The lengthy and massively successful Chinese espionage effort detailed in the report by U.S. Rep. Chris Cox, R-Calif., was staggering. It illuminated embarrassingly lax security at the nation's weapons laboratories, two decades of failure by U.S. counterintelligence agencies and the scandalous rapacity of two private satellite companies with Chinese contracts, Loral Corp. and Hughes Electronics.
China has only two dozen sophisticated nuclear weapons compared to thousands in the U.S. arsenal.
It is hard to believe China's weapons development is on par with this nation's. But to negate the theft of U.S. nuclear secrets and prevent China from testing new weapons, the Senate should ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. That already-signed treaty, held up for more than a year in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, establishes an international monitoring and verification procedure to deter nuclear testing. A group of nuclear scientists, the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers , has called for ratification as the most effective way to mitigate the loss of technology secrets and retard China's progress in testing nuclear weapons. The secrets are stolen, the technology transferred to China and there is blame aplenty to go around.