Seeking to limit fallout from the latest North Korean uranium enrichment disclosures, Obama officials have been implying they kind of knew about it all along, which is kind of true inasmuch as concern about the subject reached well back into the previous administration. But Siegfried Hecker, hands-down the leading authority on North Korean nuclear activities, has left no doubt in interview after interview that he was astonished and dumbfounded by the size and sophistication of the new enrichment plant.
Obviously the North Koreans could not have built a near state-of-the-art plant so fast without foreign assistance. So government and press speculation has been centering on which government might have helped. But even with technical advice from abroad the North Koreans would have needed components. That strongly suggests that the global supplier network assembled by A.Q. Khan still is not fully shut down.
This consideration may seem small at the moment, with the imminent danger of Korean war on everybody’s mind, but in the longer run it may be the bigger one.