Technology Review Editor on Oppenheimer and the Bomb

Jason Pontin of Technology Review has produced a thought-provoking and sobering video letter about the moral and technological implications of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as expressed through the voice of Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the weapons used there.

Pontin uses archival footage of Oppenheimer from an old NBC documentary to raise interesting questions (my paraphrasing):

Was Oppenheimer a man caught up in the unfolding and destructive logic of technology, compelled by historical circumstances to create a weapon that would kill hundreds of thousands of civilians, rather than allow the Nazis and Soviets to get the weapon first, and do who knows what with it?

Could Oppenheimer then be seen as an archetypal representation of a new humanity, caught up in technological spiral in which "everything that can be tried, will be tried," as he thought? (Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems has made similar arguments. His answer is to stop doing science.)

In which case, where destructive technologies will be developed, do "the good" have to use them first against "the evil" in a way that might be considered evil? Such as in the killing of civilians?

My view, contra my "real politic"-minded conservative chums of many years, is that such a utilitarian calculation is inherently self-deceptive.

We must cling, in truly conservative fashion, to the morality of the just war. (I argued for this in a number of editorial meetings.) The implications of that argument, when considering the bloodshed that would have ensued in the continuation of the war in the Pacific, were just too much for them to bear.

But then, they avert their eyes from the horrible nature of the atomic bombings, which seemed so easy to do, and so easy to not pay attention to. In terms of a "media cycle" the bomb was dropped, only to be displaced shortly thereafter in the news, by the end of the war.

Sixty-plus years later this feels like an academic discussion, of course. But we look to history as our guide. Someday, another generation -- maybe not "the greatest generation" -- will look upon these acts with more dispassionate eyes and see them for what they truly were.