WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.976 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.976 --> 00:00:01.952 align:middle line:90% [SQUEAKING] 00:00:01.952 --> 00:00:04.392 align:middle line:90% [RUSTLING] 00:00:04.392 --> 00:00:07.808 align:middle line:90% [CLICKING] 00:00:07.808 --> 00:00:10.248 align:middle line:90% 00:00:10.248 --> 00:00:16.777 align:middle line:84% DAVID KAISER: Welcome to 8.225/ STS.042. 00:00:16.777 --> 00:00:18.360 align:middle line:84% Just a quick announcement-- hopefully, 00:00:18.360 --> 00:00:22.680 align:middle line:84% you saw the message also through the Canvas course site, 00:00:22.680 --> 00:00:23.380 align:middle line:90% as well. 00:00:23.380 --> 00:00:25.560 align:middle line:84% We're going to do a similar routine for this coming 00:00:25.560 --> 00:00:27.340 align:middle line:84% week as we had done earlier this week, 00:00:27.340 --> 00:00:32.130 align:middle line:84% which is to say students' main assignment for Monday's class 00:00:32.130 --> 00:00:36.630 align:middle line:84% session this coming Monday is to watch, on your own time, 00:00:36.630 --> 00:00:39.090 align:middle line:84% at your own schedule, at your leisure, 00:00:39.090 --> 00:00:40.410 align:middle line:90% another documentary film. 00:00:40.410 --> 00:00:43.450 align:middle line:84% This one's also about a little less than 90 minutes, 00:00:43.450 --> 00:00:45.840 align:middle line:84% so it's comparable to a class session time. 00:00:45.840 --> 00:00:48.660 align:middle line:90% This film is called Containment. 00:00:48.660 --> 00:00:50.162 align:middle line:84% It was made by Peter Galison, some 00:00:50.162 --> 00:00:52.620 align:middle line:84% of whose work we've read before, and some of his colleagues 00:00:52.620 --> 00:00:53.790 align:middle line:90% worked on the film. 00:00:53.790 --> 00:00:57.990 align:middle line:84% And it takes some of the threads we've been talking about even 00:00:57.990 --> 00:01:01.350 align:middle line:90% further up more recent in time. 00:01:01.350 --> 00:01:05.730 align:middle line:84% I think it's a fascinating, again, very engaging, at times 00:01:05.730 --> 00:01:08.140 align:middle line:90% very troubling documentary. 00:01:08.140 --> 00:01:10.580 align:middle line:84% And so the main assignment is to watch that. 00:01:10.580 --> 00:01:14.960 align:middle line:84% So for today, it'll be a more familiar style class session. 00:01:14.960 --> 00:01:16.580 align:middle line:90% I have a bunch of slides. 00:01:16.580 --> 00:01:20.800 align:middle line:84% So I want to carry the story forward 00:01:20.800 --> 00:01:24.112 align:middle line:84% a bit further in time compared to just the developments 00:01:24.112 --> 00:01:25.570 align:middle line:84% immediately during the Second World 00:01:25.570 --> 00:01:28.150 align:middle line:84% War, which we've been focusing on for several class 00:01:28.150 --> 00:01:29.360 align:middle line:90% periods in a row. 00:01:29.360 --> 00:01:32.350 align:middle line:84% And so today is looking into the period that 00:01:32.350 --> 00:01:34.210 align:middle line:84% came to be called the Cold War, in looking 00:01:34.210 --> 00:01:38.260 align:middle line:84% at some aspects of nuclear questions during the Cold War, 00:01:38.260 --> 00:01:40.180 align:middle line:84% much, much more beyond that that we 00:01:40.180 --> 00:01:41.830 align:middle line:90% can't cover in detail in class. 00:01:41.830 --> 00:01:47.140 align:middle line:84% But I want to at least introduce some things along the lines 00:01:47.140 --> 00:01:50.270 align:middle line:84% we've already been talking about. 00:01:50.270 --> 00:01:53.860 align:middle line:84% So today, as usual, almost always there's 00:01:53.860 --> 00:01:56.028 align:middle line:90% three main parts to the class. 00:01:56.028 --> 00:01:57.820 align:middle line:84% We're going to start by talking about, what 00:01:57.820 --> 00:01:59.980 align:middle line:84% do people mean when they talk about this phrase, 00:01:59.980 --> 00:02:01.420 align:middle line:90% the atomic secret? 00:02:01.420 --> 00:02:03.100 align:middle line:84% And as we'll see, that gets bound up 00:02:03.100 --> 00:02:06.460 align:middle line:84% with questions about both espionage 00:02:06.460 --> 00:02:09.520 align:middle line:84% and possible implications of espionage during the Second 00:02:09.520 --> 00:02:12.760 align:middle line:84% World War, and also about what's called proliferation, 00:02:12.760 --> 00:02:15.010 align:middle line:84% other countries besides the United States 00:02:15.010 --> 00:02:19.270 align:middle line:84% or the immediate US-UK-Canada partnership 00:02:19.270 --> 00:02:22.510 align:middle line:84% during the war that led to the Manhattan Project, 00:02:22.510 --> 00:02:24.640 align:middle line:84% how and when did some other countries 00:02:24.640 --> 00:02:26.710 align:middle line:84% begin to develop their own nuclear weapons. 00:02:26.710 --> 00:02:30.255 align:middle line:84% And that whole bundle of themes and topics 00:02:30.255 --> 00:02:31.630 align:middle line:84% we'll talk at least briefly about 00:02:31.630 --> 00:02:33.700 align:middle line:84% for the first part of class today. 00:02:33.700 --> 00:02:37.450 align:middle line:84% Then we'll talk about the US decision 00:02:37.450 --> 00:02:39.820 align:middle line:84% to actually pursue a different kind 00:02:39.820 --> 00:02:43.220 align:middle line:84% of nuclear weapon, the hydrogen bombs or fusion weapons. 00:02:43.220 --> 00:02:46.630 align:middle line:84% And again, you got some of this introduced 00:02:46.630 --> 00:02:48.640 align:middle line:84% near the end of the film, The Day After Trinity. 00:02:48.640 --> 00:02:52.390 align:middle line:84% And I'll just talk a bit more about how those decisions 00:02:52.390 --> 00:02:54.785 align:middle line:90% played out in the US context. 00:02:54.785 --> 00:02:56.660 align:middle line:84% And then the third part will be pretty quick. 00:02:56.660 --> 00:02:58.118 align:middle line:84% But I just want to make sure we all 00:02:58.118 --> 00:03:04.630 align:middle line:84% know that the policy challenges posed by nuclear weapons hardly 00:03:04.630 --> 00:03:07.400 align:middle line:90% disappeared in 1945 or 1950. 00:03:07.400 --> 00:03:09.310 align:middle line:84% So the last part will be a look at some 00:03:09.310 --> 00:03:14.170 align:middle line:84% of the international treaties that came and went over 00:03:14.170 --> 00:03:17.830 align:middle line:84% the longer period beyond just the 1950s, 00:03:17.830 --> 00:03:20.620 align:middle line:84% stretching later into the Cold War. 00:03:20.620 --> 00:03:24.520 align:middle line:84% So that's really just a much briefer sketch, 00:03:24.520 --> 00:03:27.430 align:middle line:84% just to make sure we're clear that these issues really did 00:03:27.430 --> 00:03:30.080 align:middle line:90% have a very long, a long tail. 00:03:30.080 --> 00:03:32.530 align:middle line:84% And in fact, of course, many of the issues 00:03:32.530 --> 00:03:34.105 align:middle line:90% are still relevant to this day. 00:03:34.105 --> 00:03:35.480 align:middle line:84% That's where we're heading today. 00:03:35.480 --> 00:03:41.230 align:middle line:84% So as we saw both in the previous lecture 00:03:41.230 --> 00:03:44.470 align:middle line:84% and also I think very evocatively in the film The Day 00:03:44.470 --> 00:03:46.240 align:middle line:84% After Trinity, the Manhattan Project 00:03:46.240 --> 00:03:50.050 align:middle line:84% was this really unprecedented, sprawling 00:03:50.050 --> 00:03:53.080 align:middle line:84% scientific and technical project, ultimately employing 00:03:53.080 --> 00:03:58.270 align:middle line:84% about 125,000 people at 30 or maybe 31 sites, 00:03:58.270 --> 00:04:03.160 align:middle line:84% distinct sites across the United States and parts of Canada. 00:04:03.160 --> 00:04:05.200 align:middle line:90% It was just enormous. 00:04:05.200 --> 00:04:08.740 align:middle line:84% It included some of the, at the time, world's largest factories 00:04:08.740 --> 00:04:12.670 align:middle line:84% ever constructed at all, some of those at the isotope separation 00:04:12.670 --> 00:04:17.380 align:middle line:84% plants in Oak Ridge, likewise, the billion cubic feet 00:04:17.380 --> 00:04:20.920 align:middle line:84% or cubic meters-- billion cubic something-- of concrete 00:04:20.920 --> 00:04:24.040 align:middle line:84% poured at the Hanford site to host 00:04:24.040 --> 00:04:27.250 align:middle line:84% these enormous, enormous nuclear reactors to do things 00:04:27.250 --> 00:04:29.650 align:middle line:84% like create kilograms of plutonium 00:04:29.650 --> 00:04:30.940 align:middle line:90% instead of only micrograms. 00:04:30.940 --> 00:04:32.830 align:middle line:84% Just a reminder, this was a project 00:04:32.830 --> 00:04:36.610 align:middle line:84% on an unprecedented, industrial scale, 00:04:36.610 --> 00:04:39.520 align:middle line:84% as well as involving lots of complicated questions 00:04:39.520 --> 00:04:42.770 align:middle line:84% for science and engineering along the way. 00:04:42.770 --> 00:04:47.350 align:middle line:84% So that work was done in secret during the war. 00:04:47.350 --> 00:04:50.050 align:middle line:84% And as I mentioned briefly, some of those sites like Oak Ridge 00:04:50.050 --> 00:04:54.490 align:middle line:84% and Hanford were literally not even on the map at the time. 00:04:54.490 --> 00:04:57.700 align:middle line:84% The existence and the location of the sites 00:04:57.700 --> 00:04:59.740 align:middle line:84% was considered too sensitive to put even 00:04:59.740 --> 00:05:02.510 align:middle line:84% on simple maps of, say, the state of Tennessee, 00:05:02.510 --> 00:05:04.360 align:middle line:90% for example, or Oak Ridge. 00:05:04.360 --> 00:05:06.160 align:middle line:90% But the secrecy was-- 00:05:06.160 --> 00:05:09.190 align:middle line:84% some part of the secrecy was removed quite dramatically 00:05:09.190 --> 00:05:10.780 align:middle line:84% at the end of the Second World War 00:05:10.780 --> 00:05:12.430 align:middle line:84% when the nuclear weapons were used 00:05:12.430 --> 00:05:14.380 align:middle line:90% against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 00:05:14.380 --> 00:05:18.340 align:middle line:84% And suddenly, this was worldwide news, no longer only 00:05:18.340 --> 00:05:19.900 align:middle line:90% top secret. 00:05:19.900 --> 00:05:22.070 align:middle line:84% So what I was curious about a number of years ago-- 00:05:22.070 --> 00:05:24.310 align:middle line:84% and I wrote an article that was part 00:05:24.310 --> 00:05:25.510 align:middle line:90% of the readings for today-- 00:05:25.510 --> 00:05:28.390 align:middle line:84% was how did people react to what had previously 00:05:28.390 --> 00:05:30.850 align:middle line:84% been treated as very, very top secret 00:05:30.850 --> 00:05:34.760 align:middle line:84% once the fact of the weapons was no longer a secret? 00:05:34.760 --> 00:05:38.140 align:middle line:84% And so the way to think about that that I pursued was, 00:05:38.140 --> 00:05:39.730 align:middle line:84% what did people mean when they use 00:05:39.730 --> 00:05:41.350 align:middle line:90% the phrase, the atomic secret? 00:05:41.350 --> 00:05:44.210 align:middle line:84% They use that phrase all the time, 00:05:44.210 --> 00:05:47.170 align:middle line:84% especially in that first decade after the end of the war, 00:05:47.170 --> 00:05:50.620 align:middle line:84% in all kinds of settings and media. 00:05:50.620 --> 00:05:51.790 align:middle line:90% What did people mean? 00:05:51.790 --> 00:05:55.240 align:middle line:84% What did they think the term the atomic secret referred to? 00:05:55.240 --> 00:05:59.170 align:middle line:84% And one thing I want to prime us for just days before the next 00:05:59.170 --> 00:06:01.480 align:middle line:84% election here in our current days, 00:06:01.480 --> 00:06:03.070 align:middle line:84% is that a lot of these discussions, 00:06:03.070 --> 00:06:07.240 align:middle line:84% maybe not so surprisingly, were unfolding in the midst 00:06:07.240 --> 00:06:12.043 align:middle line:84% of and reflective of domestic politics, not only domestic-- 00:06:12.043 --> 00:06:14.460 align:middle line:84% there are lots of international things going, on as well-- 00:06:14.460 --> 00:06:16.860 align:middle line:84% but a lot of the rhythms of what changed, 00:06:16.860 --> 00:06:18.570 align:middle line:84% what kinds of conversations seemed 00:06:18.570 --> 00:06:21.965 align:middle line:90% to dominate at different times. 00:06:21.965 --> 00:06:23.340 align:middle line:84% I think we can make sense of that 00:06:23.340 --> 00:06:26.220 align:middle line:84% by thinking about a timeline of domestic, often 00:06:26.220 --> 00:06:27.600 align:middle line:90% electoral politics. 00:06:27.600 --> 00:06:29.590 align:middle line:84% When's the next congressional midterm, 00:06:29.590 --> 00:06:31.780 align:middle line:84% especially when's the next presidential election? 00:06:31.780 --> 00:06:34.920 align:middle line:84% How are those elements of a familiar US 00:06:34.920 --> 00:06:37.680 align:middle line:90% rhythm of public discourse? 00:06:37.680 --> 00:06:40.290 align:middle line:84% How are those wrapped up with some questions that, 00:06:40.290 --> 00:06:44.400 align:middle line:84% on the face of it, didn't seem to be tied up in an obvious way 00:06:44.400 --> 00:06:47.850 align:middle line:84% with those kinds of political jockeying? 00:06:47.850 --> 00:06:52.170 align:middle line:84% So the very first public response that got a lot of play 00:06:52.170 --> 00:06:54.960 align:middle line:84% in literally days and weeks after the news 00:06:54.960 --> 00:06:57.510 align:middle line:84% about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 00:06:57.510 --> 00:06:59.688 align:middle line:84% the first response was there is no secret. 00:06:59.688 --> 00:07:01.980 align:middle line:84% The response to the question, what's the atomic secret, 00:07:01.980 --> 00:07:04.410 align:middle line:90% was to say there is no secret. 00:07:04.410 --> 00:07:08.790 align:middle line:84% And that was especially advocated 00:07:08.790 --> 00:07:11.380 align:middle line:84% or promulgated by a group that came 00:07:11.380 --> 00:07:15.340 align:middle line:84% to be called the Federation of American Scientists or the FAS. 00:07:15.340 --> 00:07:17.200 align:middle line:84% Their very first title was a Federation 00:07:17.200 --> 00:07:18.790 align:middle line:90% of Atomic Scientists. 00:07:18.790 --> 00:07:22.840 align:middle line:84% And this included many, many folks 00:07:22.840 --> 00:07:26.380 align:middle line:84% who had been at various wartime Manhattan Project 00:07:26.380 --> 00:07:28.270 align:middle line:84% installations, including Los Alamos, 00:07:28.270 --> 00:07:31.450 align:middle line:84% but also at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 00:07:31.450 --> 00:07:33.160 align:middle line:84% less so at Hanford, though some, and also 00:07:33.160 --> 00:07:34.690 align:middle line:90% at the Met lab in Chicago. 00:07:34.690 --> 00:07:36.820 align:middle line:84% And they very soon after the war founded 00:07:36.820 --> 00:07:38.800 align:middle line:84% a journal that's still around today, 00:07:38.800 --> 00:07:41.800 align:middle line:84% just celebrated its 75th anniversary, 00:07:41.800 --> 00:07:43.900 align:middle line:84% called The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 00:07:43.900 --> 00:07:48.010 align:middle line:84% This was really a kind of lobbying effort, 00:07:48.010 --> 00:07:49.160 align:middle line:90% by their own terms. 00:07:49.160 --> 00:07:53.480 align:middle line:84% Their goal was to educate members of the public, 00:07:53.480 --> 00:07:55.090 align:middle line:84% including politicians and journalists 00:07:55.090 --> 00:07:59.680 align:middle line:84% and other policymakers, but also American citizens and voters 00:07:59.680 --> 00:08:03.430 align:middle line:84% more generally, about what they thought everyone should 00:08:03.430 --> 00:08:05.110 align:middle line:90% know about the new nuclear age. 00:08:05.110 --> 00:08:07.450 align:middle line:84% And their first response, which got a lot of media 00:08:07.450 --> 00:08:10.750 align:middle line:84% play literally starting in September 1945, 00:08:10.750 --> 00:08:13.180 align:middle line:84% was that there is no secret, which 00:08:13.180 --> 00:08:16.000 align:middle line:84% is to say, there's no way to keep 00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:18.970 align:middle line:84% these things the unique possession of only the United 00:08:18.970 --> 00:08:21.490 align:middle line:84% States, that many, many countries 00:08:21.490 --> 00:08:23.260 align:middle line:84% with advanced industrial capabilities 00:08:23.260 --> 00:08:27.160 align:middle line:84% and smart scientists can, and very likely will, 00:08:27.160 --> 00:08:28.360 align:middle line:90% develop their own weapons. 00:08:28.360 --> 00:08:29.860 align:middle line:84% Because there is no single thing you 00:08:29.860 --> 00:08:33.549 align:middle line:84% could lock down to prevent them from doing it. 00:08:33.549 --> 00:08:36.700 align:middle line:84% A related version, a kind of a variation on that theme, which 00:08:36.700 --> 00:08:40.510 align:middle line:84% again, got a lot of airplay in op eds and newspaper 00:08:40.510 --> 00:08:43.480 align:middle line:84% editorials, in magazine features, and so on, 00:08:43.480 --> 00:08:45.790 align:middle line:84% was that there had been one secret, 00:08:45.790 --> 00:08:47.290 align:middle line:84% but that's no longer secret at all. 00:08:47.290 --> 00:08:51.190 align:middle line:84% The secret was-- given what we know about, say, the behavior 00:08:51.190 --> 00:08:53.560 align:middle line:84% of uranium nuclei and slow neutrons, 00:08:53.560 --> 00:08:56.300 align:middle line:84% the secret that remained was, could such a thing ever 00:08:56.300 --> 00:08:56.800 align:middle line:90% be built? 00:08:56.800 --> 00:08:59.860 align:middle line:84% Could a nuclear weapon that released its energy 00:08:59.860 --> 00:09:02.950 align:middle line:84% from the runaway chain reaction of fissioning nuclei, 00:09:02.950 --> 00:09:04.505 align:middle line:90% was that physically possible? 00:09:04.505 --> 00:09:06.130 align:middle line:84% And now that's not a secret, because it 00:09:06.130 --> 00:09:09.820 align:middle line:84% had been demonstrated quite dramatically and very publicly 00:09:09.820 --> 00:09:12.150 align:middle line:90% that such a thing was possible. 00:09:12.150 --> 00:09:13.900 align:middle line:84% So that's a kind of variation on the theme 00:09:13.900 --> 00:09:15.220 align:middle line:90% that there is no secret. 00:09:15.220 --> 00:09:17.720 align:middle line:84% Or we'd say, well, the secret is now, if there was a secret, 00:09:17.720 --> 00:09:21.340 align:middle line:84% it was that it could be done, and that's no longer secret. 00:09:21.340 --> 00:09:26.380 align:middle line:84% And again, just to remind us, that message 00:09:26.380 --> 00:09:29.950 align:middle line:84% was being deployed not in a vacuum. 00:09:29.950 --> 00:09:32.260 align:middle line:84% It wasn't being articulated only for a sake 00:09:32.260 --> 00:09:34.100 align:middle line:90% of public information. 00:09:34.100 --> 00:09:35.870 align:middle line:84% That was part of the earnest goal of many 00:09:35.870 --> 00:09:37.820 align:middle line:84% of these organizers, but it was also 00:09:37.820 --> 00:09:42.320 align:middle line:84% in the midst of some very, very heated, politically divisive 00:09:42.320 --> 00:09:47.570 align:middle line:84% debates within US Congress among the punditry, let's say, 00:09:47.570 --> 00:09:49.880 align:middle line:84% or the commentators, about what to do 00:09:49.880 --> 00:09:54.770 align:middle line:84% in this suddenly new post-war world about atomic energy, 00:09:54.770 --> 00:09:57.200 align:middle line:84% about nuclear reactions generally. 00:09:57.200 --> 00:09:58.400 align:middle line:90% And there were two-- 00:09:58.400 --> 00:10:01.400 align:middle line:84% very quickly, like within weeks of the official Japanese 00:10:01.400 --> 00:10:03.980 align:middle line:84% surrender, there were two competing bills 00:10:03.980 --> 00:10:07.910 align:middle line:84% introduced into the US Congress with very different proposals 00:10:07.910 --> 00:10:09.452 align:middle line:90% for what to do after the war. 00:10:09.452 --> 00:10:11.660 align:middle line:84% Basically, what do you do with the Manhattan Project, 00:10:11.660 --> 00:10:13.190 align:middle line:90% is what it really came down to. 00:10:13.190 --> 00:10:16.430 align:middle line:84% Should there be-- both these bills 00:10:16.430 --> 00:10:18.920 align:middle line:84% assumed there would be some continuation of something 00:10:18.920 --> 00:10:20.480 align:middle line:90% like the Manhattan Project. 00:10:20.480 --> 00:10:22.850 align:middle line:84% An option that was not on the table was shut it all down 00:10:22.850 --> 00:10:23.750 align:middle line:90% and walk away. 00:10:23.750 --> 00:10:26.190 align:middle line:84% That was not considered in any serious way at the time. 00:10:26.190 --> 00:10:29.600 align:middle line:84% So instead, what seemed like the relevant options, what 00:10:29.600 --> 00:10:32.510 align:middle line:84% were reflected in these dueling pieces of legislation 00:10:32.510 --> 00:10:36.170 align:middle line:84% or proposed legislation, was number one, continue 00:10:36.170 --> 00:10:38.270 align:middle line:84% on something like the World War II basis, 00:10:38.270 --> 00:10:41.090 align:middle line:84% meaning explicit military control. 00:10:41.090 --> 00:10:43.920 align:middle line:84% The Manhattan Project, as you may remember, 00:10:43.920 --> 00:10:48.290 align:middle line:84% was really overseen by the War Department vis-a-vis 00:10:48.290 --> 00:10:50.180 align:middle line:90% the Army Corps of Engineers. 00:10:50.180 --> 00:10:53.030 align:middle line:84% That's why the Army General, Leslie Groves, 00:10:53.030 --> 00:10:55.393 align:middle line:84% was the ultimate head of the Manhattan Project, 00:10:55.393 --> 00:10:57.560 align:middle line:84% even though he had many scientific directors working 00:10:57.560 --> 00:10:58.730 align:middle line:90% with him. 00:10:58.730 --> 00:11:01.790 align:middle line:84% So option one was continue that, that there should 00:11:01.790 --> 00:11:05.390 align:middle line:84% be basically a War Department or soon a Defense Department 00:11:05.390 --> 00:11:08.390 align:middle line:84% military control of a kind of postwar version 00:11:08.390 --> 00:11:10.550 align:middle line:90% of the Manhattan Project. 00:11:10.550 --> 00:11:13.645 align:middle line:84% And the competing bill was to have a civilian agency. 00:11:13.645 --> 00:11:15.270 align:middle line:84% As I said, there was no bill that said, 00:11:15.270 --> 00:11:17.220 align:middle line:84% let's have no atomic project moving forward. 