CIA loses nuclear-powered gadget in the Himalayas, shrugs
The CIA tried to hide a nuclear device on a hallowed mountain. It did not go well.
In a story that sounds like a “Spies Like Us” sequel but is depressingly real, the CIA once hauled a nuclear-powered spying device up a sacred Himalayan mountain and then promptly lost control of it. A new video by Michael Pollard revisits the Nanda Devi expedition, a Cold War scheme so reckless it combined mountaineering hubris, radioactive material, and geopolitical paranoia into a single, frostbitten failure.
Pollard walks through how the Central Intelligence Agency partnered with elite climbers to plant a plutonium-powered surveillance gadget near the summit of Nanda Devi. The plan collapsed under bad weather, worse judgment, and the inconvenient fact that mountains are not cooperative infrastructure. The device was abandoned, possibly buried under ice and rock, and the fallout was handled with the CIA’s usual combination of secrecy and smirking.
What makes the story linger isn’t just the radiation; it’s a telling example of the CIA mindset. This was an era when the solution to “China might have a nuke” was “carry a nuclear generator up a sacred mountain.” Pollard’s video neatly captures how Cold War logic treated the natural world as expendable, local concerns as optional, and long-term consequences as someone else’s problem.
ended up reading the whole amazing NYT insert [1] on this story. ...be quite surprised if this isn't made into some sort of super-hyped movie.
> The device was abandoned, possibly buried under ice and rock, and the fallout was handled with the CIA’s usual combination of secrecy and smirking.
but then the real horror of uncertainty: if this thing wasn't spirited away by either side. if it continued to sit there on climate warming glaciers, it could end up making one of India's most critical rivers, the Ganges, radioactive.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/13/world/asia/cia-nuclear-device-himalayas-nanda-devi.html