Pieces of the action

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1. pclowesJul 2025
   Thank you for all your work! I have several Stripe Press books, especially enjoyed Revolt of the Public and Pieces of the Action.
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2. eatonphilJun 2024
   I've been reading the mentioned Bush memoir "Pieces of the Action" and it's pretty good. Stories about engineering and organizational politics. As good as any business classic (e.g. "My Years With General Motors" or "High Output Management").
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3. ricksunnyJun 2024
   Pieces of the Action is excellent. A non-autobiography autobiography.

   Many points in the book feature him being discreet about some name or some incident, even 20+ years on. For example, 'General Blank'early in the book, or this excerpt towards the end that is speculated on:

   '...other incidents such as a moment where he [Truman] and Forrestal and I were talking about something, and Forrestal spoke about the political implications of the decision. President Truman said to him 'Look, Jim, when you take a thing as serious as this to the American public, you should forget political considerations." '

   It's fun recognizing that sometimes VB must be read in a Straussian way. Even to his security-cleared peers, under wartime / atomic secrecy he has to write with implication rather than directly due to risk of security lapses. The nuclearsecrecy blog by Alex Wellerstein is a great source for this kind of thing.

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4. patch_cableAug 2023
   I also recommend “Pieces of the Action” by Vannevar Bush: https://press.stripe.com/pieces-of-the-action
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5. ricksunnySep 2026
   I want to see models of Vannevar Bush's rapid analytical machine computers supplied to the proto-NSA.

   See Colin Burke and Pieces of the Action

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6. ricksunnyAug 2025
   >I'm not sure I'd call ...

   Indeed it would have been better for me to focus on the decades of existential fear rather than the immediate bloodshed because, as demonstrated, the debate descended straight to the usual about the morality of dropping the bomb in WWII.

   >And what social epistemology, actually?

   Karl Compton and Leo Szilard whispering in Vannevar Bush's ear about the threat that the prospective threat that a German atomic bomb would pose. Vannevar would later make the case that the physicists would have done these feasibility tests anyways with or without his support, but this is a (somewhat biased) counterfactual and therefore incapable of being evaluated.

   The whole episode demonstrates that it is by responding affirmatively to the 'choice to learn' - in this case whether a unique embodiment of already known physical properties is _really_ feasible - which finds us crossing the technological Rubicon of runaway doomsday device development.

   Vannevar would go on to defend his actions in saying that it was good that such a horrific capacity was demonstrated in such a 'spectacular' way. His words in his autobiography, "Pieces of the Action" strive to cement the legacy of his gift to the world:

     "The advent of the A-bomb is generally regarded as a catastrophe for civilization. I am not convinced that it was.  With the pace of science in this present century it was inevitable that means of mass destruction should appear.  Since the concept of one world under law is far in the future, it was also inevitable that great states should face one another thus armed. If there were no A-bombs the confrontation would still have occurred, and the means might well have been to spread among a a people a disease for a chemical that would kill or render impotent the whole population.  History may well conclude, if history is written a century from now, that it was well that the inevitable confrontation came in a spectacular way that all could recognize, rather than in a subtle form which might tempt aggression through ignorance.  At least we all know, we and the rest of the world, that there are A-bombs and what they can do."

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