Ex-NATO hacker: 'In the cyber world, there's no such thing as a ceasefire' The ceasefire between Iran and Israel may prevent the two countries from firing missiles at each other, but it won't carry any weight in cyberspace, according to former NATO hacker Candan Bolukbas. "In the cyber world, there's no such thing as a ceasefire," he told The Register. If we see something in cyberspace that can …
While "we haven't seen any ceasefire happening" in terms of Iranian cyber campaigns, especially when it comes to phishing for high-value individuals' credentials and sensitive military info, "we also do this," Bolukbas said, referring to the United States.
Case in point: Stuxnet, a malware deployed against Iran's nuclear fuel centrifuges, was a joint American-Israeli op. "And that, of course, was during a ceasefire. We were not in a war with Iran," Bolukbas said.
The Israeli tail wagging the US dog, as ever. Iran's been 3 weeks away from acquiring nukes since the 80s, don't you know!
Second: don't believe everything you read or see, according to Bolukbas. Iran, along with Russia and China, are getting really good at using generative AI for fake news and social media posts that aim to manipulate public opinion.
No need to manipulate public opinion when the truth is that whatever nefarious plots the "bad" actors in the world are planning on doing, the West got their first.
Wars can and have been fought without a formal declaration. Check out, for instance, the Quasi-War between France & the US.
Bolukbas is simply wrong in his claim "And that, of course, was during a ceasefire." There has been no agreed ceasefire because there (apparently?) has been no formal declaration of hostilities from which to cease firing. Certainly, the US has had to endure more than forty-five years of Iran-sponsored attacks, mostly directed at civilians. As for Stuxnet itself, that was a HIGHLY more operation. It affected exclusively equipment used in Uranium enrichment. No person was even injured.
And when one side deliberately targets civilians while the other works to avoid affecting civilians, you certain DO have a moral side and an immoral one--and the current Iranian regime is clearly celebrating civilian deaths.
Cyberattacks thrive because states treat them like “natural disasters” rather than preventable security failures. It’s like refusing to lock your front door for decades, then calling it a “highly sophisticated level 5 burglary” when someone walks in and steals everything. And instead of fixing the lock, you hire consultants to produce a 500-page report on burglary readiness. Governments barely value engineers; if the grid goes down, they shrug and call it an act of God. No wonder attackers never stop - they know the house will stay open, and the only real industry growth is in excuses.
.. and lawyers.
Always lawyers.
I know of a rather important government department in an EU country whose cybersecurity department is staffed by .. lawyers.
No, seriously. The collective technical knowledge in that group is easily exceeded by any single 12 year old watching Youtube.
Unbelievable.
"Iran, along with Russia and China, are getting really good at using generative AI for fake news and social media posts that aim to manipulate public opinion. "
And who is providing said generative AI ?
And to think that some orange baboon is pretending that Tik Tok is a national security menace (without doing anything to stop it).
Their government isn't good people, there's no doubt about that. But Pakistan's leadership is no better, and they have nukes. North Korea's is far worse and they have nukes. Russia and China have way more nukes than Iran could ever build and far more advanced than they could ever build. So what difference does it make if Iran gets nukes? Oh sure Israel cares because they fear a situation where Iran becomes untouchable to them in the way North Korea is untouchable to South Korea. They may claim they are worried that Iran will nuke them but they know that's not going to happen for the same reason North Korea hasn't nuked Seoul and that Putin hasn't nuked Kyiv.
The incentives for Iran to develop nukes become ever more clear after what just happened to them, combined with the fake of Ukraine, who voluntarily gave up their nukes, and of Libya, who voluntarily gave up their program to develop nukes. Iran wouldn't have Israel lobbing missiles at them or Americans dropping bombs on them - they know that based on the fact that none of that ever happens to North Korea regardless of what they do.
Since we bombed Iran they kicked out all the inspectors. There is enough "missing" material to make a dozen bombs after the remaining (rather easy by comparison to getting to 60%) enrichment from 60% to 85%, and there were trucks lined up outside their deep mountain facility to evacuate valuable equipment just days before it was supposedly destroyed. I bet they have a nuke in a year or two, which we'll learn about the same way we learned about North Korea's and India's nukes - seismic monitoring of underground tests.
So while they may fence with us via cyberattack to distract us, they'll have redoubled their efforts now in complete secrecy thanks to having no more inspectors looking on.
