Imagine a world where nuclear bomb materials are sold and bought online?
One of the world’s largest online marketplace, Alibaba.com has listed on its website Gallium, one of the earth’s rarest metals, used in semiconductors, microwave circuits and other advanced electronics.
The Gallium, which is a silvery liquid at room temperature, also has one other singular application: according to a recent advertisement for the metal on Alibaba: “Gallium stabilises the plutonium.”
Due to its unique bonding properties, gallium is used in the plutonium cores of nuclear bombs, which another advertisement on the same site made clear: “Gallium, used in nuclear weapons.”
Asked about the advertisements, Alibaba said in an emailed statement to CNBC: “Alibaba.com has a strict product listing policy and we do not allow the listing of this type of product on the platform; the listings in question were taken down by our trust and safety team, and any similar listings that are found on the platform will be removed immediately and sellers involved will be penalised.”
Alibaba.com is owned by Alibaba Group Holding, a Chinese ecommerce company that is to list in New York later this month in what is likely to be the biggest internet initial public offering of all time with an IPO that could value the company at $162bn.
According to CNBC, the gallium advertisements were placed earlier this year by Litop Non Ferrous Metals, a company based in Guangzhou. At some point in the past four months, both ads appear to have been removed and replaced with less threatening versions. The latest iteration reads: “Gallium: Good price supply!”
Kathy Wen, an employee of Litop, said she blamed a former colleague for “lazy translations” and that references to nuclear weapons were unintentional. She added that they had not had any communication from Alibaba on the matter but had changed the advertisements referencing “nuclear weapons” due to marketing concerns.
Another advertisement on Alibaba.com, which has since been removed, is for uranium exported from Lagos, Nigeria. The ad was placed by Zigma Group, which describes itself on Alibaba as a company based in Illinois with a mining subsidiary in Nigeria.
It was unclear when the ads were placed, but each was viewed by the Financial Times during a period of several weeks beginning in March and through to the beginning of May. They were taken down or changed after the FT had spoken to a US government agency about the legal aspects of etailing nuclear materials and specifically indicated the websites in question.
Vladimir Evseev, director of the Centre for Social Political Studies in Moscow and the author of a highly respected report on the trade in nuclear materials, said he doubts anyone would be selling uranium ore, “because it is simply not profitable”. Vendors might be marketing small quantities of yellowcake uranium concentrate, instead.
He added, however, that there are no international restrictions on such sales but in the US it is illegal to sell such materials to Iran. “If you try to sell to Iran, someone might try to interfere with you,” he said.
Zigma said that the ad on Alibaba arose from an idea to broker deals between the government of Niger, which produces uranium, and prospective buyers. “We thought we could find buyers on the website, but they found out and said they don’t want sales of uranium,” a spokesperson said.
