MI6 are brought in on a simple smuggling matter - someone appears to be hoarding diamonds, and the Government are worried that the stability of the diamond market might be threatened if all the hoarded diamonds are released at the same time. Bond (Sean Connery) infiltrates the smuggling ring and follows it to Las Vegas.

In parallel, he discovers that whoever is running the smuggling is closing the operation down and killing everyone who was working on it. He tracks the diamonds to a laboratory belonging to millionaire Willard Whyte (Jimmy Dean) in the Arizona desert, where it would appear that they are being fitted into a satellite which is ready for launch.

Breaking into Whyte's penthouse suite in the hotel he owns (the Whyte House), Bond discovers that Whyte has been abducted and Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Charles Gray) is running everything.

Blofeld's plan is to launch a satellite with a powerful laser on board (for which he needs the diamonds). Once it's launched, he will blackmail the world. Blofeld tries to kill Bond, who escapes and releases Whyte, but in the interim Blofeld's satellite is launched and Blofeld destroys a US missile base in North Dakota, a Russian submarine and a Chinese missile base.

He intends holding an international auction with nuclear supremacy as the prize. When the US launch an attack on his base - a converted oil rig - he tries to destroy Washington, DC, but Bond destroys his base and apparently kills him again.