I'm more worried about Israel's nukes than anyone else's.
We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: 'Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.' I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
It's generally regarded that Israel's nuclear arms are to threaten the USA.
Israel gets into a conventional war with its neighbours. A USA administration vacillates (as in its support for Ukraine), Israel replies that it will have no alternative but to nuke Cairo, Amman, Istanbul, Bruxelles etc etc and draw the USSR whoever, into a global war. Unless of course the USA immediately supplies everything it wants and says nice things about it at the UN
I agree with almost everything you've written except the part about Ukraine giving up its nukes. They were never Ukraine's to give away in the first place - they belonged to the Soviet Union. Returning them to Russia was part of the deal that ended the Cold War.
Another part of the deal was that Ukraine should remain neutral in perpetuity. Of course, that didn't fit into the NATO/US empire's expansion plans and the rest is history.
Total nonsense, comrade. The Soviet Union ceased to exist - its nukes on Ukrainian soil didn’t “belong” to Russia. Ukraine inherited them as a sovereign state. The Budapest Memorandum exists precisely because Ukraine owned those nukes - and the US, UK, and Russia wanted Ukraine to give them up in exchange for security assurances. There was no deal binding Ukraine to neutrality forever. That’s just Moscow rewriting history to excuse its own aggression.
Russia's red lines regarding NATO eastward expansion were crystal clear from the start and the declassified documents prove it.
The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.
The first concrete assurances by Western leaders on NATO began on January 31, 1990, when West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher opened the bidding with a major public speech at Tutzing, in Bavaria, on German unification. The U.S. Embassy in Bonn (see Document 1) informed Washington that Genscher made clear “that the changes in Eastern Europe and the German unification process must not lead to an ‘impairment of Soviet security interests.’ Therefore, NATO should rule out an ‘expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders.’” The Bonn cable also noted Genscher’s proposal to leave the East German territory out of NATO military structures even in a unified Germany in NATO.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early
Whichever way you slice it, it was NATO/US that decided to FAFO.
Classic Kremlin half-truth spin, comrade. No legally binding treaty forbade NATO expansion - those were diplomatic discussions, not signed agreements. Gorbachev himself later admitted “the topic of NATO expansion was not discussed at all” in the context of German reunification. The Budapest Memorandum, on the other hand, was signed, and Russia violated it. You can cherry-pick memos all day - it doesn’t change the fact that Russia chose to invade sovereign neighbours, then tried to justify it by digging up decades-old vague chatter.
The point was exactly what we’re seeing now: to deter expansionist dictatorships from redrawing borders by force. Turns out that wasn’t some Cold War relic - it was insurance against exactly the kind of imperial aggression Russia is now performing.
Deterring expansionist dictatorships by expanding right up to said dictator's borders? Can you not see how ridiculous this line of argument is?
How do you think the US would respond if say, Mexico or Canada started to buddy up with the Chinese and agreed to host their nukes right up against the border? We know the answer to this, of course. It was called the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Soviet Union - whose crimes modern Russia glorifies and whitewashes - was a genocidal empire that butchered millions: the Holodomor in Ukraine, the invasion of Finland, mass deportations, gulags, and genocides against Poles, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, and countless others. They started WWII with Hitler, carving up Eastern Europe. NATO didn’t expand by force - it accepted sovereign democracies seeking protection from Russian aggression. Comparing this to the Cuban Missile Crisis - where a dictatorship secretly deployed nuclear weapons to threaten its neighbour - is absurd. NATO expansion was transparent, voluntary, and driven by states choosing collective defence precisely because history proved Moscow’s appetite for conquest and mass murder never died.
Who is reinventing history now ? You are full of strawman arguments.
NATO never "expanded". Every single NATO country in Eastern Euope signed up because they didn't trust Moscow. That's because the Soviet Union died in name only. Remind yourself that Putin is an ex-KGB officer.
The spirit of the Soviet Union is still very much alive.
Moscow invades Ukraine and what happens ? Finland comes out of its neutrality and requests NATO appartenance. Because Finland knows first hand that that bear next door is RIGHT THERE. You have probably forgotten that Stalin used WWII as a pretext to invade Finland, or you are deliberately ignoring that fact because you are obviously not interested in any fact that does not support your point of view.