00:11:17.220 --> 00:11:18.620 align:middle line:84% So it was basically, should there 00:11:18.620 --> 00:11:22.280 align:middle line:84% be continued military or a shift to a civilian agency 00:11:22.280 --> 00:11:26.100 align:middle line:84% control of anything having to do with nuclear reactions, 00:11:26.100 --> 00:11:28.460 align:middle line:84% whether it's for reactors for power generation 00:11:28.460 --> 00:11:29.510 align:middle line:90% or for weapons. 00:11:29.510 --> 00:11:31.430 align:middle line:84% And these discussions about, is there 00:11:31.430 --> 00:11:33.350 align:middle line:84% an atomic secret or not, those are 00:11:33.350 --> 00:11:37.400 align:middle line:84% being deployed in the context of a very 00:11:37.400 --> 00:11:41.120 align:middle line:84% concerted political fight over these very different visions 00:11:41.120 --> 00:11:44.570 align:middle line:84% for the legislative future of atomic energy. 00:11:44.570 --> 00:11:46.310 align:middle line:84% So we need to be careful not to read 00:11:46.310 --> 00:11:48.647 align:middle line:90% these editorials in a vacuum. 00:11:48.647 --> 00:11:50.980 align:middle line:84% There was another phase-- and this is what I write about 00:11:50.980 --> 00:11:52.810 align:middle line:90% a bit more in that article-- 00:11:52.810 --> 00:11:56.120 align:middle line:84% that didn't just stop by saying there is no secret. 00:11:56.120 --> 00:11:58.390 align:middle line:84% And so here it was really interesting to look 00:11:58.390 --> 00:12:02.800 align:middle line:84% at what were widely circulating, often quite influential, 00:12:02.800 --> 00:12:07.720 align:middle line:84% requoted statements, either by scientists or by journalists 00:12:07.720 --> 00:12:09.730 align:middle line:84% or by policy makers, including things 00:12:09.730 --> 00:12:12.400 align:middle line:84% like congressional testimony, but also in broad circulation 00:12:12.400 --> 00:12:15.790 align:middle line:84% magazines, of people articulating 00:12:15.790 --> 00:12:18.758 align:middle line:84% other answers to that question, what is the atomic secret? 00:12:18.758 --> 00:12:20.300 align:middle line:84% And what I found really interesting-- 00:12:20.300 --> 00:12:23.920 align:middle line:84% I didn't expect this going in when I was starting this work-- 00:12:23.920 --> 00:12:27.910 align:middle line:84% was that in several years after the end of the war, 00:12:27.910 --> 00:12:30.430 align:middle line:84% really right through late 1948, there 00:12:30.430 --> 00:12:33.940 align:middle line:84% was a pretty distinct pattern to these next set of responses, 00:12:33.940 --> 00:12:36.490 align:middle line:84% that even when people said there does exist something called 00:12:36.490 --> 00:12:40.450 align:middle line:84% the atomic secret, the nature of that secret-- all 00:12:40.450 --> 00:12:44.020 align:middle line:84% these different observers seemed to agree or be consistent, 00:12:44.020 --> 00:12:47.770 align:middle line:84% the nature of the secrets had to do with industrial capacity 00:12:47.770 --> 00:12:52.340 align:middle line:84% with materials, with how do you build factories that work. 00:12:52.340 --> 00:12:54.580 align:middle line:84% It was not about-- it was explicitly 00:12:54.580 --> 00:12:59.540 align:middle line:84% not about single formulas or text-based information that 00:12:59.540 --> 00:13:01.790 align:middle line:84% could, at least in principle, be smuggled out 00:13:01.790 --> 00:13:04.190 align:middle line:90% or aid some rival nation. 00:13:04.190 --> 00:13:08.750 align:middle line:84% But it was about large-scale industrial processes like, 00:13:08.750 --> 00:13:12.440 align:middle line:84% how do you pour a billion cubic meters or cubic feet 00:13:12.440 --> 00:13:15.170 align:middle line:84% of concrete and build these enormous industrial scale 00:13:15.170 --> 00:13:18.350 align:middle line:84% reactors, I mean, that kind of stuff, as opposed to, oh, 00:13:18.350 --> 00:13:22.250 align:middle line:84% slow neutrons will trigger, have a higher reaction rate. 00:13:22.250 --> 00:13:24.560 align:middle line:84% And so three close variations of that 00:13:24.560 --> 00:13:28.280 align:middle line:84% you can cluster from this very wide number, dozens 00:13:28.280 --> 00:13:32.060 align:middle line:84% and dozens and dozens of widely circulating op eds and opinion 00:13:32.060 --> 00:13:35.310 align:middle line:84% pieces and policy proposals and so on, they say, 00:13:35.310 --> 00:13:37.130 align:middle line:84% well, yeah, there are atomic secrets. 00:13:37.130 --> 00:13:39.088 align:middle line:84% There are things that legitimately should still 00:13:39.088 --> 00:13:41.030 align:middle line:90% be kept secret. 00:13:41.030 --> 00:13:43.790 align:middle line:84% But they have nothing to do with text-based information. 00:13:43.790 --> 00:13:46.490 align:middle line:84% It was things like, how do you deal with the fact 00:13:46.490 --> 00:13:48.890 align:middle line:84% that uranium hexafluoride will burn through existing 00:13:48.890 --> 00:13:52.580 align:middle line:84% industrial gaskets, when we talk about those gaseous diffusion 00:13:52.580 --> 00:13:54.260 align:middle line:90% tanks at Oak Ridge. 00:13:54.260 --> 00:13:57.740 align:middle line:84% Or how do you scale up a reactor from a research 00:13:57.740 --> 00:14:02.090 align:middle line:84% reactor like Enrico Fermi's very first pile 00:14:02.090 --> 00:14:04.460 align:middle line:84% that he helped oversee the whole Chicago team? 00:14:04.460 --> 00:14:07.880 align:middle line:84% How do you go from that to bringing in DuPont contractors 00:14:07.880 --> 00:14:09.920 align:middle line:84% to scale up these unbelievably large-- 00:14:09.920 --> 00:14:12.080 align:middle line:84% largest in the world at the time-- 00:14:12.080 --> 00:14:13.850 align:middle line:84% reactors and related power plants? 00:14:13.850 --> 00:14:15.890 align:middle line:84% Those kinds of things were secret. 00:14:15.890 --> 00:14:18.440 align:middle line:84% These folks argued they should remain secret. 00:14:18.440 --> 00:14:22.760 align:middle line:84% And they were not in danger of being quickly replicated, 00:14:22.760 --> 00:14:28.590 align:middle line:84% because they depended on a huge material basis. 00:14:28.590 --> 00:14:31.130 align:middle line:90% 00:14:31.130 --> 00:14:32.608 align:middle line:84% Now, one of the things that starts 00:14:32.608 --> 00:14:34.400 align:middle line:84% to happen in the midst of these discussions 00:14:34.400 --> 00:14:38.497 align:middle line:84% was not only a debate in the US about the proper handling 00:14:38.497 --> 00:14:39.830 align:middle line:90% of these things moving forward-- 00:14:39.830 --> 00:14:43.350 align:middle line:84% military or civilian oversight of a new agency and so on-- 00:14:43.350 --> 00:14:46.610 align:middle line:84% but also that some secrets might indeed have already 00:14:46.610 --> 00:14:49.220 align:middle line:84% been shared, or something illicit 00:14:49.220 --> 00:14:52.040 align:middle line:84% might have actually slipped beyond the carefully controlled 00:14:52.040 --> 00:14:54.320 align:middle line:84% perimeters of the wartime Manhattan Project. 00:14:54.320 --> 00:14:56.488 align:middle line:84% And this was really shocking, a series 00:14:56.488 --> 00:14:58.280 align:middle line:84% of these kind of revelations, some of which 00:14:58.280 --> 00:15:00.710 align:middle line:90% became very sensational. 00:15:00.710 --> 00:15:03.170 align:middle line:84% One of the very first happened three days 00:15:03.170 --> 00:15:07.430 align:middle line:84% after the official end of the Second World War. 00:15:07.430 --> 00:15:11.150 align:middle line:84% So in the first week of September 1945-- 00:15:11.150 --> 00:15:14.510 align:middle line:84% this became more broadly known a few months later, 00:15:14.510 --> 00:15:17.000 align:middle line:84% but widening circles of people knew about this as early 00:15:17.000 --> 00:15:18.800 align:middle line:90% as the first week of September. 00:15:18.800 --> 00:15:22.080 align:middle line:84% It became international news by February of '46, 00:15:22.080 --> 00:15:24.240 align:middle line:90% so it was not too long later. 00:15:24.240 --> 00:15:26.660 align:middle line:84% So what happened was there was an employee 00:15:26.660 --> 00:15:31.850 align:middle line:84% of the Soviet embassy in Canada named Igor Gouzenko. 00:15:31.850 --> 00:15:33.860 align:middle line:90% And he and his family defected. 00:15:33.860 --> 00:15:35.870 align:middle line:84% They were about to be restationed back 00:15:35.870 --> 00:15:36.980 align:middle line:90% to the Soviet Union. 00:15:36.980 --> 00:15:39.180 align:middle line:90% They didn't want to leave. 00:15:39.180 --> 00:15:41.018 align:middle line:90% And so Gouzenko defected. 00:15:41.018 --> 00:15:42.560 align:middle line:84% He said, basically, he wanted to stay 00:15:42.560 --> 00:15:45.680 align:middle line:90% in Canada, he and his family. 00:15:45.680 --> 00:15:52.820 align:middle line:84% To help make his case, he left with troves of documents 00:15:52.820 --> 00:15:54.350 align:middle line:90% from the Soviet embassy. 00:15:54.350 --> 00:15:55.850 align:middle line:90% He had been a cipher clerk. 00:15:55.850 --> 00:16:00.560 align:middle line:84% He worked in encryption, basically, for the Soviets 00:16:00.560 --> 00:16:03.860 align:middle line:84% as a Soviet agent during the war, stationed in Canada. 00:16:03.860 --> 00:16:07.940 align:middle line:84% And he took with him out of his office file 00:16:07.940 --> 00:16:13.430 align:middle line:84% cases full of secret documents that indicated wartime Soviet 00:16:13.430 --> 00:16:18.170 align:middle line:84% espionage vis a vis both UK and Canadian projects. 00:16:18.170 --> 00:16:20.240 align:middle line:84% This was, as you can probably imagine, 00:16:20.240 --> 00:16:23.870 align:middle line:84% a big, big, big surprise when this news finally broke 00:16:23.870 --> 00:16:25.830 align:middle line:90% broadly a few months later. 00:16:25.830 --> 00:16:26.510 align:middle line:90% So here he is. 00:16:26.510 --> 00:16:28.340 align:middle line:84% This is actually Gouzenko under a hood. 00:16:28.340 --> 00:16:33.080 align:middle line:84% This was, like, constant nightly news. 00:16:33.080 --> 00:16:35.150 align:middle line:84% He was in public, but always shielded, 00:16:35.150 --> 00:16:36.465 align:middle line:90% his face was shielded. 00:16:36.465 --> 00:16:38.090 align:middle line:84% In fact, the family went into something 00:16:38.090 --> 00:16:40.160 align:middle line:90% like witness protection. 00:16:40.160 --> 00:16:42.770 align:middle line:84% So the Canadian government eventually relented, 00:16:42.770 --> 00:16:45.260 align:middle line:84% and he and his family were able to stay in Canada. 00:16:45.260 --> 00:16:47.450 align:middle line:84% And they were given new identities, 00:16:47.450 --> 00:16:50.810 align:middle line:84% much like witness protection kind of program 00:16:50.810 --> 00:16:51.890 align:middle line:90% within the United States. 00:16:51.890 --> 00:16:54.200 align:middle line:84% So he would go on TV, but be hooded. 00:16:54.200 --> 00:16:54.950 align:middle line:90% It was variegated. 00:16:54.950 --> 00:16:57.970 align:middle line:84% Again, you can imagine the sensationalism of this. 00:16:57.970 --> 00:17:01.220 align:middle line:84% And he was a kind of fixture throughout 1946. 00:17:01.220 --> 00:17:03.580 align:middle line:84% So it turns out these materials covered 00:17:03.580 --> 00:17:07.390 align:middle line:84% many forms of attempted and sometimes successful espionage. 00:17:07.390 --> 00:17:09.790 align:middle line:84% But it included, as a little minor part 00:17:09.790 --> 00:17:12.940 align:middle line:84% of all the things he took with him, 00:17:12.940 --> 00:17:16.420 align:middle line:84% clues that led to a trail that ultimately led investigators 00:17:16.420 --> 00:17:19.420 align:middle line:84% to a British physicist named Alan Nunn May, who'd 00:17:19.420 --> 00:17:22.480 align:middle line:84% been trained at Cambridge, who had spent most of the war 00:17:22.480 --> 00:17:25.780 align:middle line:84% years working as part of the Manhattan Project in Canada 00:17:25.780 --> 00:17:29.000 align:middle line:84% at what was called the Chalk River nuclear reactor site. 00:17:29.000 --> 00:17:32.110 align:middle line:84% There were many, many reactors built in many Manhattan Project 00:17:32.110 --> 00:17:34.660 align:middle line:84% installations, the biggest of which were at Hanford. 00:17:34.660 --> 00:17:36.790 align:middle line:84% There were other kind of experimental designs being 00:17:36.790 --> 00:17:39.640 align:middle line:84% worked on, including at this site near Ottawa, 00:17:39.640 --> 00:17:42.100 align:middle line:84% under the auspices of the Manhattan Project. 00:17:42.100 --> 00:17:46.030 align:middle line:84% So the British delegation had dozens and dozens, probably 00:17:46.030 --> 00:17:48.670 align:middle line:84% hundreds of physicists and engineers 00:17:48.670 --> 00:17:51.250 align:middle line:84% who spent the war years at various Manhattan Project 00:17:51.250 --> 00:17:52.690 align:middle line:90% sites. 00:17:52.690 --> 00:17:56.030 align:middle line:84% Nunn May was one of them working at the reactor. 00:17:56.030 --> 00:17:59.420 align:middle line:84% He had been previously a member of the Communist party 00:17:59.420 --> 00:18:00.600 align:middle line:90% in Britain. 00:18:00.600 --> 00:18:04.220 align:middle line:84% He had a kind of sympathy toward the Soviet Union, 00:18:04.220 --> 00:18:06.200 align:middle line:90% by his own later admissions. 00:18:06.200 --> 00:18:11.938 align:middle line:84% And he was very concerned that the Allies' wartime ally, 00:18:11.938 --> 00:18:14.480 align:middle line:84% meaning the Soviet Union, which was fighting on the same side 00:18:14.480 --> 00:18:17.630 align:middle line:84% by that point as Britain, Canada, and the United States, 00:18:17.630 --> 00:18:21.140 align:middle line:84% was somehow not part of this otherwise information sharing 00:18:21.140 --> 00:18:22.880 align:middle line:84% program for the Manhattan Project. 00:18:22.880 --> 00:18:25.910 align:middle line:84% The Manhattan Project was explicitly a three-nation 00:18:25.910 --> 00:18:29.810 align:middle line:84% cooperation, US, UK, and Canada, even though in the broader 00:18:29.810 --> 00:18:30.980 align:middle line:90% wartime context-- 00:18:30.980 --> 00:18:32.870 align:middle line:90% so reasons May at least-- 00:18:32.870 --> 00:18:34.940 align:middle line:84% the Soviets were our allies, as well, 00:18:34.940 --> 00:18:36.500 align:middle line:90% "our" meaning the Allied side. 00:18:36.500 --> 00:18:38.210 align:middle line:84% And yet, there was not the same kind 00:18:38.210 --> 00:18:40.430 align:middle line:84% of extension of cooperation or sharing. 00:18:40.430 --> 00:18:43.100 align:middle line:84% So he took it upon himself, as became clear 00:18:43.100 --> 00:18:45.860 align:middle line:84% from investigators following these leaked 00:18:45.860 --> 00:18:48.710 align:middle line:84% documents from Gouzenko, and ultimately, Alan Nunn May just 00:18:48.710 --> 00:18:51.110 align:middle line:84% confessed to it when confronted, that he 00:18:51.110 --> 00:18:54.500 align:middle line:84% had passed along physical samples from the reactor site 00:18:54.500 --> 00:18:57.620 align:middle line:84% to a Soviet agent and ultimately with the intention of getting 00:18:57.620 --> 00:19:00.200 align:middle line:90% them to aid the Soviet project. 00:19:00.200 --> 00:19:03.890 align:middle line:84% So Nunn May was giving literally physical samples 00:19:03.890 --> 00:19:05.580 align:middle line:84% of radioactive materials, in this case, 00:19:05.580 --> 00:19:10.070 align:middle line:90% both U-233 and enriched 234. 00:19:10.070 --> 00:19:13.640 align:middle line:84% And in his mind, this would help speed their program. 00:19:13.640 --> 00:19:15.953 align:middle line:84% They could see the levels of purity or purification 00:19:15.953 --> 00:19:17.870 align:middle line:84% or enrichment that would be needed, and so on. 00:19:17.870 --> 00:19:21.860 align:middle line:84% This was, as he knew, clearly against the rules. 00:19:21.860 --> 00:19:24.350 align:middle line:84% And yet he convinced himself this was somehow 00:19:24.350 --> 00:19:27.980 align:middle line:84% OK because of the fact that the Soviet Union was officially 00:19:27.980 --> 00:19:29.400 align:middle line:84% an ally of these other countries. 00:19:29.400 --> 00:19:33.000 align:middle line:84% So that was the first atomic espionage revelation 00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:36.080 align:middle line:84% that came from this very sensational defection 00:19:36.080 --> 00:19:38.240 align:middle line:90% from the Soviet clerk. 00:19:38.240 --> 00:19:40.130 align:middle line:84% And again, what was being traded, 00:19:40.130 --> 00:19:43.010 align:middle line:84% what was being moved around, were physical samples 00:19:43.010 --> 00:19:44.060 align:middle line:90% of material. 00:19:44.060 --> 00:19:47.600 align:middle line:84% Here's a uranium, an enriched uranium sample, 00:19:47.600 --> 00:19:50.660 align:middle line:84% a small trace amount that nuclear chemists 00:19:50.660 --> 00:19:53.840 align:middle line:84% back in the Soviet Union might be able to make progress on. 00:19:53.840 --> 00:19:57.840 align:middle line:90% It was not about paperwork. 00:19:57.840 --> 00:19:59.700 align:middle line:84% That characterization, however, began 00:19:59.700 --> 00:20:03.720 align:middle line:84% to change starting in September of 1948. 00:20:03.720 --> 00:20:06.330 align:middle line:84% So you have dozens and dozens of these articulations, 00:20:06.330 --> 00:20:09.570 align:middle line:84% what is the atomic secret until this time. 00:20:09.570 --> 00:20:11.250 align:middle line:84% And they really follow this pattern 00:20:11.250 --> 00:20:13.720 align:middle line:84% of being about material industrial things, 00:20:13.720 --> 00:20:15.610 align:middle line:90% not about texts or formulas. 00:20:15.610 --> 00:20:19.320 align:middle line:84% And this is very, I think, quite a sharp break 00:20:19.320 --> 00:20:22.110 align:middle line:84% in the characterization of the so-called atomic secret, 00:20:22.110 --> 00:20:25.590 align:middle line:84% starting with this report in September 1948. 00:20:25.590 --> 00:20:28.740 align:middle line:84% This was a very attention-grabbing report 00:20:28.740 --> 00:20:33.360 align:middle line:84% by a US congressional committee, the so-called House Committee 00:20:33.360 --> 00:20:35.100 align:middle line:90% on Un-American Activities. 00:20:35.100 --> 00:20:37.680 align:middle line:84% It was often abbreviated as HUAC for House Un-American 00:20:37.680 --> 00:20:39.660 align:middle line:90% Activities Committee. 00:20:39.660 --> 00:20:42.330 align:middle line:84% This was a group, at the time a standing committee, 00:20:42.330 --> 00:20:43.320 align:middle line:90% a permanent committee. 00:20:43.320 --> 00:20:45.330 align:middle line:84% It wasn't actually permanent, it was 00:20:45.330 --> 00:20:49.110 align:middle line:84% at the time what's called a standing committee, 00:20:49.110 --> 00:20:52.200 align:middle line:84% had been set up in the 1930s, but as many of you might know, 00:20:52.200 --> 00:20:56.190 align:middle line:84% became very active in the US soon after the Second World War 00:20:56.190 --> 00:21:01.540 align:middle line:84% and really led the charge in a kind of anti-communist series 00:21:01.540 --> 00:21:04.700 align:middle line:90% of investigations and efforts. 00:21:04.700 --> 00:21:07.330 align:middle line:84% So one of the first things they did after the war 00:21:07.330 --> 00:21:11.260 align:middle line:84% to get a lot of attention was hold some very high-profile 00:21:11.260 --> 00:21:15.190 align:middle line:84% hearings about supposed or alleged communist infiltration 00:21:15.190 --> 00:21:17.050 align:middle line:84% of Hollywood and of the broader kind 00:21:17.050 --> 00:21:21.160 align:middle line:84% of educational entertainment industry. 00:21:21.160 --> 00:21:25.300 align:middle line:84% And the allegation was that all these left-leaning communists 00:21:25.300 --> 00:21:28.780 align:middle line:84% were going to poison the minds of honest Americans 00:21:28.780 --> 00:21:32.290 align:middle line:84% by seeping propaganda into movies that people 00:21:32.290 --> 00:21:34.660 align:middle line:84% would watch without realizing they're being brainwashed. 00:21:34.660 --> 00:21:37.600 align:middle line:84% That was the level of the kind of discourse at the time. 00:21:37.600 --> 00:21:41.260 align:middle line:84% Their next big set of headline grabbing revelations 00:21:41.260 --> 00:21:43.360 align:middle line:84% was actually about so-called atomic secrets, 00:21:43.360 --> 00:21:45.820 align:middle line:84% about allegations of nuclear espionage. 00:21:45.820 --> 00:21:48.172 align:middle line:84% And the way they chose to characterize it 00:21:48.172 --> 00:21:49.630 align:middle line:84% over and over and over again, which 00:21:49.630 --> 00:21:52.360 align:middle line:84% is a relentless, relentless similarity, 00:21:52.360 --> 00:21:54.100 align:middle line:90% was actually about text. 00:21:54.100 --> 00:21:58.830 align:middle line:84% It was about secret formulas or single pieces of paper 00:21:58.830 --> 00:22:01.530 align:middle line:84% that could be smuggled out as if it were kind of a James Bond 00:22:01.530 --> 00:22:04.410 align:middle line:84% movie and somehow aid a rival nation-- 00:22:04.410 --> 00:22:07.200 align:middle line:84% by this point they were mostly concerned about the Soviets-- 00:22:07.200 --> 00:22:11.340 align:middle line:84% in somehow producing a weapon from text alone. 00:22:11.340 --> 00:22:13.350 align:middle line:84% And that was quite a different framework 00:22:13.350 --> 00:22:17.340 align:middle line:84% than all these emphases on industrial capacity material. 00:22:17.340 --> 00:22:22.080 align:middle line:84% So their first foray into the atomic secrets kind 00:22:22.080 --> 00:22:26.730 align:middle line:84% of landscape was this kind of blockbuster report 00:22:26.730 --> 00:22:29.970 align:middle line:84% that they released with great fanfare in September 1948, 00:22:29.970 --> 00:22:31.633 align:middle line:84% where among the many, many claims 00:22:31.633 --> 00:22:34.050 align:middle line:84% they made was that there had been a so-called Scientist X. 00:22:34.050 --> 00:22:35.670 align:middle line:84% And they made sure they knew who it was, 00:22:35.670 --> 00:22:37.470 align:middle line:84% but they weren't going to release the name. 00:22:37.470 --> 00:22:42.150 align:middle line:84% It even heightened the mystery of it all. 00:22:42.150 --> 00:22:45.720 align:middle line:84% The Scientist X during the war, an employee of the Manhattan 00:22:45.720 --> 00:22:49.200 align:middle line:84% Project, had given what they called a complicated formula 00:22:49.200 --> 00:22:52.860 align:middle line:84% to a known communist agent in spring of '43 00:22:52.860 --> 00:22:55.110 align:middle line:84% with the express goal of helping the Soviets make 00:22:55.110 --> 00:22:57.790 align:middle line:90% their own nuclear weapon. 