> It's mission was to destroy some expensive industrial centrifuges and set back Iran's nuclear program. And it destroyed some centrifuges precisely as it was designed to. At that point discovery is inevitable, but whatevs because "mission accomplished".

I think it might be considered a partial success, but mostly failure. It did successfully set back Iran's nuclear program and destroy some centrifuges, but it spread too widely so it was probably detected much more quickly than desired.

Also, if it had been discovered only at the nuclear fuel plant, Iran might have kept quiet about it out of embarrassment, allowing it to be deployed elsewhere. Instead it was picked up by a major AV vendor and dissected very publicly.

^ Exactly

If Stuxnet was as successful as I'm sure its creators wanted it to be, we wouldn't be discussing it.

Not necessarily. It would be bound to be have found at some point in time. The article mentions it took at least a year before anyone knew about it.

And perhaps there is an even more technical worm out there still hidden and stuxnet was merely a first draft.

perhaps, but perhaps the creators don't know of any more holes. Or perhaps the creators knew about more, but the focus on security that this created resulted in not just the holes stuxnet used being closed, but the others. Or perhaps the creators know about more, but their targets have added layers of security and so they can't actually get their next worm where they want it.

A lot of unknown. Those who's job it is to secure systems have their own tricks.

Kinda makes you wonder why they didn't build a way to detect when it had reached its target so that they could have the remnants on other machines removed.