How's the weather on Red Square these days, komrade ?
NATO never "expanded"
I'm sorry, but it's impossible to have a sensible discussion with someone that denies reality. Of course NATO has expanded, both in terms of members and land area. Also, contrary to the widely held belief, it is not a defensive alliance. Military campaigns in Serbia, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria are testament to this fact. Hell, even the subject of this article, an ex-NATO hacker, boasts that Stuxnet was a cyberattack against a state which we weren't at war with.
Taken in the round, it's therefore entirely logical for Russia to feel uneasy with NATO pressed up against its borders. Russia has legitimate security concerns which, as a nuclear armed state, must be taken seriously. The declassified messages on the link above shows that past Western leaders understood this fact. Unfortunately, today we're led by donkeys which is why we're probably headed towards outright conflict in Europe precipitated by a minor scuffle in Eastern Ukraine. Madness!
NATO expansion happened because countries chose protection from a regime with a track record of invasions, genocide, and scorched earth tactics - facts you conveniently ignore. As for your list: unlike Russia’s wars of conquest, NATO’s interventions weren’t about annexing land or erasing nations. Russia’s “security concerns” are just the propaganda fig leaf Moscow waves while it bombs cities, murders and rapes civilians, and redraws borders by force - exactly why NATO exists in the first place.
NATO's intervention led directly to the break up of Serbia and the formation of Kosovo. Meanwhile, Libya and Afghanistan were regime change operations so, once again, you're factually incorrect.
The US/NATO have been responsible for more misery, death and refugee crises since WW2 than any other nation or alliance. From Vietnam to Iraq, and Afghanistan to Syria it's one catastrophic geopolitical misstep after another.
Was common defense against ANY adversary. Hell, if Russia had embraced democracy instead of becoming a dictatorship they might be a NATO member today. If they did I doubt China would be whining about that the way Putin whines about countries on Russia's border joining, because they don't have any intention of invading Russia while Putin is just mad because it reduces the countries he can try to pick off and recreate the Soviet Union.
When the US was attacked on 9/11 it wasn't by Russia, or a former Soviet state, but NATO came to their aid because it doesn't specify anything about the attack must come from the USSR or Russia, and never did. Turkey has been secure from invasion or attack despite their location near a bunch of volatile Middle Eastern countries because if that happens they will get help from all their NATO allies. They would have been way more worried about characters like Saddam and Assad on their borders than they would be about the USSR.
> Therefore, NATO should rule out an ‘expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders.’”
Yet Putin broke that ‘agreement’ himself with the invasion of Crimea, which clearly undermined any principal of not reducing the separation of Russian and NATO borders.
“ I'm sorry, but it's impossible to have a sensible discussion with someone that denies reality."
You posted this earlier, yet then go on to deny reality yourself. The overthrow of Russia’s puppet government was a popular revolt, not the ousting of a popular government. This is clearly evidenced by the continued fight against Russia’s invasion by the Ukrainian people- an installed regime by the West could never have survived more than a couple of months in a war situation - presumably Putin’s expectation when he invaded.
You posted this earlier, yet then go on to deny reality yourself. The overthrow of Russia’s puppet government was a popular revolt, not the ousting of a popular government. This is clearly evidenced by the continued fight against Russia’s invasion by the Ukrainian people- an installed regime by the West could never have survived more than a couple of months in a war situation - presumably Putin’s expectation when he invaded.
Speak to the civilians in the Donbas that were systematically shelled by the Ukrainian regime for years in the run up to the war. Not sure they were so happy about your so-called popular revolt.
Ukraine is a country of two halves. The West will never submit to Russian rule and vice-versa for the East. The obvious solution is some form of partition but, instead of facilitating this, the West decided to jump on the Ukrainian regime's side and initiate a proxy war in the mistaken belief that Russia would collapse in no time.
Here's Zelensky's ex-spin doctor Oleksiy Arestovych outlining the plan back in 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwcwGSFPqIo
Shortly after the war began, there were peace talks held in Istanbul in March 2022. Both sides initialed the resulting agreement, but at the same moment Boris the Clown rushed over and promised Ukraine that the West would back them to the hilt if they continued the war.