00:22:57.790 --> 00:23:00.407 align:middle line:84% So here's an excerpt from their report. 00:23:00.407 --> 00:23:01.990 align:middle line:84% It's a very lengthy report, but here's 00:23:01.990 --> 00:23:04.940 align:middle line:84% where they describe part of this episode in particular. 00:23:04.940 --> 00:23:08.320 align:middle line:84% They say, Scientist X read to this alleged communist agent-- 00:23:08.320 --> 00:23:11.410 align:middle line:84% he was actually a well-known labor organizer in the San 00:23:11.410 --> 00:23:13.450 align:middle line:84% Francisco Bay Area, who might indeed 00:23:13.450 --> 00:23:15.500 align:middle line:84% have been a Communist agent, I don't know. 00:23:15.500 --> 00:23:18.790 align:middle line:84% What he was known at the time was being a pro-labor activist. 00:23:18.790 --> 00:23:22.720 align:middle line:84% At the time those were often conflated in public discourse. 00:23:22.720 --> 00:23:25.330 align:middle line:84% Anyway, what they wrote was that the Scientist X read 00:23:25.330 --> 00:23:29.080 align:middle line:84% to this other person a complicated formula which 00:23:29.080 --> 00:23:32.785 align:middle line:84% this other person copied down, like F equals MA. 00:23:32.785 --> 00:23:34.630 align:middle line:84% And they'll go, let me scribble that down. 00:23:34.630 --> 00:23:37.600 align:middle line:84% Scientist X gave his reason for asking the agent 00:23:37.600 --> 00:23:39.730 align:middle line:84% to copy it down that the formula was 00:23:39.730 --> 00:23:42.050 align:middle line:84% in the handwriting of some other person, 00:23:42.050 --> 00:23:44.680 align:middle line:84% and that he, Scientist X, had to return 00:23:44.680 --> 00:23:47.200 align:middle line:84% the formula to the University of California radiation 00:23:47.200 --> 00:23:48.562 align:middle line:90% laboratories in the morning. 00:23:48.562 --> 00:23:50.770 align:middle line:84% And as I write in the article, this is like medieval. 00:23:50.770 --> 00:23:54.220 align:middle line:84% It's like literally the handwriting of the scribe 00:23:54.220 --> 00:23:58.420 align:middle line:84% is infused with nuclear power, and that one equation 00:23:58.420 --> 00:24:00.865 align:middle line:84% is enough to lead to proliferation of weapons. 00:24:00.865 --> 00:24:02.740 align:middle line:84% And therefore it has to be carefully ferreted 00:24:02.740 --> 00:24:05.890 align:middle line:84% back to the lab before anyone notices that one scrap of paper 00:24:05.890 --> 00:24:06.580 align:middle line:90% missing. 00:24:06.580 --> 00:24:09.670 align:middle line:84% If all it takes to produce a weapon 00:24:09.670 --> 00:24:12.480 align:middle line:84% is a stolen scrap of paper as opposed to a billion 00:24:12.480 --> 00:24:15.820 align:middle line:84% pounds or a billion cubic feet of concrete, 00:24:15.820 --> 00:24:19.730 align:middle line:84% then it sounds like a very scary issue indeed, doesn't it? 00:24:19.730 --> 00:24:23.860 align:middle line:84% What's interesting is to go back to the much later declassified 00:24:23.860 --> 00:24:28.300 align:middle line:84% Military Intelligence Division report on which HUAC 00:24:28.300 --> 00:24:30.340 align:middle line:90% was basing this allegation. 00:24:30.340 --> 00:24:32.980 align:middle line:84% Military Intelligence Division was a version 00:24:32.980 --> 00:24:37.150 align:middle line:84% of a kind of domestic FBI attached to the war department 00:24:37.150 --> 00:24:38.892 align:middle line:84% during the war that was conducting 00:24:38.892 --> 00:24:40.600 align:middle line:84% all kinds of surveillance during the war, 00:24:40.600 --> 00:24:43.120 align:middle line:84% including of the Manhattan Project sites. 00:24:43.120 --> 00:24:44.950 align:middle line:84% So this was originally classified. 00:24:44.950 --> 00:24:46.990 align:middle line:84% Many, many years later it was declassified. 00:24:46.990 --> 00:24:49.630 align:middle line:84% This is the portion of the transcript 00:24:49.630 --> 00:24:53.650 align:middle line:84% that seems to match closest to what HUAC was claiming. 00:24:53.650 --> 00:24:57.050 align:middle line:90% And I want to be clear-- 00:24:57.050 --> 00:25:01.940 align:middle line:84% the case of this transcript wasn't the simplest or complete 00:25:01.940 --> 00:25:02.600 align:middle line:90% truth either. 00:25:02.600 --> 00:25:04.517 align:middle line:84% I'm just saying, what was the documentary base 00:25:04.517 --> 00:25:07.280 align:middle line:84% on which these later claims were made five years later? 00:25:07.280 --> 00:25:10.850 align:middle line:84% If you go back to the 1943 intelligence reports, 00:25:10.850 --> 00:25:12.860 align:middle line:84% they describe a very different scene. 00:25:12.860 --> 00:25:18.050 align:middle line:84% This alleged communist agent, the local labor activist, 00:25:18.050 --> 00:25:20.525 align:middle line:84% had asked the scientist for copies of an article that 00:25:20.525 --> 00:25:21.650 align:middle line:90% had already been published. 00:25:21.650 --> 00:25:24.440 align:middle line:84% In fact, it goes on to say, a research article published 00:25:24.440 --> 00:25:28.400 align:middle line:84% in the Physical Review, which is by definition not classified, 00:25:28.400 --> 00:25:30.560 align:middle line:84% let alone some scrap of paper and handwriting. 00:25:30.560 --> 00:25:36.350 align:middle line:84% And the intelligence agents had recorded this perhaps 00:25:36.350 --> 00:25:37.400 align:middle line:90% verbatim dialogue. 00:25:37.400 --> 00:25:40.190 align:middle line:84% What shows up in quotations in the report is 00:25:40.190 --> 00:25:41.840 align:middle line:84% the scientists responding, quote, 00:25:41.840 --> 00:25:43.760 align:middle line:84% I could certainly get reprints of it. 00:25:43.760 --> 00:25:46.400 align:middle line:84% I could get you a copy of the article. 00:25:46.400 --> 00:25:49.640 align:middle line:84% But this would give the Soviets no knowledge 00:25:49.640 --> 00:25:51.650 align:middle line:84% at all that would be helpful for making bombs. 00:25:51.650 --> 00:25:54.250 align:middle line:84% After all, the details of nuclear fission 00:25:54.250 --> 00:25:56.000 align:middle line:84% had been published in the open literature. 00:25:56.000 --> 00:25:59.990 align:middle line:84% The synthesis of plutonium at University of California 00:25:59.990 --> 00:26:01.740 align:middle line:84% had been published in the open literature. 00:26:01.740 --> 00:26:06.990 align:middle line:84% And at least, as the once classified intelligence report 00:26:06.990 --> 00:26:09.120 align:middle line:84% suggests, what was being traded was 00:26:09.120 --> 00:26:11.730 align:middle line:84% paper-based, not some handwritten formula 00:26:11.730 --> 00:26:13.770 align:middle line:84% and something that the scientist himself said 00:26:13.770 --> 00:26:15.307 align:middle line:90% would be of no particular value. 00:26:15.307 --> 00:26:17.640 align:middle line:84% It wouldn't tell them anything they didn't already know. 00:26:17.640 --> 00:26:20.805 align:middle line:84% But that's certainly not how HUAC spun this, 00:26:20.805 --> 00:26:23.430 align:middle line:84% because remember, the transcript from the Intelligence Division 00:26:23.430 --> 00:26:24.870 align:middle line:90% was still highly classified. 00:26:24.870 --> 00:26:28.360 align:middle line:84% So HUAC could basically try to control the message. 00:26:28.360 --> 00:26:30.450 align:middle line:84% And so they held these very public hearings 00:26:30.450 --> 00:26:34.290 align:middle line:84% under the Klieg lights, these very famous lights. 00:26:34.290 --> 00:26:36.420 align:middle line:90% It was really all the rage. 00:26:36.420 --> 00:26:39.120 align:middle line:84% And they began what other observers at the time 00:26:39.120 --> 00:26:41.010 align:middle line:90% called a trial by newspaper. 00:26:41.010 --> 00:26:42.790 align:middle line:84% This was not a criminal proceeding, 00:26:42.790 --> 00:26:45.750 align:middle line:84% so there was no rules of evidence or cross-examination. 00:26:45.750 --> 00:26:48.420 align:middle line:90% This was a kind of public-- 00:26:48.420 --> 00:26:54.720 align:middle line:84% not even a hearing, a public testimony, let's say, 00:26:54.720 --> 00:26:58.980 align:middle line:84% not subject to legally binding protections for anyone 00:26:58.980 --> 00:27:00.300 align:middle line:90% involved. 00:27:00.300 --> 00:27:04.860 align:middle line:84% And yet the committee could then selectively and strategically 00:27:04.860 --> 00:27:06.600 align:middle line:84% leak information, which they proceeded 00:27:06.600 --> 00:27:08.740 align:middle line:90% to do for months and months. 00:27:08.740 --> 00:27:11.040 align:middle line:84% So they released their own big report and then would 00:27:11.040 --> 00:27:13.530 align:middle line:84% kind of surreptitiously, or not so 00:27:13.530 --> 00:27:16.740 align:middle line:84% subtly, leak additional information to various trusted 00:27:16.740 --> 00:27:20.370 align:middle line:84% newspaper reporters and keep this in the headlines, 00:27:20.370 --> 00:27:23.700 align:middle line:84% and likewise, not just newspapers, but very broad 00:27:23.700 --> 00:27:26.560 align:middle line:90% circulation magazines, as well. 00:27:26.560 --> 00:27:28.802 align:middle line:90% And I want to remind ourselves-- 00:27:28.802 --> 00:27:30.510 align:middle line:84% it took me a while to piece this together 00:27:30.510 --> 00:27:33.450 align:middle line:84% at first-- why would they do this in September of '48 00:27:33.450 --> 00:27:39.900 align:middle line:84% if the Intelligence Division had already vetted this in 1943? 00:27:39.900 --> 00:27:42.150 align:middle line:84% And I realized, oh, September 1948 00:27:42.150 --> 00:27:44.590 align:middle line:84% was right before a big and highly, 00:27:44.590 --> 00:27:47.190 align:middle line:84% highly contested presidential election in the United 00:27:47.190 --> 00:27:50.340 align:middle line:84% States, the election in early November of '48. 00:27:50.340 --> 00:27:56.850 align:middle line:84% And this was one way to try to score political points, 00:27:56.850 --> 00:28:00.600 align:middle line:84% as happens before and since, as we were quite familiar with, 00:28:00.600 --> 00:28:02.700 align:middle line:84% of one party trying to convince voters 00:28:02.700 --> 00:28:05.650 align:middle line:84% the other party shouldn't be trusted with sensitive matters, 00:28:05.650 --> 00:28:09.400 align:middle line:84% including things like nuclear energy. 00:28:09.400 --> 00:28:11.550 align:middle line:84% So this was, at least in part, a kind 00:28:11.550 --> 00:28:16.530 align:middle line:84% of political opportunity, which I don't want to suggest 00:28:16.530 --> 00:28:17.460 align:middle line:90% was unusual-- 00:28:17.460 --> 00:28:19.530 align:middle line:84% as we know, that happens before and since-- 00:28:19.530 --> 00:28:22.020 align:middle line:84% but it helps us make sense of the timing of it. 00:28:22.020 --> 00:28:24.870 align:middle line:84% This was as much about presidential election politics 00:28:24.870 --> 00:28:28.092 align:middle line:84% as it was any kind of new revelation about espionage. 00:28:28.092 --> 00:28:29.550 align:middle line:84% And what interested me was actually 00:28:29.550 --> 00:28:33.450 align:middle line:84% the shift in how HUAC chose to characterize 00:28:33.450 --> 00:28:35.460 align:middle line:84% the most dangerous or seemingly most 00:28:35.460 --> 00:28:39.060 align:middle line:84% important elements of what it takes to make nuclear weapons. 00:28:39.060 --> 00:28:42.720 align:middle line:84% It goes from industrial capacity to a single slip of paper 00:28:42.720 --> 00:28:46.770 align:middle line:84% that could be very carefully smuggled out of the country. 00:28:46.770 --> 00:28:49.260 align:middle line:84% And then following that report in a very, 00:28:49.260 --> 00:28:54.180 align:middle line:84% again, sensationalistic report released in September of 1948, 00:28:54.180 --> 00:28:57.180 align:middle line:84% then you see just again a huge proliferation 00:28:57.180 --> 00:29:02.130 align:middle line:84% of news media, congressional testimony, public lectures, 00:29:02.130 --> 00:29:05.490 align:middle line:84% and all the rest, all addressing the question, what 00:29:05.490 --> 00:29:08.100 align:middle line:84% is the atomic secret, but now all clustering 00:29:08.100 --> 00:29:11.070 align:middle line:84% around this kind of text, not material 00:29:11.070 --> 00:29:12.820 align:middle line:90% or industrial capacity. 00:29:12.820 --> 00:29:15.750 align:middle line:84% So again, people might disagree on what the atomic secret is, 00:29:15.750 --> 00:29:17.400 align:middle line:90% but there's a new clustering. 00:29:17.400 --> 00:29:20.580 align:middle line:84% It's no longer about hard stuff to ship overseas, 00:29:20.580 --> 00:29:22.620 align:middle line:84% but about simple stuff, like things 00:29:22.620 --> 00:29:24.550 align:middle line:84% you could write down on a piece of paper. 00:29:24.550 --> 00:29:29.280 align:middle line:84% And here's an example that I find very haunting or telling. 00:29:29.280 --> 00:29:31.920 align:middle line:84% When Albert Einstein was featured yet again 00:29:31.920 --> 00:29:35.070 align:middle line:84% on the cover of either Time magazine or Life magazine-- 00:29:35.070 --> 00:29:36.090 align:middle line:90% I can't remember which-- 00:29:36.090 --> 00:29:42.300 align:middle line:84% they put his famous equation in the mushroom cloud 00:29:42.300 --> 00:29:44.430 align:middle line:84% as if the bombs were made from that equation, 00:29:44.430 --> 00:29:48.370 align:middle line:84% as if that equation had had any particular role in designing, 00:29:48.370 --> 00:29:51.490 align:middle line:84% let alone developing, testing, and using these new kind 00:29:51.490 --> 00:29:53.480 align:middle line:90% of technical devices. 00:29:53.480 --> 00:29:56.058 align:middle line:84% And so when people said there is an atomic secret, 00:29:56.058 --> 00:29:58.600 align:middle line:84% they would give the answer to say it's either these so-called 00:29:58.600 --> 00:30:01.900 align:middle line:84% complicated formulas, or it's things like information about 00:30:01.900 --> 00:30:03.670 align:middle line:90% the nuclear stockpile-- 00:30:03.670 --> 00:30:07.180 align:middle line:84% the US has this many weapons ready versus that many that 00:30:07.180 --> 00:30:09.790 align:middle line:84% could be smuggled out on a piece of paper; 00:30:09.790 --> 00:30:12.550 align:middle line:84% the size and shape of the bomb-- that would have implications 00:30:12.550 --> 00:30:14.200 align:middle line:84% for things like delivery systems, 00:30:14.200 --> 00:30:16.870 align:middle line:84% what kind of airplane or boat might you need; 00:30:16.870 --> 00:30:19.540 align:middle line:84% a blueprint or some kind of sketch about that very 00:30:19.540 --> 00:30:22.840 align:middle line:84% complicated implosion mechanisms we talked a bit about-- 00:30:22.840 --> 00:30:24.490 align:middle line:84% but that was the secret and you could 00:30:24.490 --> 00:30:27.220 align:middle line:84% have a single diagram that would somehow give it all away; 00:30:27.220 --> 00:30:30.150 align:middle line:84% or other kind of so-called general principles of bomb 00:30:30.150 --> 00:30:30.650 align:middle line:90% design. 00:30:30.650 --> 00:30:33.460 align:middle line:84% So again, there's lots and lots of-- 00:30:33.460 --> 00:30:36.370 align:middle line:84% a kind of variance in what people think the atomic secret 00:30:36.370 --> 00:30:37.600 align:middle line:90% is. 00:30:37.600 --> 00:30:40.870 align:middle line:84% But they're clustering now in a very different characterization 00:30:40.870 --> 00:30:43.390 align:middle line:84% of both how science and technology works 00:30:43.390 --> 00:30:46.580 align:middle line:84% and of what's most careful to guard. 00:30:46.580 --> 00:30:50.200 align:middle line:84% And I found that shift really very, very interesting. 00:30:50.200 --> 00:30:53.230 align:middle line:84% And once again, this is not playing out in a vacuum. 00:30:53.230 --> 00:30:56.320 align:middle line:84% Not only was there the US election season 00:30:56.320 --> 00:30:59.370 align:middle line:84% to think about, but even about a year later more 00:30:59.370 --> 00:31:01.120 align:middle line:84% dramatic developments that again just kept 00:31:01.120 --> 00:31:04.790 align:middle line:84% this theme in the news, really for years. 00:31:04.790 --> 00:31:09.490 align:middle line:84% So again, as some of you might know, late in August of 1949 00:31:09.490 --> 00:31:13.180 align:middle line:84% so four years after the end of the Second World War, 00:31:13.180 --> 00:31:16.870 align:middle line:84% the Soviet Union did succeed in secretly detonating 00:31:16.870 --> 00:31:18.520 align:middle line:90% its own first nuclear weapon. 00:31:18.520 --> 00:31:21.640 align:middle line:84% It was a fission bomb, a plutonium weapon 00:31:21.640 --> 00:31:25.810 align:middle line:84% using an implosion mechanism remarkably similar to that 00:31:25.810 --> 00:31:27.490 align:middle line:84% which was tested at the Trinity test 00:31:27.490 --> 00:31:31.120 align:middle line:84% and then ultimately used in the bomb over Nagasaki. 00:31:31.120 --> 00:31:33.280 align:middle line:84% So it was a very similar kind of device 00:31:33.280 --> 00:31:37.060 align:middle line:84% that the Soviets detonated in secret in their own territory 00:31:37.060 --> 00:31:38.890 align:middle line:90% in August of '49. 00:31:38.890 --> 00:31:42.490 align:middle line:84% The US authorities nicknamed it Joe I, not really in honor, 00:31:42.490 --> 00:31:44.560 align:middle line:84% but in reference, in joking reference 00:31:44.560 --> 00:31:48.670 align:middle line:84% to Joseph Stalin who was still the leader of the Soviet Union. 00:31:48.670 --> 00:31:51.010 align:middle line:84% Then about three to three and a half weeks 00:31:51.010 --> 00:31:55.070 align:middle line:84% later, US President Harry Truman announced 00:31:55.070 --> 00:31:58.070 align:middle line:84% to great dramatic fanfare that the US 00:31:58.070 --> 00:31:59.827 align:middle line:90% had detected the Soviet test. 00:31:59.827 --> 00:32:01.160 align:middle line:90% The Soviets did not announce it. 00:32:01.160 --> 00:32:02.450 align:middle line:90% In fact, they kept it secret. 00:32:02.450 --> 00:32:05.120 align:middle line:84% The Soviets had been announcing all along until then 00:32:05.120 --> 00:32:06.470 align:middle line:90% that they had detected weapons. 00:32:06.470 --> 00:32:08.750 align:middle line:84% That turned out to have been intentional propaganda 00:32:08.750 --> 00:32:09.860 align:middle line:90% and misinformation. 00:32:09.860 --> 00:32:12.230 align:middle line:84% And when they actually did successfully detonate a bomb, 00:32:12.230 --> 00:32:13.340 align:middle line:90% they didn't announce it. 00:32:13.340 --> 00:32:16.730 align:middle line:84% Three weeks later, the US President announced it instead. 00:32:16.730 --> 00:32:18.320 align:middle line:84% And what I find super interesting 00:32:18.320 --> 00:32:20.120 align:middle line:84% is actually another really interesting book 00:32:20.120 --> 00:32:22.250 align:middle line:84% by my friend Michael Gordon, whose work I 00:32:22.250 --> 00:32:23.510 align:middle line:90% mentioned previously. 00:32:23.510 --> 00:32:26.240 align:middle line:84% Michael wrote this book called Red Cloud at Dawn. 00:32:26.240 --> 00:32:29.300 align:middle line:84% And he does I think a really fascinating reconstruction 00:32:29.300 --> 00:32:33.170 align:middle line:84% of the decision making process within the US government 00:32:33.170 --> 00:32:36.560 align:middle line:84% about whether and how to announce that the US teams had 00:32:36.560 --> 00:32:38.210 align:middle line:90% detected the Soviet bomb. 00:32:38.210 --> 00:32:41.210 align:middle line:84% In brief, the worry was that if the US announced 00:32:41.210 --> 00:32:44.450 align:middle line:84% that the US government knew the Soviets had detonated the bomb, 00:32:44.450 --> 00:32:47.360 align:middle line:84% would that give away too much of our own espionage 00:32:47.360 --> 00:32:49.490 align:middle line:90% and surveillance infrastructure? 00:32:49.490 --> 00:32:52.190 align:middle line:84% It turns out the US gained confidence 00:32:52.190 --> 00:32:56.080 align:middle line:84% about this detonation with these kind of high altitude 00:32:56.080 --> 00:32:58.450 align:middle line:84% aircraft that were already in or at least very close 00:32:58.450 --> 00:33:00.160 align:middle line:84% to Soviet airspace that already would 00:33:00.160 --> 00:33:02.860 align:middle line:84% have been seen as problematic or maybe provocative. 00:33:02.860 --> 00:33:06.310 align:middle line:84% And these planes were equipped with certain kinds of detectors 00:33:06.310 --> 00:33:10.120 align:middle line:84% to find trace amounts of certain radioactive materials. 00:33:10.120 --> 00:33:14.050 align:middle line:84% And a few days after the actual detonation, 00:33:14.050 --> 00:33:17.200 align:middle line:84% these planes found compelling evidence 00:33:17.200 --> 00:33:19.120 align:middle line:84% for certain rare isotopes that seemed 00:33:19.120 --> 00:33:21.910 align:middle line:84% to be only associated with that kind of implosion weapon. 00:33:21.910 --> 00:33:23.860 align:middle line:84% So the question was, do you even say anything? 00:33:23.860 --> 00:33:25.870 align:middle line:84% Because then will the Soviets know that we have these planes 00:33:25.870 --> 00:33:27.220 align:middle line:90% in or near their airspace? 00:33:27.220 --> 00:33:29.000 align:middle line:90% I just find that fascinating. 00:33:29.000 --> 00:33:31.960 align:middle line:84% So not only yes, we know, but we can't tell you how we know. 00:33:31.960 --> 00:33:35.920 align:middle line:84% It's one of these again quintessential kind of Cold War 00:33:35.920 --> 00:33:36.700 align:middle line:90% episodes. 00:33:36.700 --> 00:33:39.130 align:middle line:84% You can read more about that in Michael's book. 00:33:39.130 --> 00:33:41.020 align:middle line:84% Anyway, the point is, Truman-- the balance, 00:33:41.020 --> 00:33:42.800 align:middle line:84% the decision was indeed to announce it, 00:33:42.800 --> 00:33:44.470 align:middle line:84% but with no official announcement 00:33:44.470 --> 00:33:45.700 align:middle line:90% of how the US knew. 00:33:45.700 --> 00:33:47.650 align:middle line:84% But now this became, again, really 00:33:47.650 --> 00:33:51.520 align:middle line:84% shocking in many parts of the world, including in the US. 00:33:51.520 --> 00:33:54.370 align:middle line:84% The so-called US monopoly over nuclear weapons 00:33:54.370 --> 00:33:55.360 align:middle line:90% had been shattered. 