Summary: The question isn't if the knowledge about dangerous weapons will leak, but when that leak will happen. The as technology keeps getting better and better, it is only a matter of time before those technologies are cheap/simple enough to become something that can be found in a "garage workshop".
Trying to resist the spread of knowledge merely slows the rate of diffusion at best - it can have the opposite effect - so this is not a long-term solution. I suggest that we need to start fixing the underlying problems (poverty, tribal feuding, etc.) that create the motive for using dangerous weapons, or we are going to get a nasty surprise someday.
There's a selection effect at work. It seems as if everything leaks because you don't hear about the stuff that doesn't leak. Plenty of things have been kept secret for decades: differential cryptanalysis, Ultra, FOGBANK. Those are just some of the ones we know about. It's quite likely there are more we don't.
Yes, they were kept secret for decades and yet you know about them now. It's not always a question of how long can information that is considered potentially dangerous can be kept secret. Sometimes it's a question of can it be kept secret indefinitely if the information is deemed dangerous enough. Many would say no.
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You may be interested in a post I wrote on this subject a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916033
Summary: The question isn't if the knowledge about dangerous weapons will leak, but when that leak will happen. The as technology keeps getting better and better, it is only a matter of time before those technologies are cheap/simple enough to become something that can be found in a "garage workshop".
Trying to resist the spread of knowledge merely slows the rate of diffusion at best - it can have the opposite effect - so this is not a long-term solution. I suggest that we need to start fixing the underlying problems (poverty, tribal feuding, etc.) that create the motive for using dangerous weapons, or we are going to get a nasty surprise someday.
There's a selection effect at work. It seems as if everything leaks because you don't hear about the stuff that doesn't leak. Plenty of things have been kept secret for decades: differential cryptanalysis, Ultra, FOGBANK. Those are just some of the ones we know about. It's quite likely there are more we don't.
Yes, they were kept secret for decades and yet you know about them now. It's not always a question of how long can information that is considered potentially dangerous can be kept secret. Sometimes it's a question of can it be kept secret indefinitely if the information is deemed dangerous enough. Many would say no.