No terror impact.

As for nuclear terrorism, ever since al Qaeda operatives used box cutters so effectively to hijack commercial airplanes, alarmists have warned that radical Islamist terrorists would soon apply equal talents in science and engineering to make and deliver nuclear weapons so as to destroy various so-called infidels. In practice, however, terrorist groups have exhibited only a limited desire to go nuclear and even less progress in doing so. Why? Probably because developing one’s own bomb from scratch requires a series of risky actions, all of which have to go right for the scheme to work. This includes trusting foreign collaborators and other criminals; acquiring and transporting highly guarded fissile material; establishing a sophisticated, professional machine shop; and moving a cumbersome, untested weapon into position for detonation. And all of this has to be done while hiding from a vast global surveillance net looking for and trying to disrupt such activities. Terrorists are unlikely to get a bomb from a generous, like-minded nuclear patron, because no country wants to run the risk of being blamed (and punished) for a terrorist’s nuclear crimes. Nor are they likely to be able to steal one. Notes Stephen Younger, the former head of nuclear weapons research and development at Los Alamos National Laboratory: “All nuclear nations take the security of their weapons very seriously.” The grand mistake of the Cold War was to infer desperate intent from apparent capacity. For the war on terrorism, it has been to infer desperate capacity from apparent intent.