00:33:55.360 --> 00:33:58.970 align:middle line:84% Now the country that had emerged as the greatest 00:33:58.970 --> 00:34:01.670 align:middle line:84% kind of political rival in the post-war scene, 00:34:01.670 --> 00:34:04.010 align:middle line:84% meaning the Soviet Union, had its own weapons 00:34:04.010 --> 00:34:05.780 align:middle line:90% of mass destruction. 00:34:05.780 --> 00:34:08.219 align:middle line:84% And what's interesting is that until that time, 00:34:08.219 --> 00:34:11.600 align:middle line:84% US authorities kept saying that the Soviets are still 00:34:11.600 --> 00:34:12.770 align:middle line:90% five years away. 00:34:12.770 --> 00:34:15.679 align:middle line:84% The very first assessments right after the end of the war 00:34:15.679 --> 00:34:18.148 align:middle line:84% were that the Soviet Union would need at least five years 00:34:18.148 --> 00:34:19.190 align:middle line:90% to make their own weapon. 00:34:19.190 --> 00:34:21.530 align:middle line:84% That turns out to have been actually pretty close. 00:34:21.530 --> 00:34:25.760 align:middle line:84% The challenge was that every year or continuously US 00:34:25.760 --> 00:34:28.010 align:middle line:84% authorities would keep making these updated estimates, 00:34:28.010 --> 00:34:30.468 align:middle line:84% and they keep saying the Soviets are still five years away. 00:34:30.468 --> 00:34:32.690 align:middle line:84% That became, therefore, less and less accurate, 00:34:32.690 --> 00:34:33.750 align:middle line:90% as you can imagine. 00:34:33.750 --> 00:34:36.080 align:middle line:84% So the first estimates were pretty reasonable. 00:34:36.080 --> 00:34:39.139 align:middle line:84% In 1948 it was no longer reasonable to say 00:34:39.139 --> 00:34:43.040 align:middle line:84% the Soviets will need until 1953 to make their own bomb. 00:34:43.040 --> 00:34:46.550 align:middle line:84% So when so-called Joe I, when this first Soviet weapon 00:34:46.550 --> 00:34:49.159 align:middle line:84% was detected and successfully detonated, 00:34:49.159 --> 00:34:51.830 align:middle line:84% that really seemed like a big, big shock, even 00:34:51.830 --> 00:34:53.840 align:middle line:84% to the insiders in the US who, so to speak, 00:34:53.840 --> 00:34:54.989 align:middle line:90% should have known better. 00:34:54.989 --> 00:35:02.450 align:middle line:84% And so this just again ramps up the kind of Cold War jockeying 00:35:02.450 --> 00:35:04.880 align:middle line:84% and therefore the discussions about things like, 00:35:04.880 --> 00:35:08.400 align:middle line:84% is there an atomic secret, and what should we do about it? 00:35:08.400 --> 00:35:10.590 align:middle line:84% Now, soon on the heels of that, again, 00:35:10.590 --> 00:35:13.680 align:middle line:84% very surprising information for many people in the United 00:35:13.680 --> 00:35:14.310 align:middle line:90% States-- 00:35:14.310 --> 00:35:18.780 align:middle line:84% soon after that, starting in late January 1950, 00:35:18.780 --> 00:35:24.120 align:middle line:84% other news broke that there had been at least one more 00:35:24.120 --> 00:35:29.760 align:middle line:84% example of atomic espionage from the Manhattan Project 00:35:29.760 --> 00:35:30.750 align:middle line:90% during the war. 00:35:30.750 --> 00:35:35.010 align:middle line:84% This also involved a member of the British delegation, who, 00:35:35.010 --> 00:35:37.920 align:middle line:84% like Alan Nunn May, had been sent over to North America 00:35:37.920 --> 00:35:41.910 align:middle line:84% as part of the British team to work on various Manhattan 00:35:41.910 --> 00:35:42.510 align:middle line:90% Project sites. 00:35:42.510 --> 00:35:44.880 align:middle line:84% In this case, it was this individual, Klaus Fuchs. 00:35:44.880 --> 00:35:48.240 align:middle line:84% Here's his badge photo from Los Alamos. 00:35:48.240 --> 00:35:52.300 align:middle line:84% So Fuchs was actually originally from Germany. 00:35:52.300 --> 00:35:56.850 align:middle line:84% He was a very early anti-Nazi, and we 00:35:56.850 --> 00:35:59.670 align:middle line:84% were talking about this a little bit during office hours 00:35:59.670 --> 00:36:00.480 align:middle line:90% earlier today. 00:36:00.480 --> 00:36:03.270 align:middle line:84% There was a phrase that came into common usage in the United 00:36:03.270 --> 00:36:08.500 align:middle line:84% States after the war called prematurely antifascist. 00:36:08.500 --> 00:36:11.260 align:middle line:84% That was code for someone who's probably a communist, 00:36:11.260 --> 00:36:13.210 align:middle line:84% because in the earliest days in Germany, 00:36:13.210 --> 00:36:15.160 align:middle line:84% the groups that were most actively trying 00:36:15.160 --> 00:36:17.860 align:middle line:84% to oppose the Nazis even before the Nazis took over 00:36:17.860 --> 00:36:19.000 align:middle line:90% were the communists. 00:36:19.000 --> 00:36:21.850 align:middle line:84% This was a kind of left-right kind of battle. 00:36:21.850 --> 00:36:23.800 align:middle line:84% And so if you were against the Nazis 00:36:23.800 --> 00:36:26.050 align:middle line:84% before you had quote-unquote legitimate reasons to be 00:36:26.050 --> 00:36:28.300 align:middle line:84% against the Nazis, then it meant you were a communist. 00:36:28.300 --> 00:36:30.370 align:middle line:84% At least it seemed to imply that. 00:36:30.370 --> 00:36:34.100 align:middle line:84% Really remarkable there was no room for anything in between. 00:36:34.100 --> 00:36:37.270 align:middle line:84% So Fuchs was one of these left-leaning, perhaps indeed 00:36:37.270 --> 00:36:41.770 align:middle line:84% communist members who had been prematurely anti-fascist. 00:36:41.770 --> 00:36:43.268 align:middle line:84% When the Nazis took over, he then 00:36:43.268 --> 00:36:44.560 align:middle line:90% had to get out of Germany fast. 00:36:44.560 --> 00:36:48.010 align:middle line:84% So he emigrated to Britain as so many young physicists 00:36:48.010 --> 00:36:49.930 align:middle line:90% and mathematicians did. 00:36:49.930 --> 00:36:53.170 align:middle line:84% He then got involved with a British uranium project 00:36:53.170 --> 00:36:55.930 align:middle line:84% and then was sent over to North America. 00:36:55.930 --> 00:36:59.440 align:middle line:84% He first worked at Oak Ridge for quite some time in detail 00:36:59.440 --> 00:37:01.360 align:middle line:84% and things like isotope separation 00:37:01.360 --> 00:37:03.460 align:middle line:84% and then was relocated to Los Alamos 00:37:03.460 --> 00:37:05.950 align:middle line:84% and worked on many aspects, or at least a few aspects 00:37:05.950 --> 00:37:08.140 align:middle line:90% of the project from there. 00:37:08.140 --> 00:37:10.120 align:middle line:84% And then he went back to Britain after the war 00:37:10.120 --> 00:37:13.210 align:middle line:84% and worked on the British nuclear efforts 00:37:13.210 --> 00:37:16.990 align:middle line:84% at Harwell, not so far from Oxford. 00:37:16.990 --> 00:37:21.130 align:middle line:84% And then again, one of these intelligence investigations 00:37:21.130 --> 00:37:24.310 align:middle line:84% finally led to suspicion about Fuchs. 00:37:24.310 --> 00:37:27.580 align:middle line:84% He confessed late in January 1950 00:37:27.580 --> 00:37:29.860 align:middle line:84% that he had indeed been sharing materials 00:37:29.860 --> 00:37:32.590 align:middle line:84% with a Soviet agent throughout the war. 00:37:32.590 --> 00:37:36.430 align:middle line:84% That confession then led to other investigations, 00:37:36.430 --> 00:37:38.620 align:middle line:84% many of them still now back in the United States. 00:37:38.620 --> 00:37:40.940 align:middle line:84% And that led to the arrest of people, 00:37:40.940 --> 00:37:43.840 align:middle line:84% including very famously Julius and Ethel 00:37:43.840 --> 00:37:47.290 align:middle line:84% Rosenberg, a husband and wife pair who 00:37:47.290 --> 00:37:49.390 align:middle line:90% were based in New York City. 00:37:49.390 --> 00:37:53.320 align:middle line:84% They weren't at Los Alamos, but Ethel Rosenberg's brother, 00:37:53.320 --> 00:37:55.450 align:middle line:84% David Greenglass, had been stationed 00:37:55.450 --> 00:37:57.497 align:middle line:84% at Los Alamos as an army machinist. 00:37:57.497 --> 00:37:59.080 align:middle line:84% He was not a trained scientist, but he 00:37:59.080 --> 00:38:01.510 align:middle line:84% was one of the many, many, many technicians who 00:38:01.510 --> 00:38:03.430 align:middle line:90% was on site at Los Alamos. 00:38:03.430 --> 00:38:06.430 align:middle line:84% He, like his sister, had, at the very least, 00:38:06.430 --> 00:38:09.120 align:middle line:84% left-leaning political sympathies. 00:38:09.120 --> 00:38:12.610 align:middle line:84% And during the war, perhaps with Fuchs' help-- or in any case, 00:38:12.610 --> 00:38:15.180 align:middle line:84% the investigation of Fuchs led to this other ring-- 00:38:15.180 --> 00:38:17.880 align:middle line:84% Greenglass had been smuggling out some things 00:38:17.880 --> 00:38:20.160 align:middle line:84% or trying to get information from Los 00:38:20.160 --> 00:38:23.130 align:middle line:84% Alamos with the intention of getting it to the Soviets. 00:38:23.130 --> 00:38:25.320 align:middle line:84% And it seems that his brother-in-law, 00:38:25.320 --> 00:38:28.600 align:middle line:84% Julius Rosenberg, helped in ferreting this information out. 00:38:28.600 --> 00:38:31.330 align:middle line:84% So when this came to light, there was a very, again, 00:38:31.330 --> 00:38:34.140 align:middle line:84% hugely sensational trial in the United 00:38:34.140 --> 00:38:35.580 align:middle line:90% States for the Rosenbergs. 00:38:35.580 --> 00:38:38.280 align:middle line:84% Greenglass agreed to testify against his family, 00:38:38.280 --> 00:38:39.980 align:middle line:84% so he was given, basically, immunity. 00:38:39.980 --> 00:38:41.050 align:middle line:90% He cut a deal. 00:38:41.050 --> 00:38:42.990 align:middle line:84% So even though Greenglass was the one who 00:38:42.990 --> 00:38:45.570 align:middle line:84% actually stole the materials, he cooperated 00:38:45.570 --> 00:38:46.905 align:middle line:90% with the prosecution. 00:38:46.905 --> 00:38:48.780 align:middle line:84% And the trial turned out to be against Julius 00:38:48.780 --> 00:38:53.900 align:middle line:84% and Ethel Rosenberg and a third defendant, Morton Sobell. 00:38:53.900 --> 00:38:58.790 align:middle line:84% And so here's an example of what was entered into evidence 00:38:58.790 --> 00:39:01.970 align:middle line:84% for the prosecution of David Greenglass, 00:39:01.970 --> 00:39:06.050 align:middle line:84% if I remember correctly, redrawing from memory the kinds 00:39:06.050 --> 00:39:09.350 align:middle line:84% of sketches he had acquired during the war 00:39:09.350 --> 00:39:11.420 align:middle line:84% and had tried to get to the Soviets. 00:39:11.420 --> 00:39:16.310 align:middle line:84% And this was a fairly crude sketch of the implosion 00:39:16.310 --> 00:39:19.400 align:middle line:90% mechanism for a plutonium bomb. 00:39:19.400 --> 00:39:21.350 align:middle line:84% So again, what's fascinating, the trials 00:39:21.350 --> 00:39:24.950 align:middle line:84% stretches out over 1951, again, daily updates 00:39:24.950 --> 00:39:27.470 align:middle line:84% in the newspapers and nightly news. 00:39:27.470 --> 00:39:30.380 align:middle line:84% And to aid the prosecution the Atomic Energy Commission, which 00:39:30.380 --> 00:39:32.360 align:middle line:84% was this kind of postwar successor 00:39:32.360 --> 00:39:34.280 align:middle line:84% to the Manhattan Project, they actually 00:39:34.280 --> 00:39:38.150 align:middle line:84% declassified what was then being called the single most closely 00:39:38.150 --> 00:39:41.640 align:middle line:84% guarded atomic secret, which was this implosion mechanism. 00:39:41.640 --> 00:39:45.710 align:middle line:84% So to help the prosecution gain a conviction of the Rosenbergs 00:39:45.710 --> 00:39:49.820 align:middle line:84% for espionage, the government agency literally declassified 00:39:49.820 --> 00:39:51.590 align:middle line:84% what they were at the same time claiming 00:39:51.590 --> 00:39:54.450 align:middle line:84% was the single atomic secret that presumably 00:39:54.450 --> 00:39:56.820 align:middle line:84% could be written down on a single piece of paper 00:39:56.820 --> 00:39:59.672 align:middle line:84% and smuggled out to another place. 00:39:59.672 --> 00:40:00.630 align:middle line:90% In fact, at one point-- 00:40:00.630 --> 00:40:02.190 align:middle line:84% I write about this in the paper-- 00:40:02.190 --> 00:40:05.130 align:middle line:84% when testimony about this was being given by Greenglass 00:40:05.130 --> 00:40:09.630 align:middle line:84% under oath, they partially emptied the courtroom gallery 00:40:09.630 --> 00:40:11.203 align:middle line:90% of everyone except journalists. 00:40:11.203 --> 00:40:12.870 align:middle line:84% So if you want to keep something secret, 00:40:12.870 --> 00:40:15.162 align:middle line:84% I would think you would get the journalists out and let 00:40:15.162 --> 00:40:19.800 align:middle line:84% the jury stay and let the other civilian onlookers stay. 00:40:19.800 --> 00:40:22.650 align:middle line:84% They did the opposite, so really just mixed messages 00:40:22.650 --> 00:40:25.470 align:middle line:84% about what is or is not the most potential 00:40:25.470 --> 00:40:27.480 align:middle line:90% or serious atomic secret. 00:40:27.480 --> 00:40:31.840 align:middle line:84% The point is, this is all about text-based diagrams or formulas 00:40:31.840 --> 00:40:34.270 align:middle line:84% and not about industrial capacity. 00:40:34.270 --> 00:40:37.810 align:middle line:84% And again, as you may know, the Rosenbergs were found guilty. 00:40:37.810 --> 00:40:40.853 align:middle line:84% They were ultimately executed soon thereafter. 00:40:40.853 --> 00:40:42.270 align:middle line:84% And there's lots and lots and lots 00:40:42.270 --> 00:40:43.562 align:middle line:90% that's been written about that. 00:40:43.562 --> 00:40:45.360 align:middle line:84% Many, many things were once classified 00:40:45.360 --> 00:40:50.898 align:middle line:84% and over the decades have become declassified. 00:40:50.898 --> 00:40:52.440 align:middle line:84% There's more to be said, but it seems 00:40:52.440 --> 00:40:54.020 align:middle line:84% that Julius Rosenberg very likely 00:40:54.020 --> 00:40:56.520 align:middle line:84% was guilty of at least some of the things he was accused of. 00:40:56.520 --> 00:40:58.800 align:middle line:84% It's much less clear that Ethel Rosenberg 00:40:58.800 --> 00:41:01.200 align:middle line:84% was guilty of the things for which she was convicted. 00:41:01.200 --> 00:41:04.770 align:middle line:84% And there's all this stuff that was later found out 00:41:04.770 --> 00:41:07.800 align:middle line:84% of prosecutorial strategies to go 00:41:07.800 --> 00:41:09.660 align:middle line:84% after Ethel Rosenberg hard in the hopes 00:41:09.660 --> 00:41:12.240 align:middle line:84% that Julius would confess, and they both-- 00:41:12.240 --> 00:41:17.040 align:middle line:84% neither confessed, so anyway, a really messy, messy trial. 00:41:17.040 --> 00:41:21.760 align:middle line:84% Also it looked like some not proper coordination 00:41:21.760 --> 00:41:23.260 align:middle line:84% between the prosecution and a judge. 00:41:23.260 --> 00:41:27.230 align:middle line:84% It was a mess in terms of just legal procedure. 00:41:27.230 --> 00:41:30.070 align:middle line:84% And I think no matter what side one comes down historically 00:41:30.070 --> 00:41:32.860 align:middle line:84% about the efficacy of nuclear espionage, 00:41:32.860 --> 00:41:37.300 align:middle line:84% I don't think anyone claims this was a clear or clean trial, 00:41:37.300 --> 00:41:38.800 align:middle line:84% thousands of pages written about it. 00:41:38.800 --> 00:41:39.925 align:middle line:90% But that's just the upshot. 00:41:39.925 --> 00:41:42.220 align:middle line:84% The point is it's coming on the heels 00:41:42.220 --> 00:41:44.170 align:middle line:84% of these quite dramatic revelations 00:41:44.170 --> 00:41:46.940 align:middle line:90% about wartime espionage. 00:41:46.940 --> 00:41:49.240 align:middle line:84% So once this was, or at least parts of this 00:41:49.240 --> 00:41:51.790 align:middle line:84% was becoming part of the public record, 00:41:51.790 --> 00:41:55.240 align:middle line:84% many commentators, especially the United States at the time 00:41:55.240 --> 00:41:59.200 align:middle line:84% and even since then, have reached toward these examples 00:41:59.200 --> 00:42:00.370 align:middle line:90% of espionage-- 00:42:00.370 --> 00:42:04.120 align:middle line:84% Alan Nunn May, the Greenglass-Rosenbergs 00:42:04.120 --> 00:42:06.040 align:middle line:84% connection, Klaus Fuchs, and then others that 00:42:06.040 --> 00:42:08.320 align:middle line:84% have since come to light, a handful of others, 00:42:08.320 --> 00:42:12.340 align:middle line:84% to say, well, that must explain why and how the Soviets 00:42:12.340 --> 00:42:16.960 align:middle line:84% actually did succeed in making a nuclear weapon so soon compared 00:42:16.960 --> 00:42:17.530 align:middle line:90% to estimates. 00:42:17.530 --> 00:42:19.038 align:middle line:84% Remember it wasn't so soon compared 00:42:19.038 --> 00:42:20.830 align:middle line:84% to the original estimates, so soon compared 00:42:20.830 --> 00:42:23.930 align:middle line:84% to the later estimates, which proved to have been inaccurate. 00:42:23.930 --> 00:42:26.410 align:middle line:84% And so the idea was, in a sense, that they cheated, 00:42:26.410 --> 00:42:30.070 align:middle line:84% that they only caught up with the Allied effort 00:42:30.070 --> 00:42:32.980 align:middle line:84% because they had all the benefits of espionage. 00:42:32.980 --> 00:42:35.110 align:middle line:84% Once again, I want to give a shout out 00:42:35.110 --> 00:42:38.050 align:middle line:84% to my friend and colleague Alex Wellerstein, 00:42:38.050 --> 00:42:42.460 align:middle line:84% who has a fantastic set of online materials at his blog. 00:42:42.460 --> 00:42:43.780 align:middle line:90% It's a blog with footnotes. 00:42:43.780 --> 00:42:45.670 align:middle line:84% This is actually like a scholarly blog. 00:42:45.670 --> 00:42:48.050 align:middle line:84% And he has a great piece, actually from a number 00:42:48.050 --> 00:42:52.340 align:middle line:84% of years ago by now, about hand-drawn diagrams 00:42:52.340 --> 00:42:54.650 align:middle line:84% from one of the heads of the Soviet nuclear weapons 00:42:54.650 --> 00:42:59.480 align:middle line:84% project, Igor Kurchatov, to the equivalent of the Leslie Groves 00:42:59.480 --> 00:43:03.840 align:middle line:84% figure, Lavrentiy Berea, from early 1946, 00:43:03.840 --> 00:43:06.710 align:middle line:84% which you can see this handwritten Cyrillic that 00:43:06.710 --> 00:43:09.530 align:middle line:84% look like pretty compelling versions of an implosion 00:43:09.530 --> 00:43:12.200 align:middle line:84% design, the implication being that Kurchatov really 00:43:12.200 --> 00:43:13.880 align:middle line:84% was benefiting from some of these kinds 00:43:13.880 --> 00:43:19.760 align:middle line:84% of purloined worksheets and figures 00:43:19.760 --> 00:43:23.570 align:middle line:84% that people like Greenglass and Fuchs were able to supply. 00:43:23.570 --> 00:43:25.940 align:middle line:84% On the other hand, since the fall of the Soviet Union, 00:43:25.940 --> 00:43:28.820 align:middle line:84% many more materials from Soviet sources 00:43:28.820 --> 00:43:30.200 align:middle line:84% have become available to scholars 00:43:30.200 --> 00:43:33.530 align:middle line:90% within Russia and elsewhere. 00:43:33.530 --> 00:43:35.600 align:middle line:84% And the story, again, like most stories, 00:43:35.600 --> 00:43:36.800 align:middle line:90% gets a bit more complicated. 00:43:36.800 --> 00:43:40.953 align:middle line:84% Here are some really interesting more recent analyzes by Alexey 00:43:40.953 --> 00:43:43.370 align:middle line:84% Kozhevnikov-- we've read some of his work for the paper II 00:43:43.370 --> 00:43:44.390 align:middle line:90% assignment-- 00:43:44.390 --> 00:43:47.240 align:middle line:84% and also, again, Michael Gordon's book that I mentioned, 00:43:47.240 --> 00:43:49.730 align:middle line:84% that espionage, I think it's fair to say, 00:43:49.730 --> 00:43:52.520 align:middle line:84% clearly played some role in the Soviet program. 00:43:52.520 --> 00:43:55.800 align:middle line:84% But it's not so straightforward what the efficacy was, 00:43:55.800 --> 00:43:57.950 align:middle line:90% let's say what the role was. 00:43:57.950 --> 00:44:00.750 align:middle line:84% And there's lots-- again, the more one looks, 00:44:00.750 --> 00:44:03.180 align:middle line:84% the more complicated the story gets, rather than simple, 00:44:03.180 --> 00:44:03.860 align:middle line:90% which is-- 00:44:03.860 --> 00:44:06.615 align:middle line:84% maybe that's how it often is in history. 00:44:06.615 --> 00:44:08.240 align:middle line:84% So here are some of the salient points. 00:44:08.240 --> 00:44:09.680 align:middle line:84% There's much more that these other folks 00:44:09.680 --> 00:44:11.390 align:middle line:84% go into that I find really interesting. 00:44:11.390 --> 00:44:13.640 align:middle line:84% The information that was obtained via espionage-- 00:44:13.640 --> 00:44:16.460 align:middle line:84% and some of it clearly was obtained via espionage-- to 00:44:16.460 --> 00:44:19.850 align:middle line:84% within the Soviet Union was often treated as suspect 00:44:19.850 --> 00:44:21.560 align:middle line:84% because at least some of the folks 00:44:21.560 --> 00:44:23.060 align:middle line:84% there didn't know if they were being 00:44:23.060 --> 00:44:24.900 align:middle line:90% fed intentional misinformation. 00:44:24.900 --> 00:44:27.880 align:middle line:84% Was this a kind of information war after all? 00:44:27.880 --> 00:44:30.870 align:middle line:84% And so were these things being planted 00:44:30.870 --> 00:44:34.800 align:middle line:84% so that Soviet agents might be duped into getting unhelpful 00:44:34.800 --> 00:44:35.610 align:middle line:90% information? 00:44:35.610 --> 00:44:38.070 align:middle line:84% And so often these would be doled out 00:44:38.070 --> 00:44:40.920 align:middle line:84% to various internally rivalry groups 00:44:40.920 --> 00:44:42.810 align:middle line:84% within this very large Soviet program. 00:44:42.810 --> 00:44:45.090 align:middle line:84% It grew to be very, very big, much like the Manhattan 00:44:45.090 --> 00:44:45.930 align:middle line:90% Project. 