HN Reader

For additional context, the "Nuclear Device" in question is a SNAP-19C, an RTG (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator), which generates electricity via radioactivity decay (approx 30W for this model).

I thought we’ve been led to believe that the US has sensitive radiation monitoring capabilities that could be capable of somewhat pinpointing the location of the device or at least detect it’s still there or has spread? Satellite detection?

This sounds like amatuer stuff, a cool idea of a CEO who has nobody to tell them 'no'.

Did they really need to plant that on top of a Himalyan mountain? Also, even if successful, how do you service it? The environment is as rough on equipment as it is on climbers.

I understand there were no satellites yet, but there were no other options?

Interesting to see this level of cooperation between the United States and India in 1965. Especially between the American and Indian intelligence agencies.

Historians of this time period usually describe India as having a more frigid relationship with America by the mid 1960’s with India moving closer to the Soviet Union and the United States moving closer to Pakistan. But articles like this demonstrate that the situation may have been more complex than that.

Of course geopolitics can sometimes change quickly. The leadership in the US and in India did change between 1965, the early 1970’s and the late 1970’s so that was a factor as well.

> After losing it at the top of that mountain 60 years ago, the American government still refuses to acknowledge that anything ever happened

So, it's possible that they retrieved it, but can't say that because it would confirm that the mission existed.

The US also pivoted to de facto allying with China by the 1970s.

In the eyes of contemporary NatSec leadership like Kissinger (Nixon, Ford) and Brzezinski (LBJ, Carter), leveraging the Sino-Soviet split to box in the Soviets was the ideal option.

As such, from 1972-1992 the US posted soldiers in Xinjiang monitoring the USSR [0], sponsored govenrnent led tech transfers and scientific collaboration [1], provided support for Chinese military modernization [2][3], and expanded economic cooperation [4].

This also played a role as to why US intel in the 2000s assumed Xi Jinping would be pro-American [5], as he started his career working on the US supported modernization of the PLA as a junior secretary to Geng Biao [6] - who was the primary reason the Maoist regime was overthrown in the 1970s.

By the 1970s, the primary NatSec goal was blocking the USSR, and as a result realism became the primary foreign policy strategy used by the US. As such, you ended up seeing policies like ditching India and Taiwan in favor of Pakistan and China, supporting communist Somalia over not-really-communist Dergist Ethiopia during the Ogaden War, and swaying then Soviet-aligned Egypt in favor of the US by cultivating Anwar Sadat and culminating in the Camp David Accords.

[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/18/world/us-and-peking-join-...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.%E2%80%93China_Agreement_o...

[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/17/world/us-decides-to-sell-...

[3] - https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/04/archives/study-urges-us-a...

[4] - https://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/26/business/us-china-investm...

[5] - https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09BEIJING3128_a.html

[6] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geng_Biao