This was witnessed by Naftali Bennet who was part of the negotiating team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv4bsTJJ-CU
The sad part is that the conditions to end the war today are far harsher than those requested by the Russians in the Istanbul Agreement. Ukraine went toe-to-toe in a war of attrition against a far larger and more powerful adversary and has paid a terrible price in terms of lost lives and land. Demographically, it may already be too late for them.
As the old adage of Henry Kissinger goes, 'It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.'
Comrade, Russia shelled civilians in Donbas, forcibly deported or killed locals, and replaced them with Russians promised free homes and pay - then screamed “genocide” to justify annexation. That’s not liberation or revolt, it’s manufactured ethnic cleansing, documented by the UN and countless rights groups.
Here you go...
One was a retired cook. Another installed alarms in cars. Another was a cleaner in a grocery store who had gone out to buy ground beef to make her son meatball soup.
With international attention focused on the tragedy of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the deaths of these three civilians — some of the roughly 800 who have been killed in the battle over eastern Ukraine — have gone virtually unnoticed by the outside world.
The Ukrainian military’s advances to reclaim territory from rebel control have come at a steep human cost. According to a United Nations count released on Monday, 799 civilians have been killed since mid-April, when Ukraine began to battle insurgents here, and at least 2,155 have been wounded.
The killings have left the population in eastern Ukraine embittered toward Ukraine’s pro-Western government, and are helping to spur recruitment for the pro-Russian militias. In time, even if the Ukrainian military routs the rebels and retakes the east, the civilian deaths are likely to leave deep resentments here, and could complicate reconciliation efforts for decades.
In a report released on Thursday, Human Rights Watch documented four instances of the use of unguided Grad rockets, which killed at least 16 civilians in and around Donetsk in nine days. While both rebels and Ukrainian forces use the rockets — descendants of World War II-era weapons — the investigation “strongly indicates that Ukrainian government forces were responsible” for the four attacks.
“Using these kinds of weapons in populated areas is a violation of the laws of war,” said Ole Solvang, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. “International allies of the Ukrainian government — the United States, the European Union — should condemn this use and urge the government to stop.”
https://www.nytimes.com./2014/07/29/world/europe/civilian-death-toll-rise-in-ukraine.html
Correcting your ignorance is becoming a little tiresome.
This "correction" is a classic example of whataboutism, desperately trying to deflect from Russia's fundamental role in this tragedy. You're citing a 2014 article about the consequences of a conflict Russia ignited and fueled using its own military personnel disguised as "separatists" - a documented act of aggression and a war crime in itself.
Let's be crystal clear: Russia invaded, occupied, and armed these so-called "separatists" (who were often Russian military in civilian clothes). Civilian deaths, from any side, are horrific, but they are a direct and tragic outcome of Russia's unprovoked military aggression and illegal annexation attempts. Without Russia's invasion, none of those civilians would have died. Your "tiredness" in spreading disinformation doesn't change the documented fact that Russia bears responsibility for this war and its devastating toll.
> So by your logic (I use the term loosely) then, say, Buriatia should be part of Mongolia? Yet the Russian constitution explicitly outlaws secession. And I suspect Putin would cry foul if Mongolia invaded Buriatia with the same argument Putin tries to use to justify armed invasion of Ukraine.
You keep applying double standards to Russia’s behaviour. The Ukrainian borders are recognised internationally , and were agreed to by Russia itself. A country that vehemently opposes secession by its own colonised regions cannot legitimately justify invading another country because the majority of the citizens in one region traces their roots to Russia.
And the USA, UK etc wanted Ukraine to give them up because otherwise every other former USSR state would also try and keep the ones on their soil. And we weren't all that keen on a bunch of 'stans' having thermonuclear weapons and no government
You’re missing the part where Trump’s moves handed Russia and Iran exactly what they wanted on a platter. Iran wasn’t caught off-guard - odds are they had advance warning through Moscow, who now looks like Tehran’s indispensable ally and power broker. Meanwhile, the Trump clique (Russian assets in all but name) undermined inspections, gifted Iran domestic propaganda fodder, and basically told them the US can’t be trusted. Perfect outcome for Putin: chaos, fractured alliances, and Iran drifting deeper into Russia’s orbit, with enriched uranium quietly “lent” out the back door. But sure, let’s keep pretending our intelligence services have any grip on big-picture geopolitics. Watching them stumble around while we foot the bill is genuinely pathetic - especially with Starmer grovelling to Krasnov on cue.
