Kennedy told only 6 people that he accepted Khrushchev's deal to remove missiles from Cuba and Turkey which was one of the most powerful secrets in the world to disarm WW3, possibly one of the many decisions that saved the human race from nuclear annihilation. His vice president didn't even know. And the thought that Kennedy just stared down Khrushchev until Khrushchev gave in remained a core part of US international negotiation ever since. The deal was only declassified 20 years ago.

So I don't really buy this common internet "if it happened, we'd know about it" meme that secrets are so hard to keep.

Facts are easy to keep as secret. Organization is hard to keep as a secret since it involves an entire supply chain. If the secret you mentioned really required 6 people knowing it, then it can be easy to keep. Hypothetically, cloning a human requires a lot of materials that needs to be provided, so it may be harder to keep as a secret.

But what if only a portion of the information is a secret? Couldn't you run a lab and be pretty open that you're doing research cloning animals and just conveniently leave out that the animals are human? That's not meant to trivialize your point at all, but it also seems like the entire supply chain doesn't actually need to know what's going on.

> So I don't really buy this common internet "if it happened, we'd know about it" meme that secrets are so hard to keep.

Another data point: The Manhattan Project. It was large, involved a ton of people, and still managed to keep a lot of secrecy around itself for some time.

Likewise, the Guatemala syphilis experiments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiments

The Manhattan Project started in 1942, was penetrated by Soviet spies no later than 1943 (Klaus Fuchs), and was known to the whole world by 1945. It's not a great example of extended secret-keeping.

A small group of 10 or so scientists, well funded by a nation state could absolutely do it, and absolutely keep it secret

I have friends who are working on killer robots (terminator style) and they are not interested in fame or notoriety, they want the technical challenge and the fat paycheque. Whether you agree with the ethics of this is irrelevant, the point is, it can be done

Take a second and re-read your comment. Do you really think it would be hard?

There are institutions scattered all over the globe that do shit behind closed doors. Jeffrey Epstein (et all), Scientology, Russia, North Korea, the Nazis, Hydra (kidding) and a ton of engineering, defense, biotech labs all over the place.

It’s not hard to do something secretly if you have money.

Small teams can move mountains. I mean look at the Manhattan Project or Lockheed Martin during the golden years of stealth technology.

USA probably has a lead cause they have biolaboratories developing bio weapons in several former USSR republics (Georgia, Uzbekistan, maybe others). Most probably viruses that target Slavic population are developed in those labs. Also there are rumors that in Georgia they use prisoners to test biological weapons on humans.

Aside from incentives being strongly aligned, financial or otherwise, there are certainly bleak and dark scenarios I can imagine to rigidly keep any behaviour hidden from the majority of society.

I hate to have an annoying over-simplified answer but... Epstein.