By Matthew Schofield, Kansas City Star editorial board columnist

Pakistan's Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan was given complete freedom Friday.

Now, this hardly puts anyone at immediate risk. Khan, after all, is a scientist, a nuclear scientist. By all accounts, he's brilliant.

He's also, however, the father of the modern arms race. This isn't the arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States, the one that resulted in stockpiles of weapons that could erase all traces of humans from the earth, many times over.

Instead, the race he started is more dangerous than that. During the nuclear buildup of the 1950s, 60s, 70s, there was at least mutually assured destruction to prevent a third nuclear weapon attack (the first two, of course, where on Japan at the end of World War II).

Khan, quietly, secretly built a Pakistani nuclear program, putting his country into the rather elite nuclear club before anyone really knew they had were getting close to membership.

He efforts earned him hero status in Pakistan, a status that remains today. Frankly, his actions given the Pakistani relationship with India can be understood. India is also nuclear, and this is a very nervous border.

But he also later would confess to selling not simply his secrets, but his methods, to Libya, North Korea and Iran.

He's since denied that he did that, said his confession was forced. Still, his methods were copied, and this is where and when the modern arms race began.

North Korea clearly could care less about the doctrine of mutally assured destruction. that doctrine means you leave the weapons in the background. North Korea waves them about like a very dangerous club. North Korea believes in brinksmanship, but playing such a razor's edge game with such a horrible weapon should be unthinkable.

And, the plans that were shipped into Iran have been responsible for the current western worry about that state.

What Khan did, beyond simply building a weapon, is come up with a method of doing so that could be copied, by just about any nation with the will to do so.

In an age when the established nuclear powers were pushing ever more advanced technology for uranium enrichment, Khan, an experienced nuclear technician in Europe, looked backwards.

In the 1970s, he went back to 1940s technology on enrichment, working with first generation centrifuges.

Lacking efficiency, he went for bulk. And in doing so, he mapped out the path to highly enrichemd uranium for rogue nations worldwide.

There's an argument to be made that he's served his time, especially if he didn't actually give away his findings. But there's also an argument to be made that he's put the world at great risk, simply by creating the method copied by nation's with unconcerned with world domination, but intent on regional supremacy.

In any case, he' now completely free.

As the BBC quoted Justice Ejaz Ahmed in his high court rulling: "Dr Khan can come and go anywhere as he pleases, and no one should prevent him from doing this. We must implement the Islamabad high court's decision in spirit and letter. There should be no limitations on Dr Khan's movements and meetings."