Trump a Russian asset? How come the Mueller Report failed to report this bombshell?
Seriously, if the mastermind Putin, in charge of a country with a GDP less than that of Italy, is pulling the strings of the leader of the free world, perhaps he deserves the position!
Grow up.
Most of the report is public, and the damning parts are already there for anyone literate enough to read them and the rest is redacted to protect ongoing cases, intelligence sources, and methods - standard practice in national security, not some secret exoneration.
The Mueller Report laid out Russia’s massive interference campaign, the Trump camp’s eager acceptance of help, and multiple attempts to obstruct justice - then handed the whole mess to Congress because DOJ policy forbids indicting a sitting president. That’s not exoneration, that’s dodging prosecution on a technicality. And Putin doesn’t need a big GDP to destabilise the West - just a steady supply of smug, incurious marks who think mocking the problem somehow disproves it. Thanks for volunteering as Exhibit A.
OK, so let's assume you're correct and the evil mastermind Putin was able to get Trump elected in 2016. If that's the case, why did he lose in 2020? Why were elections even allowed to be held, for that matter?
Surely, the 2016 win meant it was job done? The Kremlin had their boy in the White House, right?
Perfect outcome for Putin: chaos, fractured alliances, and Iran drifting deeper into Russia’s orbit, with enriched uranium quietly “lent” out the back door. But sure, let’s keep pretending our intelligence services have any grip on big-picture geopolitics.
A bit like pushing Russia into the arms of the actual global threat, China, due to the ridiculous Ukraine proxy war which you're all in favour of.
Russia wasn’t “pushed” anywhere - it’s a failing kleptocracy that’s been grovelling to China for scraps long before Ukraine fought back. Calling a sovereign nation’s self-defence a “proxy war” is just Kremlin fanfiction for people too lazy to remember who invaded whom.
So Ukraine fought back on its own did it? The $400 billion in military aid from the US/NATO had nothing to do with it? Tell me, when you decide to spend $400B on something, would that not suggest some form of involvement?
Russia is now providing tactical military intelligence to China on how to defeat Western weapons. That presents a big problem for the US who now concede that China/Taiwan is going to be the next hot spot.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-train-china-troops-beat-us-nato-western-weapons-systems-2090569
So I repeat, pushing Russia into the arms of China was a huge geopolitical mistake.
Of course Ukraine needed help - because Russia launched a genocidal invasion. That’s called supporting a victim, not orchestrating a war. And Russia “providing intelligence” to China is just the flailing of a failing dictatorship desperate for relevance. The only reason Moscow ran to Beijing is because its army got humiliated and its economy is sinking. That’s not some Western “mistake” - it’s the consequence of a regime so toxic even its old vassals want nothing to do with it.
Not sure if you're keeping up with how things are progressing in the war, but it's not going too well for Ukraine, even with $400B and counting of the best Western arms. Doesn't sound like a humiliation for the Russian army where I'm sitting.
Every country acts out of self-interest. The US/NATO didn't get involved in Ukraine because it was a victim. There are unjust and brutal wars that rage for decades in Africa yet they barely get a mention in the news, let alone $100B dollar injections of cash from the West.
Your opinion on world affairs and geopolitics is staggeringly naive. Falling for every word from the warmongering neocons, MSM and the military industrial complex. I can quite believe you were one of the cheerleaders calling for an intervention in Iraq when Bush & Blair started talking about WMDs.
Nobody is buying the line that Ukraine defending itself against an invading army is the same as Bush’s Iraq disaster. And comparing Russia’s scorched-earth terror campaign to ignored conflicts in Africa is just cheap whataboutism designed to excuse war crimes. Funny how every Kremlin script ends with blaming the West for Moscow’s brutality - almost like you’ve got nothing else.
And Russia “providing intelligence” to China is just the flailing of a failing dictatorship desperate for relevance. The only reason Moscow ran to Beijing is because its army got humiliated and its economy is sinking.
Why would Putin need to run to Beijing if he's controlling the guy that leads the most powerful nation on Earth, President Donald J Trump?
Make it make sense!
Comrade, the US isn’t Russia - Trump and his troupe can’t just do Putin’s bidding outright without risking charges. They push the line, sow chaos, fracture alliances. But America still has checks and balances, unlike the Kremlin, where when one man says jump, you either jump or fly out the window. That’s why even with Trump in office, Putin still had to run to China for backup.
