But it still took the best physicists in the world with unlimited resources almost a decade to do so...

That article is a nice thought experiment, but they didn't actually build it.

Like many things, doing something for the first time with no proven blueprint is a lot harder than re-creating a process that you know works. And there's plenty of leaked/released information out there that a sufficiently interested party would very easily be able to obtain most of the steps/schematics necessary.

It's a little outdated at this point, but McPhee's 'The Curve of Binding Energy' is a fascinating read on this topic

> The hard part is getting and enriching uranium.

That is an important part though.

Which was exactly my point: you can't argue that "wide access to biotechnology will do no harm, after all, people haven't started building nukes in their back yard".

I think that's the point they were making.