00:44:45.930 --> 00:44:47.910 align:middle line:84% And so you have competing groups that 00:44:47.910 --> 00:44:50.690 align:middle line:84% would almost have a kind of peer review, 00:44:50.690 --> 00:44:51.800 align:middle line:90% for lack of a better term. 00:44:51.800 --> 00:44:54.562 align:middle line:84% One group would be told, this is from the American project, 00:44:54.562 --> 00:44:55.520 align:middle line:90% and we think it's real. 00:44:55.520 --> 00:44:56.127 align:middle line:90% Go with it. 00:44:56.127 --> 00:44:57.710 align:middle line:84% Another group would be told basically, 00:44:57.710 --> 00:44:58.752 align:middle line:90% we think this is garbage. 00:44:58.752 --> 00:44:59.760 align:middle line:90% Poke holes in it. 00:44:59.760 --> 00:45:02.810 align:middle line:84% And so it's not like they said, here's the answer, go do it. 00:45:02.810 --> 00:45:06.380 align:middle line:84% Likewise-- again, it became clear only decades later-- 00:45:06.380 --> 00:45:09.830 align:middle line:84% the Soviets wound up pursuing many, many roots in parallel, 00:45:09.830 --> 00:45:12.320 align:middle line:84% much as the US or the Allied project 00:45:12.320 --> 00:45:15.050 align:middle line:84% had done during the war, even with the knowledge 00:45:15.050 --> 00:45:18.800 align:middle line:84% of the efforts that had proven to be most effective in the US 00:45:18.800 --> 00:45:19.530 align:middle line:90% case. 00:45:19.530 --> 00:45:22.520 align:middle line:84% So typically for the US project, if there 00:45:22.520 --> 00:45:26.000 align:middle line:84% were four different ideas to separate fissionable 00:45:26.000 --> 00:45:28.850 align:middle line:84% uranium from the more stable isotope, 00:45:28.850 --> 00:45:31.685 align:middle line:84% the response from General Groves was usually, try all four. 00:45:31.685 --> 00:45:34.280 align:middle line:84% If there's a war on, give it all you got, try all of them. 00:45:34.280 --> 00:45:35.870 align:middle line:84% We'll go with whatever is quickest. 00:45:35.870 --> 00:45:37.940 align:middle line:84% And yet, and afterwards, some would 00:45:37.940 --> 00:45:40.080 align:middle line:84% prove to have been more effective than others. 00:45:40.080 --> 00:45:42.710 align:middle line:84% It seems clear that the Soviets often did the same thing, 00:45:42.710 --> 00:45:44.540 align:middle line:84% even knowing which wound up being 00:45:44.540 --> 00:45:48.080 align:middle line:84% the most effective version in the wartime Manhattan Project. 00:45:48.080 --> 00:45:50.460 align:middle line:84% The Soviets would often set up parallel efforts 00:45:50.460 --> 00:45:53.920 align:middle line:84% instead of only trying the one that had seemed most effective. 00:45:53.920 --> 00:45:56.550 align:middle line:84% So that's not a huge savings of time or effort either, 00:45:56.550 --> 00:46:00.250 align:middle line:84% and also even more tricky that a lot of these very, 00:46:00.250 --> 00:46:03.690 align:middle line:84% very complicated devices, these bombs like the implosion 00:46:03.690 --> 00:46:07.200 align:middle line:84% design, depended on very specific properties 00:46:07.200 --> 00:46:09.570 align:middle line:84% of non-nuclear materials, both epoxies-- 00:46:09.570 --> 00:46:13.170 align:middle line:84% kinds of glues or adhesives-- certain kinds of, literally, 00:46:13.170 --> 00:46:16.020 align:middle line:84% the wiring to try to make sure that you have sub 00:46:16.020 --> 00:46:18.510 align:middle line:84% microsecond accuracy for the firing circuits, 00:46:18.510 --> 00:46:22.230 align:middle line:84% but also these different kinds of conventional explosives 00:46:22.230 --> 00:46:23.650 align:middle line:90% that burn at different rates. 00:46:23.650 --> 00:46:27.180 align:middle line:84% So you're trying to make this shaped ingoing pressure wave. 00:46:27.180 --> 00:46:31.230 align:middle line:84% And the Soviets had different forms of TNT equivalent. 00:46:31.230 --> 00:46:33.180 align:middle line:90% So they weren't just copying-- 00:46:33.180 --> 00:46:34.977 align:middle line:84% they couldn't just copy the blueprints, 00:46:34.977 --> 00:46:36.810 align:middle line:84% even if they had rather complete blueprints. 00:46:36.810 --> 00:46:39.240 align:middle line:84% So it's not to say the espionage was irrelevant. 00:46:39.240 --> 00:46:41.260 align:middle line:84% I'd hardly think that's the case. 00:46:41.260 --> 00:46:45.270 align:middle line:84% But it's also seems pretty inaccurate to say 00:46:45.270 --> 00:46:48.600 align:middle line:84% the Soviet bomb was merely a product of copying 00:46:48.600 --> 00:46:49.590 align:middle line:90% the Manhattan Project. 00:46:49.590 --> 00:46:52.650 align:middle line:84% And so again, we get the real life experience 00:46:52.650 --> 00:46:54.570 align:middle line:84% of these complicated human endeavors 00:46:54.570 --> 00:46:56.640 align:middle line:84% that didn't fit into the neat stories that 00:46:56.640 --> 00:47:00.217 align:middle line:90% were being told then or since. 00:47:00.217 --> 00:47:01.800 align:middle line:84% So in the meantime, again, coming back 00:47:01.800 --> 00:47:05.010 align:middle line:84% to things that really caught my attention about the way 00:47:05.010 --> 00:47:07.140 align:middle line:84% espionage and so-called atomic secrets 00:47:07.140 --> 00:47:10.680 align:middle line:84% were being characterized throughout the US at this time, 00:47:10.680 --> 00:47:12.840 align:middle line:84% was after the news about Klaus Fuchs 00:47:12.840 --> 00:47:15.660 align:middle line:84% did become very broadly known-- it was major newspaper 00:47:15.660 --> 00:47:20.310 align:middle line:84% news by late January of 1950-- there was a kind of slippage 00:47:20.310 --> 00:47:21.960 align:middle line:90% that became very common. 00:47:21.960 --> 00:47:24.630 align:middle line:84% I find this actually very chilling, 00:47:24.630 --> 00:47:27.450 align:middle line:84% a slippage, not to say all German communists 00:47:27.450 --> 00:47:29.832 align:middle line:84% who came to the United States were actually bad. 00:47:29.832 --> 00:47:31.290 align:middle line:84% That might have been one conclusion 00:47:31.290 --> 00:47:32.820 align:middle line:84% people might have unfairly drawn, 00:47:32.820 --> 00:47:34.500 align:middle line:84% but that wasn't where people went. 00:47:34.500 --> 00:47:38.250 align:middle line:84% The conclusion reached often was that all theoretical physicists 00:47:38.250 --> 00:47:39.030 align:middle line:90% are suspect. 00:47:39.030 --> 00:47:43.920 align:middle line:84% Let that sink in for a second, that because of Klaus Fuchs, 00:47:43.920 --> 00:47:47.040 align:middle line:84% because of his perfidy and because 00:47:47.040 --> 00:47:49.590 align:middle line:84% of his what was often called his warped mentality, 00:47:49.590 --> 00:47:54.120 align:middle line:84% his infantile, naive sense of how the world should work 00:47:54.120 --> 00:47:57.600 align:middle line:84% as characterized by his critics, that that's 00:47:57.600 --> 00:48:00.690 align:middle line:84% a sign of physicists who have been too poorly 00:48:00.690 --> 00:48:01.860 align:middle line:90% trained in the humanities. 00:48:01.860 --> 00:48:02.640 align:middle line:90% That part I like. 00:48:02.640 --> 00:48:05.250 align:middle line:84% That's why we have GIRs here in past courses, right? 00:48:05.250 --> 00:48:09.090 align:middle line:84% The allegation was these narrow-minded scientists 00:48:09.090 --> 00:48:12.120 align:middle line:84% hadn't learned about government and history and literature 00:48:12.120 --> 00:48:13.510 align:middle line:90% and human affairs. 00:48:13.510 --> 00:48:16.930 align:middle line:84% So they have baby ideas about how the world works, 00:48:16.930 --> 00:48:19.350 align:middle line:84% including kind of idealized notions of world government 00:48:19.350 --> 00:48:22.600 align:middle line:90% or of communist utopias. 00:48:22.600 --> 00:48:25.510 align:middle line:84% And so therefore, theoretical physicists as a group 00:48:25.510 --> 00:48:27.160 align:middle line:90% are dangerous. 00:48:27.160 --> 00:48:30.310 align:middle line:84% If you think the bomb was made by equations, if you think 00:48:30.310 --> 00:48:34.750 align:middle line:84% the bomb is essentially text made real, 00:48:34.750 --> 00:48:36.670 align:middle line:84% and therefore the most dangerous things are 00:48:36.670 --> 00:48:39.790 align:middle line:84% formulas and engineering diagrams as opposed to billion 00:48:39.790 --> 00:48:42.280 align:middle line:84% cubic feet of concrete, if theories 00:48:42.280 --> 00:48:44.320 align:middle line:84% are dangerous because they make bombs, 00:48:44.320 --> 00:48:47.722 align:middle line:84% and if theorists have this kind of warped or unbalanced 00:48:47.722 --> 00:48:49.930 align:middle line:84% education where they're more susceptible to so-called 00:48:49.930 --> 00:48:53.380 align:middle line:84% communist propaganda than well-trained economists 00:48:53.380 --> 00:48:56.650 align:middle line:84% or whatever else, then that's a double danger, right? 00:48:56.650 --> 00:48:59.920 align:middle line:84% Because the bombs are allegedly made by theorists, 00:48:59.920 --> 00:49:01.840 align:middle line:84% using kind of reifying equations. 00:49:01.840 --> 00:49:04.360 align:middle line:84% I find that just stunning that people 00:49:04.360 --> 00:49:05.860 align:middle line:84% would have come to those conclusions 00:49:05.860 --> 00:49:07.780 align:middle line:84% knowing that the Manhattan Project required 00:49:07.780 --> 00:49:11.710 align:middle line:84% unprecedented industrial capacity with experts 00:49:11.710 --> 00:49:14.342 align:middle line:84% from metallurgy and chemical engineering 00:49:14.342 --> 00:49:16.300 align:middle line:84% and electrical engineering and many, many areas 00:49:16.300 --> 00:49:18.520 align:middle line:90% well beyond theoretical physics. 00:49:18.520 --> 00:49:20.890 align:middle line:84% And so you have this really strange way 00:49:20.890 --> 00:49:25.830 align:middle line:84% of thinking about scientific and technical progress, let alone 00:49:25.830 --> 00:49:29.030 align:middle line:84% thinking about individuals who majored in one field of study 00:49:29.030 --> 00:49:29.730 align:middle line:90% or another. 00:49:29.730 --> 00:49:31.760 align:middle line:84% And again, that doesn't die down very quickly. 00:49:31.760 --> 00:49:36.260 align:middle line:84% As late as 1956, there's a case of a federal judge 00:49:36.260 --> 00:49:39.230 align:middle line:84% sentencing a Cornell grad student to jail time. 00:49:39.230 --> 00:49:40.760 align:middle line:84% The grad student had been accused 00:49:40.760 --> 00:49:43.070 align:middle line:84% of being a member of the Communist party. 00:49:43.070 --> 00:49:44.750 align:middle line:84% The student pled the Fifth Amendment 00:49:44.750 --> 00:49:47.090 align:middle line:84% against self-incrimination in court. 00:49:47.090 --> 00:49:49.070 align:middle line:84% That was not at the time recognized 00:49:49.070 --> 00:49:50.510 align:middle line:90% as a legitimate defense. 00:49:50.510 --> 00:49:54.680 align:middle line:84% That was righted a few years later with the Warren court. 00:49:54.680 --> 00:49:57.350 align:middle line:84% So he was held in contempt and sent to jail, 00:49:57.350 --> 00:50:00.290 align:middle line:84% not only for not cooperating, but because the federal judge 00:50:00.290 --> 00:50:03.860 align:middle line:84% was convinced that younger generation of pure scientists 00:50:03.860 --> 00:50:05.588 align:middle line:90% engaged in research in physics-- 00:50:05.588 --> 00:50:07.880 align:middle line:84% by which he meant this Cornell theoretical physics grad 00:50:07.880 --> 00:50:10.730 align:middle line:84% student-- had succumbed to communistic propaganda. 00:50:10.730 --> 00:50:13.520 align:middle line:84% Again, that's a remarkable leap or slippage 00:50:13.520 --> 00:50:18.290 align:middle line:84% between bombs or formulas and theorists or commies. 00:50:18.290 --> 00:50:21.470 align:middle line:84% That seems to go well beyond the evidence 00:50:21.470 --> 00:50:25.040 align:middle line:84% at the time about some instances of espionage 00:50:25.040 --> 00:50:27.920 align:middle line:84% that indeed were serious, but might have had 00:50:27.920 --> 00:50:29.463 align:middle line:90% a range of possible outcomes. 00:50:29.463 --> 00:50:31.880 align:middle line:84% Let me pause-- oh, the last part, the last slide before we 00:50:31.880 --> 00:50:34.700 align:middle line:84% pause, this again starts to have real world 00:50:34.700 --> 00:50:36.920 align:middle line:90% implications of many kinds. 00:50:36.920 --> 00:50:39.860 align:middle line:84% One that, again, I found rather surprising 00:50:39.860 --> 00:50:42.980 align:middle line:84% is if you go back and look in the Congressional record, which 00:50:42.980 --> 00:50:45.920 align:middle line:84% is now thankfully digitized, go up and count 00:50:45.920 --> 00:50:48.320 align:middle line:84% all of the hearings in the first decade 00:50:48.320 --> 00:50:50.270 align:middle line:84% after the end of the Second World War 00:50:50.270 --> 00:50:53.330 align:middle line:84% that this House Un-American Activities Committee held 00:50:53.330 --> 00:50:55.100 align:middle line:90% that involved any academics. 00:50:55.100 --> 00:50:57.440 align:middle line:84% They held all kinds of hearings about labor organizers, 00:50:57.440 --> 00:50:59.870 align:middle line:84% about school teachers, about Hollywood script writers. 00:50:59.870 --> 00:51:01.940 align:middle line:84% But they held lots and lots of hearings 00:51:01.940 --> 00:51:04.850 align:middle line:84% about academics, again, with this fear about poisoning 00:51:04.850 --> 00:51:06.650 align:middle line:90% impressionable youth. 00:51:06.650 --> 00:51:08.270 align:middle line:84% And you count up by anything you want 00:51:08.270 --> 00:51:10.520 align:middle line:84% to count-- the number of witnesses who were subpoenaed 00:51:10.520 --> 00:51:15.048 align:middle line:84% to testify, the number of hearings on specific topics, 00:51:15.048 --> 00:51:17.090 align:middle line:84% or the number of days devoted to those hearings-- 00:51:17.090 --> 00:51:21.050 align:middle line:84% by any measure, you see that they were overwhelmingly 00:51:21.050 --> 00:51:22.940 align:middle line:84% drawing on theoretical physicists 00:51:22.940 --> 00:51:26.890 align:middle line:84% in particular, much more than, say, chemists, much more 00:51:26.890 --> 00:51:29.500 align:middle line:84% than economists or philosophers or political scientists who 00:51:29.500 --> 00:51:32.020 align:middle line:84% actually once studied things like communist world systems 00:51:32.020 --> 00:51:35.720 align:middle line:84% or demand side economics or anything else. 00:51:35.720 --> 00:51:39.100 align:middle line:84% So the people who HUAC deemed most dangerous and most 00:51:39.100 --> 00:51:41.890 align:middle line:84% in need of these kind of interrogation high profile 00:51:41.890 --> 00:51:44.770 align:middle line:84% congressional hearings were people who by then they 00:51:44.770 --> 00:51:47.650 align:middle line:84% could associate with nuclear secrets which were formulas 00:51:47.650 --> 00:51:49.220 align:middle line:90% which were dangerous. 00:51:49.220 --> 00:51:50.890 align:middle line:84% And so this begins having a long tail. 00:51:50.890 --> 00:51:52.960 align:middle line:84% And there were just dozens and dozens 00:51:52.960 --> 00:51:56.500 align:middle line:84% of careers that were really destroyed because people 00:51:56.500 --> 00:51:58.630 align:middle line:84% chose to plead the Fifth Amendment or the First 00:51:58.630 --> 00:52:04.270 align:middle line:84% Amendment or had been briefly members of a Communist Party 00:52:04.270 --> 00:52:07.542 align:middle line:84% for a study group in 1935 and found it boring and left, 00:52:07.542 --> 00:52:09.250 align:middle line:84% and suddenly that came back to haunt them 00:52:09.250 --> 00:52:12.072 align:middle line:84% and were fired from tenured, as well as tenure track positions 00:52:12.072 --> 00:52:14.530 align:middle line:84% and all the rest, a very strong amount of blacklisting that 00:52:14.530 --> 00:52:16.210 align:middle line:84% went on that, again, many scholars 00:52:16.210 --> 00:52:17.830 align:middle line:90% have since begun to document. 00:52:17.830 --> 00:52:21.250 align:middle line:84% But you see, I can only make sense of charts like this 00:52:21.250 --> 00:52:24.040 align:middle line:84% by thinking about what were the depictions of how science 00:52:24.040 --> 00:52:27.290 align:middle line:84% and technology work, let alone what's 00:52:27.290 --> 00:52:30.513 align:middle line:84% the most important part behind making nuclear weapons. 00:52:30.513 --> 00:52:31.430 align:middle line:90% So let me pause there. 00:52:31.430 --> 00:52:32.598 align:middle line:90% There's a lot to chew on. 00:52:32.598 --> 00:52:33.890 align:middle line:90% The next parts will be quicker. 00:52:33.890 --> 00:52:37.290 align:middle line:90% 00:52:37.290 --> 00:52:40.920 align:middle line:84% So Gary asks, was Nixon in the House? 00:52:40.920 --> 00:52:41.880 align:middle line:90% Yes. 00:52:41.880 --> 00:52:44.400 align:middle line:84% So part of the famous HUAC hearings 00:52:44.400 --> 00:52:47.550 align:middle line:84% did involve a very young member of Congress, Richard Nixon, 00:52:47.550 --> 00:52:49.770 align:middle line:84% before even his first run for president, let alone 00:52:49.770 --> 00:52:51.310 align:middle line:90% his later runs. 00:52:51.310 --> 00:52:54.032 align:middle line:84% And so this was a bipartisan committee. 00:52:54.032 --> 00:52:55.740 align:middle line:84% It was a standing committee of the House. 00:52:55.740 --> 00:52:57.960 align:middle line:84% But then as now, the majority party 00:52:57.960 --> 00:53:00.310 align:middle line:84% could appoint the chairpeople, and so on. 00:53:00.310 --> 00:53:03.060 align:middle line:84% So during this particular period it 00:53:03.060 --> 00:53:05.460 align:middle line:84% was chaired by some Republicans who 00:53:05.460 --> 00:53:09.090 align:middle line:84% clearly were out against the Democrat Harry Truman 00:53:09.090 --> 00:53:10.170 align:middle line:90% for re-election. 00:53:10.170 --> 00:53:13.170 align:middle line:84% Again, that's not that's neither surprising or illegal. 00:53:13.170 --> 00:53:15.000 align:middle line:84% We have a two-party system in this country, 00:53:15.000 --> 00:53:16.500 align:middle line:90% for better or worse. 00:53:16.500 --> 00:53:20.160 align:middle line:84% But the way that the committee was activated 00:53:20.160 --> 00:53:26.130 align:middle line:84% had a very, very clear and very impactful partisan slant. 00:53:26.130 --> 00:53:29.250 align:middle line:84% The Alger Hiss case was exactly part of the exact same period, 00:53:29.250 --> 00:53:30.325 align:middle line:90% exactly right, Gary. 00:53:30.325 --> 00:53:32.700 align:middle line:84% Lucas says, you seem to know a lot about Soviet espionage 00:53:32.700 --> 00:53:33.510 align:middle line:90% during the Manhattan Project. 00:53:33.510 --> 00:53:35.510 align:middle line:84% What about German or Japanese wartime espionage? 00:53:35.510 --> 00:53:36.350 align:middle line:90% Very good. 00:53:36.350 --> 00:53:39.220 align:middle line:84% I don't know of any, and that's a fascinating question, Lucas. 00:53:39.220 --> 00:53:40.900 align:middle line:84% I can't think of a single instance. 00:53:40.900 --> 00:53:44.890 align:middle line:84% I'll turn to the TAs if any of them have come across it. 00:53:44.890 --> 00:53:46.030 align:middle line:90% I don't know of any. 00:53:46.030 --> 00:53:47.113 align:middle line:90% That's really interesting. 00:53:47.113 --> 00:53:49.770 align:middle line:84% There have been a handful more, like three or four 00:53:49.770 --> 00:53:53.980 align:middle line:84% more instances of wartime espionage, again, 00:53:53.980 --> 00:53:57.100 align:middle line:84% in aid of the Soviets or intended aid of the Soviets, 00:53:57.100 --> 00:54:00.880 align:middle line:84% often from US citizens during the war from the Manhattan 00:54:00.880 --> 00:54:03.610 align:middle line:84% Project that were totally unknown at the time 00:54:03.610 --> 00:54:05.800 align:middle line:84% and came to light literally decades later, 00:54:05.800 --> 00:54:07.120 align:middle line:90% but still only a handful. 00:54:07.120 --> 00:54:09.700 align:middle line:84% And all the ones I know of were people 00:54:09.700 --> 00:54:13.040 align:middle line:84% with the intent of helping the Soviets, which again, 00:54:13.040 --> 00:54:15.910 align:middle line:84% as I remind all of us, the Soviets 00:54:15.910 --> 00:54:20.680 align:middle line:84% were a wartime ally of the US, the UK, and Canada. 00:54:20.680 --> 00:54:22.270 align:middle line:84% And I'm not saying that excuses it, 00:54:22.270 --> 00:54:25.870 align:middle line:84% but that was often highlighted as a motivation 00:54:25.870 --> 00:54:27.370 align:middle line:90% for many of these folks. 00:54:27.370 --> 00:54:30.190 align:middle line:84% I'm not endorsing that behavior, but many of them 00:54:30.190 --> 00:54:36.400 align:middle line:84% would say the Soviets are losing many more members of their army 00:54:36.400 --> 00:54:38.710 align:middle line:84% than we are on behalf of the Allied front, these kinds 00:54:38.710 --> 00:54:40.720 align:middle line:84% of arguments for which I can understand where 00:54:40.720 --> 00:54:41.980 align:middle line:90% that was coming from at least. 00:54:41.980 --> 00:54:46.030 align:middle line:84% And I don't know of a single instance of even attempted, let 00:54:46.030 --> 00:54:48.880 align:middle line:84% alone successful espionage from the US projects, 00:54:48.880 --> 00:54:50.140 align:middle line:90% either for Germany and Japan. 00:54:50.140 --> 00:54:51.280 align:middle line:84% There was a lot more in the other direction. 00:54:51.280 --> 00:54:53.530 align:middle line:84% We talked briefly about US surveillance 00:54:53.530 --> 00:54:55.330 align:middle line:84% of the German nuclear project, including 00:54:55.330 --> 00:54:58.330 align:middle line:84% kidnapping nuclear scientists and all that. 00:54:58.330 --> 00:55:01.708 align:middle line:84% Johan asks, was physics in Allied occupied Germany-- what 00:55:01.708 --> 00:55:04.000 align:middle line:84% was physics like in Allied occupied Germany and Central 00:55:04.000 --> 00:55:04.500 align:middle line:90% Europe? 00:55:04.500 --> 00:55:06.500 align:middle line:90% Oh, very good question. 00:55:06.500 --> 00:55:07.400 align:middle line:90% That's a big topic. 