” if NOT espionage which has its own color?
pakistan and china helped nk
North Korea is missing quite a bit of dots.
I thought france played a huge role in nuclear proliferation through its sale of nuclear power plant tech/designs (which was largely based on american designs from westinghouse? they developed their own but abandoned eventually i believe) especially to states that are currently unofficially working on bombs (iran, for example)
![The surprising truth about who helped whom get nuclear weapons [OC]](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/w4hzur79yx4f1-1920x1024.png)
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AQ Khan supplying materials and know how to NK, and being hailed officially as a national hero suggests there ought to be a line between Pakistan and North Korea.
North Korea invented it all?
NK developed on its own, without espionage?
What’s “adversarial assistance”?
Data: the unsung hero of decision making!
1) the Dutch and Canadians have nuclear weapons? Or do the different sized dots mean different things?
2) why is South Africa in the neutral rather than Western bloc?
3) how is “adversarial assistance” defined?
There’s nothing surprising here. It follows other geopolitics pretty closely.
Excellent Job OP, might also be interesting to do a sequel examining all the nations that failed to develop a complete design, and how they were assisted by the established powers.
My one quibble would be the UK arguably started its nuclear weapons development in 1940 through Tube Alloys, but I get why you showed it the way you have.
Completely glosses over Canada’s involvement in the Manhattan Project. The US would not have had nukes when they did without us. We’re still cleaning up the plutonium waste.
Which makes the entire graphic suspect and unreliable. Downvoted.
We can draw a yellow line from China and Pakistan to North Korea most likely
Interesting that there’s no mention of the Apollo affair where 300-500 lbs of enriched uranium were stolen in the 60s from a US company near Pittsburgh. It’s widely believed that the uranium ended up in Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
A not so talked about aspect of the Second World War and the period immediately after is actually how much the US and UK didn’t get a long. Churchill and FDR got along well which smoothed over a majority of the differences, but man there were a lot of people in FDRs administration and after who straight up wanted to curb the British as much as possible.
What is “adversarial assistance”?
Ukraine should be on here. It’s the only other nation to ever disarm. Look where it got them.
Netherlands and Canada don’t have their own nukes. Some lines are dubious. Others seem to be missing. There’s also no breakdown between speculative and proven.
The Soviets famously freaked out by the Chinese getting nuclear weapons when Mao said that China was a very important ally for a thermonuclear war since given their huge population, they were sure to have some survivors.
Didn’t the UK’s nuke development start before the war though?
I thought it only got transferred to the US due to the war.
Did Dutch helped Pakistan, or they stole it from them?
The whole point of this chart is ruined if you don’t say where the Canadian spies etc got their info from…
Also what the heck is “adversarial assistance” if NOT espionage which has its own color?
pakistan and china helped nk
North Korea is missing quite a bit of dots.
I thought france played a huge role in nuclear proliferation through its sale of nuclear power plant tech/designs (which was largely based on american designs from westinghouse? they developed their own but abandoned eventually i believe) especially to states that are currently unofficially working on bombs (iran, for example)
[Anyway here’s a simple documentary i listened to not too long ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WNjyxeBsWc&vl=en-US)
What’s adversarial assistance?
Didn’t get the netherlands-Pakistan part.
NK didn’t develop it on their own
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