In the mid 1960's, America's nuclear bomb program hired two young physics PhD's, who had zero-ish nuclear weapon knowledge. Their job - sit in an office, and try to design a working A-bomb - based on (1) public knowledge, (2) nuclear experiments that a 4th-rate nation could have performed at the time, and (3) the assumption that said 4th-rate nation had gotten its hands on a modest supply of weapons-grade plutonium.
Strategic Objective: Determine whether or not the only real barrier between troublesome 4th-rate nations and Nuclear Power status was access to weapons-grade not-yet-glowing stuff.
Test Result: SH*T. Said access was definitely the only barrier. So we better ramp up Major Efforts to limit such access...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091472/