Were nuclear technologies developed independently by other countries or were they stolen?

by McSaladMachine
restricteddata

There are an interesting set of assumptions in this question (I assume you mean by "other" that you mean "other than the USA").

First, literally no countries have ever been able to develop nuclear weapons completely indigenously. The Manhattan Project, for example, required aid from the British, Canada, and uranium ore supplies from the Belgium Congo. The Soviets used German and Austrian scientific labor, as well as information from spies in the United States, to supplement their own efforts. The UK worked with the USA (as noted). The French also had a minor role in the Manhattan Project (working at parts of the British team in Canada). China received aid from the USSR, India received material aid from the French and Canada, Pakistan received aid from China and information illicitly gotten from the Dutch. North Korea received assistance from Pakistan. Israel had help from the French, the South Africans from Israel.

So the binary, "developed independently" vs "stolen" is not super adequate. Separately, "stolen" is not how I would describe any of these programs. For some, espionage played a role (the USSR and Pakistan, notably). Even in that case, I wouldn't call it a "stolen" bomb — I would say that espionage played a part (as it does with many things, by many nations). Making a nuclear weapon is not as simple as someone writing down an equation and then you have it; it still takes a monumental research and production effort. (The Soviet atomic program required the labor from as many people as the Manhattan Project, and was not a simple carbon copy of it.) Also, much of the "assistance" was not of the espionage sort anyway — states have helped other states proliferate, and in some cases (like Pakistan and North Korea) it's not clear where the state ends and private entrepreneurs begin.