Russia and China were always going to align with each other as a matter of time. Russia (since Vladimir arrived as Prime Minister post Yeltsin) wants to expand to the old borders of the USSR. China wants the entire eastern hemisphere. The US doesn't want either of those things. They naturally would drift back together, even if it's likely to be as rocky as their previous ventures in the 30s and 60s.
Exactly. Perhaps a quick history lesson on nuclear weapons is in order.
SHORT VERSION
Any country that wants nuclear weapons has had them for a long time.
LONG VERSION
In 1939 Albert Einstein and other scientists sent a letter to President Roosevelt proposing what became the atomic bomb.
In 1945, six years later, the US exploded three atomic weapons. The Hiroshima bomb was a gun bomb where enriched uranium was shot together at very high speed to create the fission reaction. The Nagasaki bomb used explosives to compress the plutonium fuel perfectly to create the fission reaction. The first test, Trinity, also used explosives to compress the fuel just like the Nagasaki bomb but the gun design was considered more reliable so it was chosen for the first attack.
In 1952, seven years later, the US exploded the first so-called "hydrogen bomb", a fusion weapon. A hydrogen bomb actually explodes when an atomic bomb a few feet away from the fusion fuel is first exploded. The energy from the exploding atomic bomb is captured and redirected to create the force needed to compress the fusion fuel perfectly before the atomic bomb scatters the fusion fuel to the winds.
Think about the math behind that.
That's why the old Vela satellites looked for a characteristic double peak when trying to detect an H bomb test. The smaller peak was the A bomb followed by the taller peak, the H portion. Once again proving that timing is critical. :)
It was all done in a mere thirteen years using slide rules, manual calculations, and manual experimentation. 13 years from concept to The Big One.
While centrifuges are a more efficient way of enriching uranium it’s not the only way. In fact, the Manhattan Project during WWII used gaseous diffusion running in Oak Ridge, TN , not centrifuges. Gaseous diffusion requires a lot of electricity which is why a TVA hydroelectric-powered site was chosen, but Iran has Russian reactors now to create massive amounts of electricity. And processes have gotten a lot more efficient in the last half-century.
Then the Atomic Energy Commission created their "Atoms For Peace" program and released massive amounts of design information to the world. Then they decided that was a bad idea but the information was already out there.
And now, 70+ years after the USA exploded the first hydrogen bomb, politicians are still saying "We can't let (fill in the blank) get The Bomb!"
Folks, any country that wanted nuclear weapons had 70 years and computers to do what the USA did in 13 by hand.
With all of the piss-poor security, computers, and the Internet, literally all of the necessary design data was stolen long ago. I'm pretty sure Iran and others can figure out how to build a gun-type weapon. Let's not forget about any fissionable material that was lost when the Soviet Union collapsed. The weapons themselves will degrade without maintenance but the half-life of the fissionable material is still good for a dirty bomb, if nothing else.
Heck, I remember visiting the US Air Force Museum in Ohio as a kid. They had two working models of atomic bombs there, one of each type. I "pushed the button" and the models showed the basics of how each weapon worked with moving parts followed by a bright light.
The takeaway to me is that the "We can't let (fill in the blank) get The Bomb!" is simply a public opinion control mechanism that has worked stunningly well to justify all sorts of aggression for over half a century.
Amateur hackers always want to take down the biggest and the best whether they are multi-national banks or government defense agencies. When I worked in the US banking cybersecurity area there were about 6,000 financial institutions in the USA. We used to joke about what idiots the DDoS kiddies were to go after Chase, Citi, etc.
Why?
Because with the same amount of firepower they probably could take down 4,000 or 5,000 of the financial institutions in the USA at one time because those community banks and credit unions simply didn't want to, or couldn't afford to, invest in those types of protections. Even better, many small FI's outsource to just a few big companies to provide their online services. Target those outsourcers and you can take down hundreds of small FI's with one attack.
Same with other industries but Microsoft, AWS, occasionally take them down due to screw-ups. :)
A bunch of little targets is easier to hit than one big target. That's why we keep reading about hacked local utilities, especially water providers, being compromised by state-level hackers. They know if they turn off the little providers then their ultimate target will also fall. The third-party risk is where the problem is.
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