00:55:07.400 --> 00:55:11.470 align:middle line:84% So the short answer is there was a lot of efforts 00:55:11.470 --> 00:55:13.860 align:middle line:84% soon after the war under something that 00:55:13.860 --> 00:55:16.230 align:middle line:84% became known as the Marshall Plan 00:55:16.230 --> 00:55:20.670 align:middle line:84% to do a heavy investment by the United States 00:55:20.670 --> 00:55:24.600 align:middle line:84% in many parts of the world, including Germany, 00:55:24.600 --> 00:55:27.480 align:middle line:84% to try to help them reinvest and reestablish 00:55:27.480 --> 00:55:33.450 align:middle line:84% a kind of civil society, partly as a bulwark 00:55:33.450 --> 00:55:36.360 align:middle line:84% against further temptations, it would have been called 00:55:36.360 --> 00:55:38.910 align:middle line:84% at the time, to align with the Soviets; 00:55:38.910 --> 00:55:40.890 align:middle line:84% partly, some revisionist historians have said, 00:55:40.890 --> 00:55:44.520 align:middle line:84% to make more markets and make it easier 00:55:44.520 --> 00:55:47.327 align:middle line:84% to trade for American commercial interests-- 00:55:47.327 --> 00:55:48.160 align:middle line:90% I think that's true. 00:55:48.160 --> 00:55:49.560 align:middle line:84% I think sometimes it's overblown, but certainly was 00:55:49.560 --> 00:55:51.420 align:middle line:84% part of the calculation-- and also 00:55:51.420 --> 00:55:54.900 align:middle line:84% for these kinds of geostrategic alliance efforts. 00:55:54.900 --> 00:55:58.320 align:middle line:84% So there was a kind of strategic use of redevelopment 00:55:58.320 --> 00:56:00.180 align:middle line:90% or rebuilding aid generally. 00:56:00.180 --> 00:56:02.550 align:middle line:84% And as some of my colleagues like John Krieger 00:56:02.550 --> 00:56:05.520 align:middle line:84% and other historians have shown, a fair amount 00:56:05.520 --> 00:56:09.360 align:middle line:84% of support for basic research in the sciences in many countries 00:56:09.360 --> 00:56:14.050 align:middle line:84% of Europe were undertaken with a similar kind of aim by the US, 00:56:14.050 --> 00:56:16.270 align:middle line:84% including by private US-based foundations, as well 00:56:16.270 --> 00:56:17.650 align:middle line:90% as US government dollars. 00:56:17.650 --> 00:56:19.720 align:middle line:84% Sometimes-- we now know those foundations 00:56:19.720 --> 00:56:21.970 align:middle line:90% were a cover for CIA money. 00:56:21.970 --> 00:56:23.380 align:middle line:84% It was basically money laundering 00:56:23.380 --> 00:56:27.250 align:middle line:84% to buy influence or buy good relations with otherwise 00:56:27.250 --> 00:56:29.120 align:middle line:84% left-leaning scientists in France, 00:56:29.120 --> 00:56:31.870 align:middle line:84% for example, or to avoid what looked 00:56:31.870 --> 00:56:34.120 align:middle line:84% like to have an influence of communist thinking 00:56:34.120 --> 00:56:37.120 align:middle line:84% in certain otherwise influential cultural figures, including 00:56:37.120 --> 00:56:38.170 align:middle line:90% lots of scientists. 00:56:38.170 --> 00:56:40.870 align:middle line:84% So there was often very, in terms 00:56:40.870 --> 00:56:43.150 align:middle line:84% of dollars that were spent, very generous funding 00:56:43.150 --> 00:56:45.220 align:middle line:84% on basic sciences and institutes, 00:56:45.220 --> 00:56:47.680 align:middle line:84% including Niels Bohrs Institute, but many in France, 00:56:47.680 --> 00:56:51.400 align:middle line:84% many in what would become Western Germany, many in Italy, 00:56:51.400 --> 00:56:56.830 align:middle line:84% many joint summer schools and educational efforts 00:56:56.830 --> 00:56:58.840 align:middle line:84% under NATO, as well as just the US. 00:56:58.840 --> 00:57:02.260 align:middle line:84% And again, there was frankly a mixture of incentives or kind 00:57:02.260 --> 00:57:05.380 align:middle line:84% of strategic thinking behind that on the US side, 00:57:05.380 --> 00:57:07.450 align:middle line:84% much of which came to light only decades later, 00:57:07.450 --> 00:57:10.480 align:middle line:84% including, as I say, literal money laundering, as well as, 00:57:10.480 --> 00:57:13.840 align:middle line:84% let's say, more transparent funding 00:57:13.840 --> 00:57:17.830 align:middle line:84% that nonetheless had a range of motivations behind it. 00:57:17.830 --> 00:57:22.150 align:middle line:84% So anyway, more to be said, but that's a fascinating question. 00:57:22.150 --> 00:57:24.940 align:middle line:84% Alex asks, is it possible the AEC declassified 00:57:24.940 --> 00:57:27.902 align:middle line:84% this so-called most closely guarded secret in order 00:57:27.902 --> 00:57:29.860 align:middle line:84% to draw attention away from industrial secrets? 00:57:29.860 --> 00:57:31.270 align:middle line:90% That's really interesting, Alex. 00:57:31.270 --> 00:57:32.620 align:middle line:90% Maybe. 00:57:32.620 --> 00:57:34.900 align:middle line:84% Certainly that would be consistent with their motives. 00:57:34.900 --> 00:57:37.775 align:middle line:84% But what I find interesting is that it really was-- 00:57:37.775 --> 00:57:39.400 align:middle line:84% frankly, it was a kind of double speak. 00:57:39.400 --> 00:57:47.200 align:middle line:84% And again, my ability to find a kind of benevolent explanation 00:57:47.200 --> 00:57:51.190 align:middle line:84% in this instance is strained, seeing just how 00:57:51.190 --> 00:57:53.943 align:middle line:84% much was going on behind the scenes improperly, 00:57:53.943 --> 00:57:55.360 align:middle line:84% and in some cases I think actually 00:57:55.360 --> 00:57:59.200 align:middle line:84% illegally with a coordination between prosecution 00:57:59.200 --> 00:58:05.410 align:middle line:84% and the judge or between federal agencies and journalists. 00:58:05.410 --> 00:58:07.570 align:middle line:84% There was a lot of very intentional leaking 00:58:07.570 --> 00:58:09.100 align:middle line:84% of otherwise protected information 00:58:09.100 --> 00:58:10.617 align:middle line:90% for strategic purposes. 00:58:10.617 --> 00:58:12.700 align:middle line:84% And again, I don't mean to say that was brand new. 00:58:12.700 --> 00:58:15.400 align:middle line:84% That's been happening as long as humans have kept secrets. 00:58:15.400 --> 00:58:21.790 align:middle line:84% But there was a lot of I think very strategic kind of flows, 00:58:21.790 --> 00:58:24.610 align:middle line:90% basically of smear campaigns. 00:58:24.610 --> 00:58:26.860 align:middle line:84% I mean, that's really what I think it could be called. 00:58:26.860 --> 00:58:28.465 align:middle line:84% And even if the people being smeared 00:58:28.465 --> 00:58:30.590 align:middle line:84% had done terrible things that deserved punishment-- 00:58:30.590 --> 00:58:32.090 align:middle line:84% and I think in many, many cases that 00:58:32.090 --> 00:58:35.530 align:middle line:84% seems like a fair conclusion-- the means by which it was done 00:58:35.530 --> 00:58:39.400 align:middle line:84% were often at least as troublesome or as worthy 00:58:39.400 --> 00:58:43.340 align:middle line:84% of careful evaluation years later. 00:58:43.340 --> 00:58:45.190 align:middle line:90% So I don't know. 00:58:45.190 --> 00:58:46.833 align:middle line:84% It's just-- honestly, it's a cesspit. 00:58:46.833 --> 00:58:48.250 align:middle line:84% When you start digging this stuff, 00:58:48.250 --> 00:58:50.987 align:middle line:84% it doesn't inspire one for human nature. 00:58:50.987 --> 00:58:52.570 align:middle line:84% I guess very few things in history do. 00:58:52.570 --> 00:58:54.230 align:middle line:84% But a lot of this gets super messy. 00:58:54.230 --> 00:58:58.060 align:middle line:84% And again, I can appreciate what people thought were the stakes. 00:58:58.060 --> 00:59:01.110 align:middle line:84% I mean, nuclear weapons, now the Soviets have one. 00:59:01.110 --> 00:59:02.860 align:middle line:84% All these people were active in espionage. 00:59:02.860 --> 00:59:06.320 align:middle line:84% You can see this kind of drumbeat of drama. 00:59:06.320 --> 00:59:09.400 align:middle line:84% So I don't mean to suggest that cool heads would 00:59:09.400 --> 00:59:10.940 align:middle line:90% have prevailed today. 00:59:10.940 --> 00:59:12.190 align:middle line:90% I don't think they would have. 00:59:12.190 --> 00:59:14.320 align:middle line:84% But nonetheless, with the fullness of time, 00:59:14.320 --> 00:59:17.170 align:middle line:84% with fuller documentation of what was going on 00:59:17.170 --> 00:59:20.200 align:middle line:84% in many parts of the world, not only within the United States, 00:59:20.200 --> 00:59:23.410 align:middle line:84% I think we can reevaluate many of these maneuvers that 00:59:23.410 --> 00:59:27.040 align:middle line:84% were done in this kind of high fever moment 00:59:27.040 --> 00:59:29.290 align:middle line:84% and maybe try to learn from them moving forward, 00:59:29.290 --> 00:59:32.185 align:middle line:90% put it that way. 00:59:32.185 --> 00:59:32.810 align:middle line:90% Let me move on. 00:59:32.810 --> 00:59:34.110 align:middle line:90% Let me go to these next parts. 00:59:34.110 --> 00:59:35.060 align:middle line:90% They'll be quicker. 00:59:35.060 --> 00:59:39.530 align:middle line:84% But let's press on to next parts for today 00:59:39.530 --> 00:59:43.190 align:middle line:84% and talk about this next section on the decision in the United 00:59:43.190 --> 00:59:45.720 align:middle line:84% States to pursue a new kind of nuclear weapon, the hydrogen 00:59:45.720 --> 00:59:46.220 align:middle line:90% bomb. 00:59:46.220 --> 00:59:49.868 align:middle line:90% 00:59:49.868 --> 00:59:51.660 align:middle line:84% And again, we saw some of this in the film, 00:59:51.660 --> 00:59:53.660 align:middle line:90% The Day After Trinity. 00:59:53.660 --> 00:59:58.400 align:middle line:84% So in October 1949, a few years into the nuclear age, 00:59:58.400 --> 01:00:01.430 align:middle line:84% the Atomic Energy Commission's General Advisory Committee 01:00:01.430 --> 01:00:04.460 align:middle line:84% was often called the GAC, which was 01:00:04.460 --> 01:00:08.150 align:middle line:84% a civilian advisory committee to the civilian Atomic Energy 01:00:08.150 --> 01:00:12.080 align:middle line:84% Commission with many experts, some of whom 01:00:12.080 --> 01:00:15.920 align:middle line:84% were just outside consultants, many of whom 01:00:15.920 --> 01:00:19.820 align:middle line:84% were Manhattan Project veterans, but otherwise not full-time 01:00:19.820 --> 01:00:22.040 align:middle line:84% involved in the nuclear effort afterwards. 01:00:22.040 --> 01:00:26.000 align:middle line:84% This Advisory Committee of approximately a dozen people 01:00:26.000 --> 01:00:29.030 align:middle line:84% wrote a top secret report recommending 01:00:29.030 --> 01:00:32.660 align:middle line:84% to the federal government not to pursue 01:00:32.660 --> 01:00:35.270 align:middle line:84% the development of this new kind of weapon, the hydrogen bomb. 01:00:35.270 --> 01:00:36.992 align:middle line:84% In fact, some committee members actually 01:00:36.992 --> 01:00:38.450 align:middle line:84% argued that such a weapon would be, 01:00:38.450 --> 01:00:41.070 align:middle line:84% in their words, an evil thing in any light. 01:00:41.070 --> 01:00:43.070 align:middle line:84% And we'll see more about what these weapons were 01:00:43.070 --> 01:00:43.580 align:middle line:90% in a few minutes. 01:00:43.580 --> 01:00:45.530 align:middle line:84% But they were saying that there were all kinds of reasons 01:00:45.530 --> 01:00:46.610 align:middle line:90% not to pursue them. 01:00:46.610 --> 01:00:48.170 align:middle line:84% And at least some of these members 01:00:48.170 --> 01:00:51.500 align:middle line:84% made an explicitly moral or ethical argument 01:00:51.500 --> 01:00:54.120 align:middle line:84% that these weapons are, in the parlance of today, 01:00:54.120 --> 01:00:56.187 align:middle line:84% weapons of mass destruction that could only 01:00:56.187 --> 01:00:57.270 align:middle line:90% be used against civilians. 01:00:57.270 --> 01:01:04.860 align:middle line:84% These are no longer in any sense weapons for a military theater. 01:01:04.860 --> 01:01:08.070 align:middle line:84% That was a top secret report, though it, again, 01:01:08.070 --> 01:01:10.560 align:middle line:84% angered certain powerful political figures who 01:01:10.560 --> 01:01:12.870 align:middle line:84% were very gung ho on trying to develop things 01:01:12.870 --> 01:01:14.550 align:middle line:90% like hydrogen weapons. 01:01:14.550 --> 01:01:17.220 align:middle line:84% And Oppenheimer began to stand out more and more 01:01:17.220 --> 01:01:20.850 align:middle line:84% in many of these people's minds as a kind of drag 01:01:20.850 --> 01:01:23.580 align:middle line:84% on the system, that he was perhaps intentionally trying 01:01:23.580 --> 01:01:26.580 align:middle line:84% to sway his own colleagues on the General Advisory Committee. 01:01:26.580 --> 01:01:28.890 align:middle line:84% He chaired the general Advisory Committee at the time. 01:01:28.890 --> 01:01:33.060 align:middle line:84% Was he exercising undue influence on them, was he 01:01:33.060 --> 01:01:36.540 align:middle line:84% trying to lobby against a new kind of weapon 01:01:36.540 --> 01:01:39.630 align:middle line:84% that some people thought the nation needed in order 01:01:39.630 --> 01:01:41.530 align:middle line:90% to secure the peace, and so on. 01:01:41.530 --> 01:01:43.590 align:middle line:84% So this played a very, very large role 01:01:43.590 --> 01:01:47.240 align:middle line:84% in the eventual security hearing against Oppenheimer, 01:01:47.240 --> 01:01:49.740 align:middle line:84% the result of which was that he was stripped of his security 01:01:49.740 --> 01:01:52.050 align:middle line:84% clearance and no longer consulted 01:01:52.050 --> 01:01:55.180 align:middle line:84% for the federal government, starting in 1954. 01:01:55.180 --> 01:01:58.200 align:middle line:84% So the H-bomb decision was fraught on many, many levels 01:01:58.200 --> 01:01:59.333 align:middle line:90% over many years. 01:01:59.333 --> 01:02:00.000 align:middle line:90% That's the idea. 01:02:00.000 --> 01:02:01.698 align:middle line:84% It was associated-- became closely 01:02:01.698 --> 01:02:03.990 align:middle line:84% associated with Oppenheimer because he chaired this GAC 01:02:03.990 --> 01:02:05.070 align:middle line:90% committee. 01:02:05.070 --> 01:02:08.220 align:middle line:84% The GAC committee report was highly classified. 01:02:08.220 --> 01:02:10.560 align:middle line:84% In fact, the text was only declassified 01:02:10.560 --> 01:02:14.460 align:middle line:84% and widely available starting in the 1980s, decades later. 01:02:14.460 --> 01:02:17.770 align:middle line:84% Now you can find it easily online in many, many places. 01:02:17.770 --> 01:02:22.050 align:middle line:84% And if you go back and read the actual report, 01:02:22.050 --> 01:02:25.140 align:middle line:84% it does indeed argue against the development of a hydrogen 01:02:25.140 --> 01:02:29.640 align:middle line:84% weapon, but not because of ethical worries 01:02:29.640 --> 01:02:31.680 align:middle line:84% and not because the members of the GAC 01:02:31.680 --> 01:02:35.940 align:middle line:84% were striking a kind of pacifist tone or an anti-nuclear tone, 01:02:35.940 --> 01:02:36.910 align:middle line:90% by any means. 01:02:36.910 --> 01:02:42.060 align:middle line:84% In fact, the report advocates a very aggressive nuclear stance. 01:02:42.060 --> 01:02:45.240 align:middle line:84% And they argue against hydrogen weapons, as we'll see in a few, 01:02:45.240 --> 01:02:46.128 align:middle line:90% for several reasons. 01:02:46.128 --> 01:02:47.670 align:middle line:84% Because the committee worried that it 01:02:47.670 --> 01:02:51.580 align:middle line:84% would derail too much of what they considered 01:02:51.580 --> 01:02:54.780 align:middle line:84% a critical effort to make more and more working weapons 01:02:54.780 --> 01:02:58.590 align:middle line:84% of the World War II type, that any effort to make 01:02:58.590 --> 01:03:02.220 align:middle line:84% as yet unproven hydrogen bombs would actually 01:03:02.220 --> 01:03:05.203 align:middle line:84% be too disruptive to the arsenal for other kinds 01:03:05.203 --> 01:03:06.870 align:middle line:84% of nuclear weapons, which the group said 01:03:06.870 --> 01:03:11.010 align:middle line:84% were essential to go on full speed ahead. 01:03:11.010 --> 01:03:12.890 align:middle line:84% So not only was Oppenheimer not being 01:03:12.890 --> 01:03:18.140 align:middle line:84% some pacifist dove saying all bombs are bad, 01:03:18.140 --> 01:03:19.340 align:middle line:90% they were actually-- 01:03:19.340 --> 01:03:22.130 align:middle line:84% Oppenheimer's own committee and Oppenheimer's cover letter 01:03:22.130 --> 01:03:25.190 align:middle line:84% and so on makes it clear that he individually, and the committee 01:03:25.190 --> 01:03:28.370 align:middle line:84% broadly, were advocating an aggressive expansion 01:03:28.370 --> 01:03:30.350 align:middle line:84% of the nuclear weapons capabilities. 01:03:30.350 --> 01:03:33.050 align:middle line:84% And it was only this Minority Report included 01:03:33.050 --> 01:03:35.780 align:middle line:84% as an appendix-- written not by Oppenheimer, 01:03:35.780 --> 01:03:39.500 align:middle line:84% but by other members, Enrico Fermi and Isidor Rabi-- 01:03:39.500 --> 01:03:41.780 align:middle line:84% that also raises additional reason not 01:03:41.780 --> 01:03:44.720 align:middle line:84% to pursue a hydrogen bomb where they speak briefly, 01:03:44.720 --> 01:03:46.323 align:middle line:90% but in explicitly moral tones. 01:03:46.323 --> 01:03:47.990 align:middle line:84% That wasn't Oppenheimer at all, in fact, 01:03:47.990 --> 01:03:49.532 align:middle line:84% and it doesn't seem to have reflected 01:03:49.532 --> 01:03:50.600 align:middle line:90% his views at the time. 01:03:50.600 --> 01:03:52.250 align:middle line:84% And we know that, because Oppenheimer 01:03:52.250 --> 01:03:54.470 align:middle line:84% was doing lots of consulting until his clearance was 01:03:54.470 --> 01:03:55.040 align:middle line:90% stripped. 01:03:55.040 --> 01:03:59.760 align:middle line:84% So even after the 1949 report from the General Advisory 01:03:59.760 --> 01:04:03.980 align:middle line:84% Committee, he was leading all kinds of study groups 01:04:03.980 --> 01:04:07.050 align:middle line:84% for classified advice on nuclear issues. 01:04:07.050 --> 01:04:08.930 align:middle line:84% Another example of the many, many 01:04:08.930 --> 01:04:12.030 align:middle line:84% was conducted in the summer of 1951. 01:04:12.030 --> 01:04:14.340 align:middle line:84% It was held on Caltech's campus, but again, it 01:04:14.340 --> 01:04:16.980 align:middle line:84% was all classified work sponsored by the US Army 01:04:16.980 --> 01:04:20.640 align:middle line:84% and the Air Force called Project Vista and had many, many parts. 01:04:20.640 --> 01:04:25.500 align:middle line:84% But one of those had to do with nuclear strategies 01:04:25.500 --> 01:04:29.600 align:middle line:84% for different kinds of stats as vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. 01:04:29.600 --> 01:04:32.970 align:middle line:84% And the subcommittee that Oppenheimer actually chaired 01:04:32.970 --> 01:04:36.300 align:middle line:84% recommended that hundreds of nuclear weapons 01:04:36.300 --> 01:04:40.440 align:middle line:84% should be deployed throughout Western Europe, including West 01:04:40.440 --> 01:04:43.080 align:middle line:84% Germany and Allied NATO bases all 01:04:43.080 --> 01:04:47.760 align:middle line:84% around Western Europe with actual working tactical weapons 01:04:47.760 --> 01:04:50.320 align:middle line:84% that could be used and should be used, 01:04:50.320 --> 01:04:54.055 align:middle line:84% they argued, to repel a potential invasion 01:04:54.055 --> 01:04:54.930 align:middle line:90% from the Soviet army. 01:04:54.930 --> 01:04:57.390 align:middle line:84% The worry at this point was that the Soviet army, in terms 01:04:57.390 --> 01:05:00.030 align:middle line:84% of numbers of troops, was just so much larger than any 01:05:00.030 --> 01:05:02.760 align:middle line:84% of the NATO-affiliated armies that if it 01:05:02.760 --> 01:05:05.160 align:middle line:84% were a conventional warfare fought in the early '50s, 01:05:05.160 --> 01:05:08.430 align:middle line:84% the Soviets would just roll over anyone else, was the fear. 01:05:08.430 --> 01:05:10.020 align:middle line:84% So this group said, well, then we'll 01:05:10.020 --> 01:05:14.060 align:middle line:84% just use usable tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield 01:05:14.060 --> 01:05:16.070 align:middle line:84% to repel an otherwise numerically 01:05:16.070 --> 01:05:18.540 align:middle line:90% superior Soviet invading force. 01:05:18.540 --> 01:05:21.920 align:middle line:84% So Oppenheimer's own committee pushes 01:05:21.920 --> 01:05:25.820 align:middle line:84% for a first-use nuclear policy, which was incredibly aggressive 01:05:25.820 --> 01:05:28.100 align:middle line:84% at the time, that not only should these weapons be 01:05:28.100 --> 01:05:29.780 align:middle line:84% deployed, but we should use them first, 01:05:29.780 --> 01:05:31.670 align:middle line:84% even if the other side doesn't use nukes first. 01:05:31.670 --> 01:05:33.878 align:middle line:84% By this point the Soviets had their own [INAUDIBLE].. 01:05:33.878 --> 01:05:35.780 align:middle line:84% So this wasn't greeted with fanfare 01:05:35.780 --> 01:05:37.490 align:middle line:90% by everyone who could see it. 01:05:37.490 --> 01:05:40.130 align:middle line:84% In fact, it made more enemies with the Air Force 01:05:40.130 --> 01:05:43.038 align:middle line:84% because this seemed to cede more control over nuclear weapons 01:05:43.038 --> 01:05:44.330 align:middle line:90% to the Army than the Air Force. 01:05:44.330 --> 01:05:46.940 align:middle line:84% There's always this internal rivalry and tension. 01:05:46.940 --> 01:05:50.035 align:middle line:84% So the Air Force said, we should be the only ones who 01:05:50.035 --> 01:05:51.410 align:middle line:84% handle nuclear weapons because we 01:05:51.410 --> 01:05:53.900 align:middle line:84% have the big bombs and the big planes, 01:05:53.900 --> 01:05:55.700 align:middle line:90% and we can deliver them. 01:05:55.700 --> 01:05:58.143 align:middle line:84% So Oppenheimer made more internal enemies, 01:05:58.143 --> 01:06:00.560 align:middle line:84% but not because he was saying, get rid of nuclear weapons, 01:06:00.560 --> 01:06:02.268 align:middle line:84% because he was saying, make more of them, 01:06:02.268 --> 01:06:04.010 align:middle line:84% and be ready to use them aggressively. 01:06:04.010 --> 01:06:05.322 align:middle line:90% I find that chilling. 01:06:05.322 --> 01:06:07.280 align:middle line:84% Meanwhile, what were some more of the arguments 01:06:07.280 --> 01:06:10.520 align:middle line:84% within the actual 1949 GAC report? 01:06:10.520 --> 01:06:14.190 align:middle line:84% Why else did they say not to pursue a hydrogen weapon 01:06:14.190 --> 01:06:20.390 align:middle line:84% and instead to focus on implosion fission weapons? 01:06:20.390 --> 01:06:22.940 align:middle line:84% 2 and 1/2 years-- or I guess 1 and 1/2 years after the end 01:06:22.940 --> 01:06:26.300 align:middle line:84% of the war in April of '47, the US still only 01:06:26.300 --> 01:06:28.940 align:middle line:90% had components for seven bombs. 01:06:28.940 --> 01:06:30.320 align:middle line:90% They weren't even assembled. 