Nuclear smuggling

GOP congressman says nuclear bomb could be smuggled in a ‘bale of marijuana.’ Don’t laugh too hard.

MIT professor Jack Ruina wrote in The Washington Post back in 2001: “A potential adversary does not have to rely on ballistic missiles to deliver a warhead. A small nation could easily resort to using planes, ships, cruise missiles or, as has been facetiously suggested, to hiding a warhead in a bale of marijuana, the shipment of which defies most detection.”

In congressional hearings in 2012 and 2014, Frank Ciluffo, the director of George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute, also pitched the possibility. Here's what he said in 2014: “If you want to smuggle in a tactical nuclear weapon, just wrap it in bale of marijuana. Because we're not doing all that well in terms of some of our drug enforcement.”

Harvard University's Graham Allison also suggested it in 2007, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

And getting a suitcase-size nuclear weapon into the United States would be easy, Allison said: “They could always hide it in a bale of marijuana.”