WASHINGTON—Just before President Barack Obama hosted the last biennial Nuclear Security Summit of his presidency, Belgian authorities reported chilling evidence. Affiliates of the terrorists who attacked the Brussels airport and subway had also installed a surveillance camera outside the house of a senior nuclear worker.
This incident follows other instances of sabotage and extremism within the country’s nuclear industry, raising fears that terrorists want to cause a major nuclear accident or seize nuclear material that could perhaps be turned into a “dirty bomb.”
The nuclear summits, among Obama’s most successful national security innovations, have made considerable progress in raising awareness about this post-Cold War danger and securing measures to avert it, but the discovery in Brussels serves as a reminder how serious the global threat remains.
Since the end of the Cold War, a variety of terrorist groups have tried to obtain weapons of mass destruction, and the threat has increased in recent years. The so-called Islamic State and other contemporary terrorists have employed chemical weapons in several countries and seek even more powerful nuclear weapons.