01:06:30.320 --> 01:06:32.570 align:middle line:84% If there had been a sudden change 01:06:32.570 --> 01:06:36.500 align:middle line:84% in the geopolitical situation, and there 01:06:36.500 --> 01:06:39.440 align:middle line:84% was deemed to be some need to start using bombs 01:06:39.440 --> 01:06:41.900 align:middle line:84% as they've been used at the end of the Second World War, 01:06:41.900 --> 01:06:45.830 align:middle line:84% there were only parts for seven bombs even 01:06:45.830 --> 01:06:48.560 align:middle line:84% nearly two years later after the end of the War. 01:06:48.560 --> 01:06:50.660 align:middle line:84% Two years after that, or two and 1/2 years after, 01:06:50.660 --> 01:06:54.085 align:middle line:84% that the entire stockpile was still only 235 weapons. 01:06:54.085 --> 01:06:56.460 align:middle line:84% Of course, that was a closely guarded secret at the time. 01:06:56.460 --> 01:06:59.090 align:middle line:84% That's one of the things that has since been declassified. 01:06:59.090 --> 01:07:02.443 align:middle line:84% So that was very, very much on the minds of members of the GAC 01:07:02.443 --> 01:07:04.610 align:middle line:84% who had security clearance to know all these things. 01:07:04.610 --> 01:07:06.590 align:middle line:84% They argue, saying, we should be concentrating 01:07:06.590 --> 01:07:09.540 align:middle line:84% on building up a stockpile of weapons we know how to make 01:07:09.540 --> 01:07:12.380 align:middle line:84% and that we know could be effective, militarily 01:07:12.380 --> 01:07:14.720 align:middle line:90% effective in their estimation? 01:07:14.720 --> 01:07:18.300 align:middle line:84% Likewise, they go on to say, the delivery systems, 01:07:18.300 --> 01:07:20.490 align:middle line:84% which by that point mostly meant aircraft, 01:07:20.490 --> 01:07:22.770 align:middle line:84% would limit the size of hydrogen bombs. 01:07:22.770 --> 01:07:25.530 align:middle line:84% The idea was that any design that might work-- and there 01:07:25.530 --> 01:07:27.540 align:middle line:84% were at that point no workable designs. 01:07:27.540 --> 01:07:32.220 align:middle line:84% All the ideas seemed to require enormous factory-scale 01:07:32.220 --> 01:07:34.920 align:middle line:84% associated equipment like cryogenics and so on. 01:07:34.920 --> 01:07:38.340 align:middle line:84% You'd have to ship like a small factory, part of which 01:07:38.340 --> 01:07:41.080 align:middle line:84% would then blow up, was at least the thought. 01:07:41.080 --> 01:07:45.660 align:middle line:84% How could you possibly get these things to a military target? 01:07:45.660 --> 01:07:48.120 align:middle line:84% They're going to be too large even for the biggest bombers 01:07:48.120 --> 01:07:50.400 align:middle line:90% in the Air Force's fleet. 01:07:50.400 --> 01:07:52.860 align:middle line:84% So we don't know how to make them, they're saying, 01:07:52.860 --> 01:07:54.527 align:middle line:84% and if we could make them, they wouldn't 01:07:54.527 --> 01:07:55.968 align:middle line:90% be practical for delivery. 01:07:55.968 --> 01:07:57.510 align:middle line:84% Remember this is long before rockets, 01:07:57.510 --> 01:07:59.890 align:middle line:84% this is long before Sputnik, and so on. 01:07:59.890 --> 01:08:01.500 align:middle line:84% So as they write in their own report, 01:08:01.500 --> 01:08:03.270 align:middle line:84% their classified report, there appears 01:08:03.270 --> 01:08:06.210 align:middle line:84% to be no chance of hydrogen weapons being 01:08:06.210 --> 01:08:08.340 align:middle line:84% an economical alternative to fission weapons 01:08:08.340 --> 01:08:11.640 align:middle line:84% based on what they called the strict criteria of damage 01:08:11.640 --> 01:08:12.900 align:middle line:90% area per dollar. 01:08:12.900 --> 01:08:16.140 align:middle line:84% If we want to have a kind of nuclear arsenal, 01:08:16.140 --> 01:08:19.649 align:middle line:84% they're arguing, let's make it of weapons we know how to make 01:08:19.649 --> 01:08:22.840 align:middle line:84% and that we know could be delivered. 01:08:22.840 --> 01:08:25.600 align:middle line:84% There are even more esoteric challenges that the group 01:08:25.600 --> 01:08:28.420 align:middle line:84% was wrestling with, again, in the report, in the classified 01:08:28.420 --> 01:08:34.310 align:middle line:84% report, as well as other classified briefings. 01:08:34.310 --> 01:08:36.790 align:middle line:84% So at the time that the GAC wrote this report, 01:08:36.790 --> 01:08:40.450 align:middle line:84% all the known projected hydrogen bomb designs-- none of which 01:08:40.450 --> 01:08:45.040 align:middle line:84% had been tested or built yet-- all of the prototype 01:08:45.040 --> 01:08:48.370 align:middle line:84% ideas required huge amounts of tritium. 01:08:48.370 --> 01:08:51.370 align:middle line:84% That's a heavy isotope of hydrogen. They're 01:08:51.370 --> 01:08:53.920 align:middle line:84% called hydrogen bombs, but ordinary hydrogen it was feared 01:08:53.920 --> 01:08:54.712 align:middle line:90% wouldn't be enough. 01:08:54.712 --> 01:08:58.029 align:middle line:84% You needed many more neutrons per hydrogen nucleus. 01:08:58.029 --> 01:09:00.100 align:middle line:84% You needed a heavy isotope called tritium. 01:09:00.100 --> 01:09:02.560 align:middle line:84% Tritium, then as now, was very rare 01:09:02.560 --> 01:09:04.390 align:middle line:90% and very expensive to produce. 01:09:04.390 --> 01:09:06.819 align:middle line:84% The naturally occurring amounts are trace. 01:09:06.819 --> 01:09:08.890 align:middle line:84% So again, much like plutonium, the idea 01:09:08.890 --> 01:09:11.859 align:middle line:84% is you'd have to make tritium in reactors. 01:09:11.859 --> 01:09:15.279 align:middle line:84% And the designs called for kilograms worth of tritium 01:09:15.279 --> 01:09:17.620 align:middle line:84% per bomb, just like they called for tens of kilograms 01:09:17.620 --> 01:09:19.000 align:middle line:90% worth of plutonium. 01:09:19.000 --> 01:09:21.520 align:middle line:90% Producing just 10 grams-- 01:09:21.520 --> 01:09:23.180 align:middle line:84% not even not even a whole kilogram, 01:09:23.180 --> 01:09:26.930 align:middle line:84% producing 10 grams of tritium at the time meant taking reactors 01:09:26.930 --> 01:09:29.600 align:middle line:84% offline that otherwise would have been producing plutonium 01:09:29.600 --> 01:09:33.450 align:middle line:84% for the known design of nuclear weapons. 01:09:33.450 --> 01:09:35.660 align:middle line:84% And so they go through this calculation. 01:09:35.660 --> 01:09:41.300 align:middle line:84% The US would forego 100 or more fission bombs per hydrogen bomb 01:09:41.300 --> 01:09:43.819 align:middle line:84% even if the designs would work because the materials that 01:09:43.819 --> 01:09:45.770 align:middle line:90% would be needed were so rare. 01:09:45.770 --> 01:09:48.740 align:middle line:84% And it was a direct trade-off, a zero sum game, they argued, 01:09:48.740 --> 01:09:51.200 align:middle line:84% in how you produce the fissionable materials 01:09:51.200 --> 01:09:53.939 align:middle line:90% versus the fusion fuel. 01:09:53.939 --> 01:09:55.920 align:middle line:84% So they make this report saying, for all 01:09:55.920 --> 01:09:57.660 align:middle line:84% these tactical and strategic reasons, 01:09:57.660 --> 01:10:00.360 align:middle line:84% we advise against a crash course development of a hydrogen 01:10:00.360 --> 01:10:03.850 align:middle line:84% bomb, that was delivered to many US officials, 01:10:03.850 --> 01:10:05.040 align:middle line:90% including the president. 01:10:05.040 --> 01:10:08.700 align:middle line:84% Nonetheless, really just weeks later on the very last day 01:10:08.700 --> 01:10:12.090 align:middle line:84% of January, 1950, the US President, Harry Truman, 01:10:12.090 --> 01:10:15.120 align:middle line:84% announced publicly that he was nonetheless 01:10:15.120 --> 01:10:17.400 align:middle line:84% ordering the crash course development of a hydrogen 01:10:17.400 --> 01:10:19.025 align:middle line:84% bomb-- that was a public announcement-- 01:10:19.025 --> 01:10:21.120 align:middle line:84% and at the same time, then ordered a gag order 01:10:21.120 --> 01:10:22.770 align:middle line:84% so anyone with information about this 01:10:22.770 --> 01:10:24.090 align:middle line:84% could no longer speak to the press. 01:10:24.090 --> 01:10:25.507 align:middle line:84% So he makes a public announcement, 01:10:25.507 --> 01:10:27.900 align:middle line:84% then limits other public discussion. 01:10:27.900 --> 01:10:29.280 align:middle line:84% And again, looking back, you say, 01:10:29.280 --> 01:10:31.890 align:middle line:84% oh, but what about all this smart input from the GAC? 01:10:31.890 --> 01:10:34.320 align:middle line:84% They had clearance, they were experienced, 01:10:34.320 --> 01:10:35.850 align:middle line:90% they made good arguments. 01:10:35.850 --> 01:10:39.660 align:middle line:84% Again, with hindsight, I can see how 01:10:39.660 --> 01:10:42.510 align:middle line:84% Truman might have felt like his hand was forced, 01:10:42.510 --> 01:10:45.480 align:middle line:84% not only because of arguments about tritium 01:10:45.480 --> 01:10:48.420 align:middle line:84% rates of production, but also because of what else 01:10:48.420 --> 01:10:52.110 align:middle line:84% was changing in the world around him, around many people. 01:10:52.110 --> 01:10:55.600 align:middle line:84% Remember only weeks before he had announced to the world 01:10:55.600 --> 01:10:58.000 align:middle line:84% that the Soviets now had their own nuclear weapon, 01:10:58.000 --> 01:11:00.550 align:middle line:84% that announcement about so-called Joe I. 01:11:00.550 --> 01:11:03.790 align:middle line:84% One week after that, the communists in China 01:11:03.790 --> 01:11:05.020 align:middle line:90% won militarily. 01:11:05.020 --> 01:11:06.520 align:middle line:90% They beat the nationalists. 01:11:06.520 --> 01:11:09.040 align:middle line:84% China had had an ongoing Civil War. 01:11:09.040 --> 01:11:10.810 align:middle line:90% The US had backed one side. 01:11:10.810 --> 01:11:14.140 align:middle line:84% The other side won, the explicit Chinese Communist Party. 01:11:14.140 --> 01:11:16.210 align:middle line:84% So now it looked like many people 01:11:16.210 --> 01:11:18.730 align:middle line:84% read that as a kind of domino effect 01:11:18.730 --> 01:11:21.700 align:middle line:84% of further communist expansion, first the Soviets, 01:11:21.700 --> 01:11:22.570 align:middle line:90% now the Chinese. 01:11:22.570 --> 01:11:24.820 align:middle line:84% That was at least how it was often read or interpreted 01:11:24.820 --> 01:11:25.960 align:middle line:90% in the US. 01:11:25.960 --> 01:11:29.500 align:middle line:84% And then just days before Truman's announcement, 01:11:29.500 --> 01:11:31.330 align:middle line:84% Klaus Fuchs confessed to espionage, saying, 01:11:31.330 --> 01:11:34.032 align:middle line:84% yes, I really was stealing stuff from wartime Manhattan Project 01:11:34.032 --> 01:11:34.990 align:middle line:90% to give to the Soviets. 01:11:34.990 --> 01:11:38.290 align:middle line:84% So in some sense, we can understand 01:11:38.290 --> 01:11:40.540 align:middle line:84% how Truman might have arrived at that decision, 01:11:40.540 --> 01:11:44.560 align:middle line:84% even though there were, one might say, 01:11:44.560 --> 01:11:47.350 align:middle line:84% at least understandable and I think maybe compelling reasons 01:11:47.350 --> 01:11:49.345 align:middle line:90% given on the other side. 01:11:49.345 --> 01:11:50.720 align:middle line:84% Remember this is all before there 01:11:50.720 --> 01:11:53.720 align:middle line:84% was a single notion of how to actually make a hydrogen bomb. 01:11:53.720 --> 01:11:56.420 align:middle line:84% Truman was saying, we'll work harder at it, basically. 01:11:56.420 --> 01:12:01.460 align:middle line:84% So more than a year after his announcement in March of 1951, 01:12:01.460 --> 01:12:04.940 align:middle line:84% under high secrecy, there was a first really important 01:12:04.940 --> 01:12:06.710 align:middle line:84% conceptual breakthrough we now know. 01:12:06.710 --> 01:12:08.660 align:middle line:84% It wasn't known widely at the time. 01:12:08.660 --> 01:12:11.540 align:middle line:84% And that was introduced by these two individuals-- 01:12:11.540 --> 01:12:14.630 align:middle line:84% Stan Ulam, who was interviewed in The Day After Trinity 01:12:14.630 --> 01:12:16.970 align:middle line:84% a mathematician who worked at wartime Los Alamos 01:12:16.970 --> 01:12:20.270 align:middle line:84% and stayed much of his time at Los Alamos, 01:12:20.270 --> 01:12:22.477 align:middle line:84% and the theoretical physicist Edward Teller. 01:12:22.477 --> 01:12:24.560 align:middle line:84% And the two of them were working together and kind 01:12:24.560 --> 01:12:26.600 align:middle line:84% of bouncing ideas back and forth. 01:12:26.600 --> 01:12:28.550 align:middle line:84% And together around the same time, 01:12:28.550 --> 01:12:31.010 align:middle line:84% they helped refine this idea in secret 01:12:31.010 --> 01:12:34.470 align:middle line:84% that's now called the either Teller-Ulam or Ulam-Teller 01:12:34.470 --> 01:12:34.970 align:middle line:90% idea. 01:12:34.970 --> 01:12:38.090 align:middle line:84% There's a real fight afterwards about who deserves more credit. 01:12:38.090 --> 01:12:41.450 align:middle line:84% So Ulam does seem to have gotten to the main idea first. 01:12:41.450 --> 01:12:43.620 align:middle line:84% Even teller seemed to grudgingly admit that. 01:12:43.620 --> 01:12:45.710 align:middle line:84% So I tend to call it Ulam-Teller. 01:12:45.710 --> 01:12:47.930 align:middle line:84% The idea, again, is physically very interesting 01:12:47.930 --> 01:12:51.430 align:middle line:84% if we think only about the laws of nature for a moment. 01:12:51.430 --> 01:12:55.140 align:middle line:84% The idea was not to try to ignite a fusion reaction only 01:12:55.140 --> 01:12:58.230 align:middle line:84% based on the very high temperatures released 01:12:58.230 --> 01:13:02.740 align:middle line:84% by a fission bomb, but actually using radiation pressure. 01:13:02.740 --> 01:13:06.780 align:middle line:84% So these fission bombs give out tons of very high energy X-ray 01:13:06.780 --> 01:13:10.570 align:middle line:84% radiation in addition to producing a lot of heat. 01:13:10.570 --> 01:13:12.810 align:middle line:84% The early efforts to try to cook, 01:13:12.810 --> 01:13:15.420 align:middle line:84% to try to start a fusion reaction going, fusing 01:13:15.420 --> 01:13:18.330 align:middle line:84% very light nuclei together and thereby releasing energy, 01:13:18.330 --> 01:13:20.670 align:middle line:84% had all relied on heating the fusion 01:13:20.670 --> 01:13:25.200 align:middle line:84% fuel to very high energies and using a nuclear weapon fission 01:13:25.200 --> 01:13:28.710 align:middle line:84% bomb as a so-called trigger to heat up the fusion fuel. 01:13:28.710 --> 01:13:30.000 align:middle line:90% And none of them seem to work. 01:13:30.000 --> 01:13:32.730 align:middle line:84% You couldn't heat it fast enough or all these kinds of concerns. 01:13:32.730 --> 01:13:34.860 align:middle line:90% It didn't seem to be feasible. 01:13:34.860 --> 01:13:38.850 align:middle line:84% And what Ulam and Teller together really put forward 01:13:38.850 --> 01:13:41.430 align:middle line:84% was that those fission bombs do more than just give off heat. 01:13:41.430 --> 01:13:44.760 align:middle line:84% They give out unbelievable amounts of very high energy 01:13:44.760 --> 01:13:46.500 align:middle line:90% radiation X-rays. 01:13:46.500 --> 01:13:50.280 align:middle line:84% And people knew since long before Compton scattering days 01:13:50.280 --> 01:13:52.740 align:middle line:90% that radiation carries momentum. 01:13:52.740 --> 01:13:54.402 align:middle line:90% It can exert pressure. 01:13:54.402 --> 01:13:55.860 align:middle line:84% So then they realized if they could 01:13:55.860 --> 01:13:58.260 align:middle line:84% begin building a kind of cylindrical design 01:13:58.260 --> 01:14:02.220 align:middle line:84% and channel or focus that very high intensity very high 01:14:02.220 --> 01:14:05.400 align:middle line:84% energy radiation from this trigger, this fission bomb 01:14:05.400 --> 01:14:08.520 align:middle line:84% trigger, explode a kind of plutonium bomb 01:14:08.520 --> 01:14:12.730 align:middle line:84% at one end of a cylinder and funnel or lens 01:14:12.730 --> 01:14:16.320 align:middle line:84% the X-rays onto the fusion fuel, then it actually 01:14:16.320 --> 01:14:21.060 align:middle line:84% might ignite the fuel and might require much, much less tritium 01:14:21.060 --> 01:14:25.180 align:middle line:84% because the reaction might be more likely to get started. 01:14:25.180 --> 01:14:27.180 align:middle line:84% That was still just literally a thought. 01:14:27.180 --> 01:14:29.040 align:middle line:84% That was certainly not proven, but it 01:14:29.040 --> 01:14:31.620 align:middle line:84% was the first new conceptual insight 01:14:31.620 --> 01:14:34.260 align:middle line:84% after years of thinking about hydrogen weapons. 01:14:34.260 --> 01:14:37.618 align:middle line:84% So again, just the timeline I find just astonishingly fast. 01:14:37.618 --> 01:14:39.660 align:middle line:84% We saw Truman makes this announcement at the very 01:14:39.660 --> 01:14:41.940 align:middle line:90% last day of January, 1950. 01:14:41.940 --> 01:14:43.450 align:middle line:90% A little over a year later-- 01:14:43.450 --> 01:14:45.210 align:middle line:90% still, of course, top secret-- 01:14:45.210 --> 01:14:48.180 align:middle line:84% Stan Ulam and Edward Teller introduced this really quite 01:14:48.180 --> 01:14:49.890 align:middle line:84% compellingly new idea to at least start 01:14:49.890 --> 01:14:51.660 align:middle line:84% working on-- will it work, won't it work? 01:14:51.660 --> 01:14:54.040 align:middle line:90% 01:14:54.040 --> 01:14:54.540 align:middle line:90% A 01:14:54.540 --> 01:14:56.790 align:middle line:84% Little more than a year after that, the US 01:14:56.790 --> 01:15:01.170 align:middle line:84% establishes a second full-scale top secret nuclear weapons lab 01:15:01.170 --> 01:15:03.510 align:middle line:84% in California, not too far from Berkeley 01:15:03.510 --> 01:15:05.550 align:middle line:84% in Livermore, California, largely 01:15:05.550 --> 01:15:07.740 align:middle line:84% at the urging and the lobbying of Edward Teller 01:15:07.740 --> 01:15:11.550 align:middle line:90% and other political allies. 01:15:11.550 --> 01:15:13.740 align:middle line:84% So there was Los Alamos operating at full tilt, 01:15:13.740 --> 01:15:15.780 align:middle line:84% plus the second lab at Livermore. 01:15:15.780 --> 01:15:18.690 align:middle line:84% And the kind of gallows humor, the joke 01:15:18.690 --> 01:15:21.480 align:middle line:84% soon developed at Livermore that the main competition 01:15:21.480 --> 01:15:23.580 align:middle line:84% was actually Los Alamos, that the Soviets weren't 01:15:23.580 --> 01:15:24.310 align:middle line:90% the competition. 01:15:24.310 --> 01:15:27.210 align:middle line:84% The second lab had to prove its worth vis-a-vis the first lab. 01:15:27.210 --> 01:15:28.710 align:middle line:84% There was a real internal rivalry, 01:15:28.710 --> 01:15:31.170 align:middle line:84% much like Army versus Air Force and Navy 01:15:31.170 --> 01:15:32.680 align:middle line:90% and all these kinds of things. 01:15:32.680 --> 01:15:36.820 align:middle line:84% And again, just remarkably quickly, in November of '52-- 01:15:36.820 --> 01:15:39.450 align:middle line:84% so a year and a 1/2 after this first kind of sketch 01:15:39.450 --> 01:15:41.200 align:middle line:90% of a new idea to proceed-- 01:15:41.200 --> 01:15:45.360 align:middle line:84% the first working hydrogen bomb device 01:15:45.360 --> 01:15:51.320 align:middle line:84% was detonated by the US in the Pacific on the Enewetok Atoll 01:15:51.320 --> 01:15:53.570 align:middle line:84% with an explosive yield that was indeed 01:15:53.570 --> 01:15:56.420 align:middle line:84% 1,000 times more powerful than the bombs that 01:15:56.420 --> 01:16:00.500 align:middle line:84% had been used against either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. 01:16:00.500 --> 01:16:04.730 align:middle line:84% So the wartime fission bombs were measuring outputs 01:16:04.730 --> 01:16:09.620 align:middle line:84% in the tens of thousands of tons, so tens 01:16:09.620 --> 01:16:12.890 align:middle line:90% of kilotons of conventional TNT. 01:16:12.890 --> 01:16:15.860 align:middle line:84% And these hydrogen bombs were setting the scale up 01:16:15.860 --> 01:16:17.300 align:middle line:90% by a factor of 1,000. 01:16:17.300 --> 01:16:23.390 align:middle line:84% The first one ever tested had an explosive yield of more than 10 01:16:23.390 --> 01:16:27.710 align:middle line:90% million tons equivalent of TNT. 01:16:27.710 --> 01:16:29.570 align:middle line:84% And then again, as you probably know, 01:16:29.570 --> 01:16:32.870 align:middle line:84% that was just the beginning of an enormous race 01:16:32.870 --> 01:16:35.672 align:middle line:84% of doing above-ground nuclear tests between the US 01:16:35.672 --> 01:16:37.130 align:middle line:84% and the Soviet Union and eventually 01:16:37.130 --> 01:16:41.450 align:middle line:84% other countries, as well, France and other countries, Britain 01:16:41.450 --> 01:16:42.980 align:middle line:90% and some others. 01:16:42.980 --> 01:16:45.560 align:middle line:84% We're not so clear who's doing what when, 01:16:45.560 --> 01:16:47.360 align:middle line:84% but certainly in these early years, mostly 01:16:47.360 --> 01:16:48.680 align:middle line:90% the US and the Soviet Union. 01:16:48.680 --> 01:16:51.710 align:middle line:84% This is a plot just of the number of above-ground tests, 01:16:51.710 --> 01:16:54.980 align:middle line:84% not even including their yield or their radioactive fallout 01:16:54.980 --> 01:16:56.150 align:middle line:90% or anything else. 01:16:56.150 --> 01:16:57.740 align:middle line:84% As you can see, the US was doing-- 01:16:57.740 --> 01:16:59.390 align:middle line:90% this is the Trinity test. 01:16:59.390 --> 01:17:00.170 align:middle line:90% That's the first. 01:17:00.170 --> 01:17:01.520 align:middle line:90% These are only test detonations. 01:17:01.520 --> 01:17:05.630 align:middle line:84% Here's the one in 1945, several more in 1946, 01:17:05.630 --> 01:17:08.360 align:middle line:90% the first Soviet test in 1949. 01:17:08.360 --> 01:17:10.560 align:middle line:84% By the time we get to the mid 1950s, 01:17:10.560 --> 01:17:14.090 align:middle line:84% the US conducted nearly 80 above-ground nuclear tests 01:17:14.090 --> 01:17:15.150 align:middle line:90% in that year alone. 