Alex Wellerstein

> They're still there last time I checked. Hiroshima has a population of ~1m. Nagasaki closer to 300k.

This is an argument by equivocation. There’s still a “World Trade Center” in NYC but it’s not the one that fell in 2001. Nor does saying it’s so restore the dead to life.

> An invasion of Japan would have cost an order of magnitude more lives. It was the 4th year of an extremely bitter conflict that Japan started. There were no real good options on the table. Only "shit" and "extremely shit".

This is a legal defense strategy that was never heard before an international tribunal because, notably, one was never held.

I don’t have the energy to skim through the Nuremberg transcripts right now, but I also believe “it was the best of bad options” was a legal defense attempted there, with mixed results.

EDIT: I’m being rate limited, so I can’t answer any more questions today. But suffice it to say that in Truman’s place I would have extended the relative protection that Kyoto received to every large Japanese city and contained the air force to bombing primarily military and industrial targets, with the understanding that precision bombing was not as advanced in 1940s as it is today.

Here is a more in depth analysis of options other than nuclear bombardment (though it only discusses nukes, which is not the primary locus of my criticism). https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/08/03/were-there-alternatives-to-the-atomic-bombings/

Also I did not say they were “erased from the…

Hi, I'd like to make a few comments on von Neumann considering I've spent some time reading around about him.

First of all, on the biography. So far for me the biographies written about von Neumann have two key problems to me:

1) They avoid his mathematical work and focus on his work in game theory, computing, nuclear weapons, etc. I find this a bit problematic because despite all his other achievements, von Neumann was fundamentally a mathematician who applied his skills in mathematics and logic to other fields to great success, however before all this he first made many substantial contributions to pure mathematics. Now the question is how can one author cover these broad areas that von Neumann contributed to at a reasonable level? I'm not really sure it can be done, even von Neumann's colleagues themselves weren't fully aware of the extent of his work. For example I remember reading some interview of one where they said he never made any contributions to number theory, yet von Neumann early in his career did publish at least two papers on the field, one on algebraic number theory and another on transcendental number theory. So perhaps multiple authors, each covering their specialty would work better if they can make their chapters weave together nicely. Another problem is what level should it be. I personally would like it to be around STEM major level mathematics so you can properly introduce some concepts however I understand most authors wouldn't do this because it…

The author is a historian whose main published work is the book Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States. He isn't very interested in the information itself; he's interested in where it comes from and in the process that led to its release. It's notable not because it contains interesting information, it's notable because it seems like it might represent a radical break with established patterns in US government procedures with regards to restricted data (which is a special and very weird kind of classification that only applies to nuclear secrets).

In other words: the author is interested in the institutions and policies that manage nuclear secrets, not so much in the secrets themselves.

In a different post[0] regarding a fumbled redaction that released similar information about what a warhead looks like, he had this to say:

> It’s also just not clear that these kinds of [declassification] mistakes “matter,” in the sense of actually increasing the danger in the world, or to the United States. I’ve never come across a case where some kind of slip-up like this actually helped an aspiring nuclear weapons state, or helped our already-advanced adversaries. That’s just not how it works: there’s a lot more work that has to be done to make a working nuke than you can get out of a slip-up like this, and when it comes to getting secret information, the Russians and Chinese have already shown that even the “best” systems can be penetrated by various…

As far as I can tell, Nixon was a complete nutjob. Here he is on the possibility of nuking Vietnam (via Alex Wellerstein):

> But my favorite quotes are from Nixon about Vietnam. During a spring offensive by the North Vietnamese in 1972, Nixon told Kissinger:

>> We’re going to do it. I’m going to destroy the goddamn country, believe me, I mean destroy it if necessary. And let me say, even the nuclear weapons if necessary. It isn’t necessary. But, you know, what I mean is, what shows you the extent to which I’m willing to go. By a nuclear weapon, I mean that we will bomb the living bejeezus out of North Vietnam and then if anybody interferes we will threaten the nuclear weapons.

> A week later, he continued to a somewhat horrified Kissinger:

>> Nixon: I’d rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that ready?

>> Kissinger: That, I think, would just be too much.

>> Nixon: A nuclear bomb, does that bother you?… I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christ’s sake! The only place where you and I disagree is with regard to the bombing. You’re so goddamned concerned about civilians, and I don’t give a damn. I don’t care.

>> Kissinger: I’m concerned about the civilians because I don’t want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.

http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/10/25/nixon-and-the-bomb/

We're not prepared to countenance two things:

1) That some form of propellantless propulsion may in fact be 'a thing'.

2) That exotic propulsion technologies may be 'born secret' by default — even if you or I invented them — because of their national security implications (can be formed into an ICBM platforn). There would be no publicly-referenceable classification list informing you of this, because that is not how it works and would defeat the purpose. Our best precedent on this is in fact the Manhattan Project. Living then we would not know that isotope fission methods were restricted data, even while speculation could be bandied about in amateurish publications (cit. Alex Wellerstein's excellent blog https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/03/07/death-dust-1941/ ) Moreover, we would see those few scientists who were actually pursuing relevant study under government auspices actively misrepresenting (i.e. lying) to the press. cit. Urey on heavy water:

"...it got Harold Urey, the guy who discovered heavy water, to write a letter to the editor saying I don’t have any clue what this is about. There is certainly no way to use this in war, which is a total lie."

https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Full%20Transcript%20of%20AHF%20NSF%20Workshop.pdf

I took Professor Wellerstein's class it was super interesting. For my final project I researched some of the peaceful nuke ideas, and this Israeli canal was discussed in that class.

The US had an entire program dedicated to a bunch of different applications of nuclear bombs that were not blowing up cities called Project Plowshare[1]. Some of the proposed ideas were the above second canal, another was a type of "fracking" to release natural gas, yet another was a way to create a new protected port (for military purposes)

there was also a similar program in the USSR called Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy [2]. They had similar ideas, but the big achievement was closing two oil wells that could not be conventionally capped. so they detonated nuclear bombs adjacent to the well which physically blocked the well.

I would highly recommend checking out Wellerstein's blog [3]. tons of cool write ups about different aspects of nuclear technology and their history. Another fun thing he made, the Nuke Map [4]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_National_Economy
[3]: http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/
[4]: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/