01:17:15.150 --> 01:17:16.880 align:middle line:90% That's more than one per week. 01:17:16.880 --> 01:17:19.370 align:middle line:84% That's extraordinary, the pace of this. 01:17:19.370 --> 01:17:21.470 align:middle line:84% And almost all of these now were variations 01:17:21.470 --> 01:17:25.730 align:middle line:84% of the hydrogen bombs, no longer these seemingly small-- 01:17:25.730 --> 01:17:28.890 align:middle line:84% not so small, but by comparison small fission bombs. 01:17:28.890 --> 01:17:31.080 align:middle line:84% And then again, you see a brief pause here 01:17:31.080 --> 01:17:35.550 align:middle line:84% and then another huge expansion of the above-ground testing 01:17:35.550 --> 01:17:36.720 align:middle line:90% regime. 01:17:36.720 --> 01:17:38.580 align:middle line:84% Let me pause there, take a few questions, 01:17:38.580 --> 01:17:40.372 align:middle line:84% and I'll get to the last part real quickly. 01:17:40.372 --> 01:17:42.770 align:middle line:90% 01:17:42.770 --> 01:17:45.530 align:middle line:84% Jade asked, what happened in the pause? 01:17:45.530 --> 01:17:47.728 align:middle line:84% Do you mean the pause in the testing? 01:17:47.728 --> 01:17:49.020 align:middle line:90% We'll come to that in a moment. 01:17:49.020 --> 01:17:50.310 align:middle line:90% So that's a great question. 01:17:50.310 --> 01:17:52.430 align:middle line:90% We'll see in a second 01:17:52.430 --> 01:17:56.540 align:middle line:84% Yeah, so very good question-- did the notion of physicists 01:17:56.540 --> 01:17:59.420 align:middle line:84% having these warped or unbalanced educational 01:17:59.420 --> 01:18:02.360 align:middle line:84% backgrounds affect their perceived credibility? 01:18:02.360 --> 01:18:04.280 align:middle line:90% It did in some quarters. 01:18:04.280 --> 01:18:08.000 align:middle line:84% So many people who were either career politicians or career 01:18:08.000 --> 01:18:12.110 align:middle line:84% military strategists said, perhaps with good reason, 01:18:12.110 --> 01:18:14.660 align:middle line:84% that why should I listen to any of these funny college 01:18:14.660 --> 01:18:15.440 align:middle line:90% professors? 01:18:15.440 --> 01:18:18.920 align:middle line:90% That's usually a fair comment. 01:18:18.920 --> 01:18:21.530 align:middle line:84% They have no experience with, say, military strategy, 01:18:21.530 --> 01:18:25.550 align:middle line:84% for example, or with procurement or the supply chain 01:18:25.550 --> 01:18:26.520 align:middle line:90% or anything like that. 01:18:26.520 --> 01:18:28.850 align:middle line:84% So there were plenty of arguments that came down 01:18:28.850 --> 01:18:30.500 align:middle line:84% to basically, these people don't have 01:18:30.500 --> 01:18:33.110 align:middle line:90% sufficient relevant expertise. 01:18:33.110 --> 01:18:35.600 align:middle line:84% And that's a perfectly valid critique I think. 01:18:35.600 --> 01:18:38.015 align:middle line:84% It was also often used selectively because they didn't 01:18:38.015 --> 01:18:39.890 align:middle line:84% seem to make that critique against physicists 01:18:39.890 --> 01:18:42.260 align:middle line:84% like Edward Teller, who were arguing 01:18:42.260 --> 01:18:45.000 align:middle line:84% a position that was more in line with their own position. 01:18:45.000 --> 01:18:48.500 align:middle line:84% So again, I think that argument has merit and was also 01:18:48.500 --> 01:18:51.990 align:middle line:84% nonetheless deployed kind of selectively or strategically. 01:18:51.990 --> 01:18:54.180 align:middle line:90% So that argument was made. 01:18:54.180 --> 01:18:55.590 align:middle line:90% It's not an invalid argument. 01:18:55.590 --> 01:18:58.830 align:middle line:84% And yet again, its actual usage was, in hindsight, maybe 01:18:58.830 --> 01:19:02.185 align:middle line:84% not so clear cut as it could have been. 01:19:02.185 --> 01:19:04.560 align:middle line:84% And for example, there were plenty of university chemists 01:19:04.560 --> 01:19:06.480 align:middle line:84% and physicists who were advocating-- 01:19:06.480 --> 01:19:08.910 align:middle line:84% not just Teller, who were advocating 01:19:08.910 --> 01:19:11.880 align:middle line:84% the aggressive development of hydrogen weapons. 01:19:11.880 --> 01:19:14.460 align:middle line:84% And they were very eagerly listened to and given credit 01:19:14.460 --> 01:19:19.830 align:middle line:84% as being the relevant experts in classified congressional 01:19:19.830 --> 01:19:21.540 align:middle line:90% testimony, for example. 01:19:21.540 --> 01:19:24.180 align:middle line:84% So the who has the relevant expertise question 01:19:24.180 --> 01:19:27.060 align:middle line:84% was a fair one, but again, it was used-- it was deployed, 01:19:27.060 --> 01:19:30.623 align:middle line:84% let's just say, in a variety of ways. 01:19:30.623 --> 01:19:31.540 align:middle line:90% Other questions there? 01:19:31.540 --> 01:19:36.168 align:middle line:90% 01:19:36.168 --> 01:19:36.960 align:middle line:90% I'm almost at time. 01:19:36.960 --> 01:19:39.390 align:middle line:90% Let me start this next part. 01:19:39.390 --> 01:19:46.680 align:middle line:84% We can talk more about this next week, as well. 01:19:46.680 --> 01:19:49.290 align:middle line:84% But just to say the US effort to develop 01:19:49.290 --> 01:19:51.290 align:middle line:84% more and more of these hydrogen bombs continued. 01:19:51.290 --> 01:19:53.540 align:middle line:84% Here was what turned out to have been the largest 01:19:53.540 --> 01:19:58.050 align:middle line:84% above-ground test by the US ever conducted in March of 1954, 01:19:58.050 --> 01:20:02.300 align:middle line:84% the so-called Castle-Bravo bomb, 50% more explosive even 01:20:02.300 --> 01:20:04.160 align:middle line:90% than that first Ivy Mike shot. 01:20:04.160 --> 01:20:06.690 align:middle line:84% This one became well known for many reasons, 01:20:06.690 --> 01:20:08.930 align:middle line:84% not just because it was the record holder, 01:20:08.930 --> 01:20:11.930 align:middle line:84% but also because this was a larger explosive yield 01:20:11.930 --> 01:20:13.980 align:middle line:84% than the designers had expected, in fact, 01:20:13.980 --> 01:20:16.940 align:middle line:84% more than twice as explosive as the designers themselves 01:20:16.940 --> 01:20:18.560 align:middle line:90% had predicted. 01:20:18.560 --> 01:20:21.890 align:middle line:84% And that meant that the fall-out from it, 01:20:21.890 --> 01:20:24.380 align:middle line:84% there was more radioactive debris from it, 01:20:24.380 --> 01:20:26.030 align:middle line:84% and it traveled further than expected. 01:20:26.030 --> 01:20:28.620 align:middle line:84% Also it was an unlucky break with the wind. 01:20:28.620 --> 01:20:31.730 align:middle line:84% So the effects of this above-ground test 01:20:31.730 --> 01:20:34.310 align:middle line:84% in the Pacific were much more extensive 01:20:34.310 --> 01:20:36.560 align:middle line:90% than anyone had planned on. 01:20:36.560 --> 01:20:40.010 align:middle line:84% And what happened was there was a Japanese commercial fishing 01:20:40.010 --> 01:20:43.280 align:middle line:84% boat, a private fishing boat, very far from the test site, 01:20:43.280 --> 01:20:45.230 align:middle line:84% but it turns out not far enough, given 01:20:45.230 --> 01:20:48.510 align:middle line:84% just how far, hundreds of miles, the fall-out 01:20:48.510 --> 01:20:51.160 align:middle line:90% eventually began to flow. 01:20:51.160 --> 01:20:54.720 align:middle line:84% And so the fall-out did fall onto this fishing boat. 01:20:54.720 --> 01:20:57.210 align:middle line:84% Many people on the boat became sick very 01:20:57.210 --> 01:20:59.740 align:middle line:84% quickly with radiation sickness, quite severely sick. 01:20:59.740 --> 01:21:01.590 align:middle line:90% And this was no longer secret. 01:21:01.590 --> 01:21:05.100 align:middle line:84% This was now people in Japan who were clearly 01:21:05.100 --> 01:21:08.520 align:middle line:84% showing ill effects from a US above-ground test. 01:21:08.520 --> 01:21:11.730 align:middle line:84% That's one of the first times that questions about fall-out 01:21:11.730 --> 01:21:14.640 align:middle line:84% or the dangers of radioactivity become commonly 01:21:14.640 --> 01:21:17.580 align:middle line:84% discussed in the broader kind of mass media 01:21:17.580 --> 01:21:18.750 align:middle line:90% within the United States. 01:21:18.750 --> 01:21:20.175 align:middle line:84% As we've talked about a few times 01:21:20.175 --> 01:21:21.550 align:middle line:84% from good questions in the class, 01:21:21.550 --> 01:21:24.510 align:middle line:84% it's not that no one knew about radioactivity or its dangers. 01:21:24.510 --> 01:21:27.360 align:middle line:84% But it wasn't usually talked about very broadly 01:21:27.360 --> 01:21:30.540 align:middle line:84% until events that somehow couldn't be denied, 01:21:30.540 --> 01:21:34.890 align:middle line:84% media coverage like that Japanese fishing boat accident, 01:21:34.890 --> 01:21:38.220 align:middle line:84% but a very horrible accident from that 1954 test. 01:21:38.220 --> 01:21:41.730 align:middle line:84% That begins to trigger much more community activism 01:21:41.730 --> 01:21:45.630 align:middle line:84% and scientist activism against above-ground testing because 01:21:45.630 --> 01:21:47.520 align:middle line:90% of the dangers of fall-out. 01:21:47.520 --> 01:21:50.520 align:middle line:84% The United States, among the most successful campaigns, 01:21:50.520 --> 01:21:52.230 align:middle line:90% has the kind of popular face. 01:21:52.230 --> 01:21:54.330 align:middle line:84% One of the fingers in front of it, 01:21:54.330 --> 01:21:56.730 align:middle line:84% was Linus Pauling, who'd already won 01:21:56.730 --> 01:21:58.767 align:middle line:90% the Nobel Prize in chemistry. 01:21:58.767 --> 01:22:00.600 align:middle line:84% He was not working on the Manhattan Project. 01:22:00.600 --> 01:22:03.360 align:middle line:84% He was an outsider scientist, but a very smart one, 01:22:03.360 --> 01:22:05.070 align:middle line:90% who was also very media savvy. 01:22:05.070 --> 01:22:07.200 align:middle line:84% And he was among the first to draft 01:22:07.200 --> 01:22:10.740 align:middle line:84% these kind of large-scale petitions 01:22:10.740 --> 01:22:12.900 align:middle line:84% with many other leading public figures 01:22:12.900 --> 01:22:15.300 align:middle line:90% to stop above-ground testing. 01:22:15.300 --> 01:22:18.150 align:middle line:84% Another I think just completely fascinating example 01:22:18.150 --> 01:22:21.120 align:middle line:84% was started a few months later by a different group 01:22:21.120 --> 01:22:24.690 align:middle line:84% of several nuclear scientists, biomedical and public health 01:22:24.690 --> 01:22:27.510 align:middle line:84% experts, and civilians who had experience 01:22:27.510 --> 01:22:31.020 align:middle line:84% in political organizing, members of the local league of Women 01:22:31.020 --> 01:22:34.440 align:middle line:84% Voters, for example, but otherwise were not scientists, 01:22:34.440 --> 01:22:35.640 align:middle line:90% in the Saint Louis area. 01:22:35.640 --> 01:22:37.057 align:middle line:84% They call themselves the Committee 01:22:37.057 --> 01:22:38.970 align:middle line:90% for Nuclear Information. 01:22:38.970 --> 01:22:41.550 align:middle line:84% And they began this very famous baby tooth survey. 01:22:41.550 --> 01:22:43.710 align:middle line:84% I don't know if any of you will have heard of it. 01:22:43.710 --> 01:22:46.500 align:middle line:84% The idea was that because of all the above-ground testing, much 01:22:46.500 --> 01:22:48.660 align:middle line:84% of it within the continental United States, 01:22:48.660 --> 01:22:52.080 align:middle line:84% not just far away from the US in these Pacific Islands, 01:22:52.080 --> 01:22:54.840 align:middle line:84% but even lots of tests of the Nevada test site and elsewhere, 01:22:54.840 --> 01:22:57.600 align:middle line:84% that we were in a sense bombing our own population, 01:22:57.600 --> 01:23:00.030 align:middle line:84% not with the immediate blast, but with these long-term 01:23:00.030 --> 01:23:01.950 align:middle line:84% and potentially long-lived effects 01:23:01.950 --> 01:23:03.540 align:middle line:90% of radioactive fall-out. 01:23:03.540 --> 01:23:08.040 align:middle line:84% And as evidence of that, the idea 01:23:08.040 --> 01:23:10.380 align:middle line:84% was that radioactive fall-out would land in the grass, 01:23:10.380 --> 01:23:12.300 align:middle line:84% the cows would graze, their milk would 01:23:12.300 --> 01:23:16.050 align:middle line:84% carry radioactive elements, children would drink the milk, 01:23:16.050 --> 01:23:18.750 align:middle line:84% and it would be taken up in the bones. 01:23:18.750 --> 01:23:20.580 align:middle line:84% It would be taken up in everyone's bones, 01:23:20.580 --> 01:23:22.080 align:middle line:84% but children's bones were especially 01:23:22.080 --> 01:23:24.330 align:middle line:84% easy to access because they lose their baby teeth. 01:23:24.330 --> 01:23:30.870 align:middle line:84% So here you have this perfect reservoir of calcium-rich bone 01:23:30.870 --> 01:23:33.150 align:middle line:84% material from humans that's absorbing 01:23:33.150 --> 01:23:35.250 align:middle line:84% some of these radioactive fall-out elements 01:23:35.250 --> 01:23:37.170 align:middle line:84% like strontium 90, which were already by then 01:23:37.170 --> 01:23:39.910 align:middle line:84% known to be pretty bad, iodine isotopes, as well. 01:23:39.910 --> 01:23:41.700 align:middle line:90% So the idea was brilliant-- 01:23:41.700 --> 01:23:43.700 align:middle line:84% send us your children's baby teeth. 01:23:43.700 --> 01:23:46.920 align:middle line:84% We'll send you these standardized little information 01:23:46.920 --> 01:23:47.640 align:middle line:90% cards. 01:23:47.640 --> 01:23:49.380 align:middle line:84% Send us literally the teeth, and we 01:23:49.380 --> 01:23:52.020 align:middle line:84% can test them in the Saint Louis Washington University 01:23:52.020 --> 01:23:54.780 align:middle line:84% laboratory and see just how extensive the radiation 01:23:54.780 --> 01:23:58.350 align:middle line:84% poisoning of the US continental United States has been, 01:23:58.350 --> 01:24:01.200 align:middle line:84% due to the US's own above-ground testing. 01:24:01.200 --> 01:24:03.570 align:middle line:84% That was a brilliant political maneuver. 01:24:03.570 --> 01:24:05.670 align:middle line:84% And you can see it was this mixture of-- 01:24:05.670 --> 01:24:07.710 align:middle line:84% we might today call it citizen science. 01:24:07.710 --> 01:24:10.170 align:middle line:84% But it took some real political acumen 01:24:10.170 --> 01:24:12.450 align:middle line:84% from the League of Women Voters volunteers, 01:24:12.450 --> 01:24:15.600 align:middle line:84% as well as from these concerned scientists. 01:24:15.600 --> 01:24:20.850 align:middle line:84% And then this finally led to a unilateral moratorium 01:24:20.850 --> 01:24:24.180 align:middle line:84% on US testing starting in '58 in direct response to that. 01:24:24.180 --> 01:24:27.330 align:middle line:84% The US stopped testing, while the Soviets didn't stop. 01:24:27.330 --> 01:24:29.070 align:middle line:84% But then the US went back to testing 01:24:29.070 --> 01:24:32.820 align:middle line:84% once the Soviets started testing more and more massive weapons. 01:24:32.820 --> 01:24:36.720 align:middle line:84% And the real pause came actually after the Cuban Missile Crisis 01:24:36.720 --> 01:24:40.260 align:middle line:84% in October 1962, which seemed to have really shocked 01:24:40.260 --> 01:24:42.570 align:middle line:84% enough highly placed people, both in the United 01:24:42.570 --> 01:24:44.190 align:middle line:90% States and the Soviet Union. 01:24:44.190 --> 01:24:48.500 align:middle line:84% And that led fairly swiftly to the signing of the Limited Test 01:24:48.500 --> 01:24:49.400 align:middle line:90% Ban Treaty. 01:24:49.400 --> 01:24:52.520 align:middle line:84% It was called limited because it limited above-ground testing. 01:24:52.520 --> 01:24:54.890 align:middle line:84% It drove all testing underground, 01:24:54.890 --> 01:24:58.250 align:middle line:84% of which then it continued extensively for decades. 01:24:58.250 --> 01:25:01.130 align:middle line:84% But the idea was to stop at least the previous pattern 01:25:01.130 --> 01:25:04.160 align:middle line:84% of 80 or more above-ground tests in a given year. 01:25:04.160 --> 01:25:07.940 align:middle line:84% It really took a series of citizen activism, scientists 01:25:07.940 --> 01:25:11.430 align:middle line:84% getting involved on many fronts, as well as these really, 01:25:11.430 --> 01:25:13.550 align:middle line:84% I think, quite chilling and very dangerous 01:25:13.550 --> 01:25:17.210 align:middle line:84% kind of nuclear standoffs, all these coming together 01:25:17.210 --> 01:25:20.450 align:middle line:84% by the early 1960s to lead to a sense 01:25:20.450 --> 01:25:24.230 align:middle line:84% that above-ground nuclear testing was to be stopped. 01:25:24.230 --> 01:25:28.040 align:middle line:84% Let me pause there just to say that these next few slides are 01:25:28.040 --> 01:25:30.170 align:middle line:84% just to say the debates didn't end with that. 01:25:30.170 --> 01:25:32.360 align:middle line:84% It was then debates about delivery mechanisms, 01:25:32.360 --> 01:25:34.310 align:middle line:84% about missiles, about how many warheads 01:25:34.310 --> 01:25:36.410 align:middle line:84% should be on a missile, should there 01:25:36.410 --> 01:25:39.810 align:middle line:84% be anti-missile, anti-ballistic missile systems, and so on. 01:25:39.810 --> 01:25:41.810 align:middle line:84% Here's a preview for that next film. 01:25:41.810 --> 01:25:44.570 align:middle line:84% Because of all of this above-ground testing before it 01:25:44.570 --> 01:25:48.690 align:middle line:84% was driven underground, there is to this day lingering 01:25:48.690 --> 01:25:50.882 align:middle line:84% ill effects throughout, for example, 01:25:50.882 --> 01:25:52.590 align:middle line:84% the continental United States, though not 01:25:52.590 --> 01:25:56.370 align:middle line:84% limited to that, where 3,000 square miles 01:25:56.370 --> 01:25:59.610 align:middle line:84% of the continental United States have now by the US 01:25:59.610 --> 01:26:01.800 align:middle line:84% federal government been deemed officially 01:26:01.800 --> 01:26:04.650 align:middle line:84% uninhabitable because the remnant radiation 01:26:04.650 --> 01:26:06.520 align:middle line:90% levels are still too high. 01:26:06.520 --> 01:26:08.520 align:middle line:84% And that's the kind of thing that this next film 01:26:08.520 --> 01:26:11.320 align:middle line:84% called Containment tells us much more about. 01:26:11.320 --> 01:26:14.560 align:middle line:84% So the decades long and ultimately, 01:26:14.560 --> 01:26:20.040 align:middle line:84% in this case, thousands of millennia long environmental 01:26:20.040 --> 01:26:23.310 align:middle line:84% impacts of this relatively brief period of Cold War 01:26:23.310 --> 01:26:26.980 align:middle line:84% nuclear activity, that leaves a tail much, 01:26:26.980 --> 01:26:30.450 align:middle line:84% much longer than only the early tests and early test bans. 01:26:30.450 --> 01:26:32.160 align:middle line:84% And that's just a preview for the film. 01:26:32.160 --> 01:26:34.290 align:middle line:84% So finally, just the last slide-- 01:26:34.290 --> 01:26:37.200 align:middle line:84% but these nuclear issues have never been outside of society. 01:26:37.200 --> 01:26:39.420 align:middle line:90% I guess that should be obvious. 01:26:39.420 --> 01:26:43.350 align:middle line:84% But the scientific debates which were difficult and sometimes 01:26:43.350 --> 01:26:47.180 align:middle line:84% conceptually very rich, they were not happening in a vacuum, 01:26:47.180 --> 01:26:50.840 align:middle line:84% and nor were changing notions of what scientists' own roles can 01:26:50.840 --> 01:26:51.860 align:middle line:90% or should be. 01:26:51.860 --> 01:26:53.720 align:middle line:84% Are they subject to special scrutiny 01:26:53.720 --> 01:26:56.480 align:middle line:84% because they're somehow the wizards of dangerous materials? 01:26:56.480 --> 01:26:59.195 align:middle line:84% Are they politically naive and therefore shouldn't be trusted? 01:26:59.195 --> 01:27:01.070 align:middle line:84% Should they be speaking out because they have 01:27:01.070 --> 01:27:02.280 align:middle line:90% special insight or knowledge? 01:27:02.280 --> 01:27:04.280 align:middle line:84% We haven't resolved these questions to this day, 01:27:04.280 --> 01:27:06.620 align:middle line:84% but they get really churned up and really 01:27:06.620 --> 01:27:09.200 align:middle line:84% amplified as burning questions I think 01:27:09.200 --> 01:27:12.127 align:middle line:84% during this period of the early and mid Cold War. 01:27:12.127 --> 01:27:14.210 align:middle line:84% So those are things we can again continue to think 01:27:14.210 --> 01:27:15.960 align:middle line:90% about later in the term. 01:27:15.960 --> 01:27:17.933 align:middle line:84% So again, I'm sorry to run a little bit long. 01:27:17.933 --> 01:27:19.850 align:middle line:84% I'd be glad to stay late and answer questions, 01:27:19.850 --> 01:27:23.000 align:middle line:84% but that's what I want to get across for now. 01:27:23.000 --> 01:27:24.410 align:middle line:84% Iyabo asks, was there competition 01:27:24.410 --> 01:27:27.140 align:middle line:84% similar to Livermore Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project? 01:27:27.140 --> 01:27:31.400 align:middle line:84% No, in that case, it really was just the Manhattan Project. 01:27:31.400 --> 01:27:33.170 align:middle line:84% There were different facilities that 01:27:33.170 --> 01:27:35.480 align:middle line:84% were not doing the same thing, so in that sense, 01:27:35.480 --> 01:27:36.680 align:middle line:90% they weren't rivals. 01:27:36.680 --> 01:27:38.990 align:middle line:84% Oak Ridge was doing different things than Hanford. 01:27:38.990 --> 01:27:41.960 align:middle line:84% With Los Alamos and Livermore, both they 01:27:41.960 --> 01:27:45.710 align:middle line:84% had overlapping missions, more directly overlapping missions. 01:27:45.710 --> 01:27:48.997 align:middle line:84% And I think that bred more of a kind of immediate rivalry. 01:27:48.997 --> 01:27:50.705 align:middle line:84% So I think that was part of a difference. 01:27:50.705 --> 01:27:52.480 align:middle line:90% That's a good question. 01:27:52.480 --> 01:27:53.710 align:middle line:90% Again, sorry to run late. 01:27:53.710 --> 01:27:55.585 align:middle line:84% I'd be glad to stay on a bit longer if people 01:27:55.585 --> 01:28:01.242 align:middle line:84% have more questions, but we'll delve more into this next time. 01:28:01.242 --> 01:28:01.950 align:middle line:90% Thanks, everyone. 01:28:01.950 --> 01:28:03.710 align:middle line:90% Stay well. 01:28:03.710 --> 01:28:25.000 align:middle line:90%