A memorable scene in the 2023 best picture winner Oppenheimer involves a meeting between the eponymous scientist and President Truman in the wake of the atomic bombing of Japan. Following some cursory discussion of international nuclear policy (on which the two do not see eye to eye), Oppenheimer confesses to Truman, “I feel I have blood on my hands.” To this, Truman mockingly pulls out a handkerchief and waves it in Oppenheimer’s face. “You think anyone in Hiroshima or Nagasaki gives a shit about who built the bomb?” he asks. “They care who dropped it.” As Oppenheimer is escorted out of the Oval, Truman loudly instructs his Secretary of State not to let “that crybaby” back in.
As it turns out, this is one of the most historically grounded pieces of dialogue in the film. The meeting between Oppenheimer and Truman actually took place, and American Prometheus (the biography that Oppenheimer was adapted from) indicates that it was just about as hostile as the scene suggests. Whether or not Truman called Oppenheimer a crybaby within earshot, he certainly did so–verbatim–in subsequent correspondence. At least one other line in the scene is lifted directly from firsthand accounts. When Truman asks what should be done with Los Alamos now that the Manhattan Project has fulfilled its mission, Oppenheimer responds “Give it back to the Indians.”
One thing we can observe here is that it is simply assumed that the American government (and others to follow) are going to be calling the shots on the use of nuclear weapons. Indeed, that piece of the story is so taken for granted that it probably sounds strange to even mention, as if it could have been otherwise. Part of the reason for this may be because the Manhattan Project (now known as the Department of Energy) was a government agency. But that’s really just a circumstantial point. There’s a deeper idea captured in Cillian Murphy’s glassy-eyed flashbacks and J. Robert Oppenheimer’s own gaunt-faced recitation from the Bhagavad Gita. Namely, that all of this became inevitable once the technology was built.
Yes, Truman was the one who ordered that The Bomb be dropped, yes the Soviets will quickly get to work developing nuclear capabilities of their own, but these events are just the clockwork universe ticking along after the wind-up. That’s why Oppenheimer feels he has blood on his hands and why, in the (less well-substantiated) final line of the film, he tells Einstein that he believes they have indeed set in motion a chain reaction that will destroy the entire world. Giving it back to the Indians isn’t a real option.
I can only speak for myself here, but as the orchestra swelled, and the visuals of Earth’s atmosphere on fire flashed across the screen, and the credit sequence began to play, my takeaway was not that the big tragedy in all of this had been allowing Harry S. Truman to have access to the bomb once it was built.
Imagine for a moment that it’s mid-1945 and you’re President Truman. The United States has just lost 50,000 soldiers (not to mention 150,000 to 250,000 Japanese military and civilian dead) capturing Okinawa, which is itself just a staging ground for the planned amphibious invasion of the Japanese home islands. That invasion–Operation Downfall–will exceed D-Day in scope. Casualty projections number in the millions. In fact, the United States has manufactured so many purple hearts in anticipation of the forthcoming campaign that they will still be being given to soldiers wounded in Afghanistan 75 years later.
But wait! Who’s that on the line? It’s J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the M…the McBombalds Corporation. The McBombalds Corporation is a privately-held, venture-backed Delaware PBC specializing in drive-thru fast food and weapons manufacturing. Oppenheimer (and other members of the McBombalds C-suite) are well integrated into bay-area culture, including ambiguous communist associations that they have downplayed since becoming primo defense contractors.
Anyway, Oppenheimer is calling to inform you that McBombalds has just successfully tested a nuclear weapon at its corporate headquarters in Los Alamos, NM. It has two ready-for-use A-bombs on hand, and it will in short order be able to deliver several additional newer, sleeker, more powerful models on contract with the Department of Defense.
Great news, you think. With these weapons, the United States may be able to win the war without having to commit any troops to a costly ground invasion. That will save countless American and Japanese lives alike. It may also secure the American position against its emerging geopolitical rival, the Soviet Union, in the embryonic post-war order. You inform Oppenheimer of these plans, and announce your intention to purchase the two bombs that he has in stock…
There’s a moment of silence on the line. Then Oppenheimer tells you that, while he agrees the A-bombs have great potential, he and the McBombalds board are not comfortable with their deployment against Japanese cities. Though it’s true that conventional bombing raids in both Asia and Europe have already claimed huge numbers of civilian lives, nuclear weapons represent a new stage in technology that should not be treated lightly. There are major risks that McBombalds has spent a lot of time thinking about. Its team has produced an entire memo on the threat of igniting the Earth’s atmosphere, for instance (though it concluded prior to testing that the likelihood was not high enough to warrant shuttering the project).
While Oppenheimer agrees that the American government should eventually take charge of nuclear policy, McBombalds is currently willing to grant the United States government only conditional access. It is willing to conduct a public demonstration for Japanese observers in international waters, or some other uninhabited area, but it is not yet ready to authorize use of the A-bomb for all lawful military uses. McBombalds will ship an A-bomb, but with a built-in kill switch that disarms the weapon whenever it detects a population center. McBombalds of course maintains its own arsenal, with full ability to disable the kill-switch, but Oppenheimer assures you he and the rest of the McBombalds C-suite can be trusted.
What do you do in the McBombalds timeline?
If AI is in fact what Anthropic believes it is, then that’s the timeline in which we are currently living. Dario believes AI is akin to a nuclear weapon. It’s a bit more complicated than that, actually. Whether it’s Good or Bad remains to be seen. Either way, the government wants access and, as discussed above, Anthropic is reluctant to provide it.
How one should answer the McBombalds question is not obvious. In our timeline, nuclear weapons were not developed by a private corporation, the United States successfully used them to end the Second World War, and–despite their proliferation–they have not destroyed humanity in the 80 or so years since their invention. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we can successfully replicate the experiment with AI. Indeed, it doesn’t even mean that we’ve been successful with nuclear weapons.
It is perhaps apropos that the Anthropic dispute boiled over just a day before the onset of the ongoing American-Israeli war in Iran. That’s in part because the technological edge that has defined that war–as with the Venezuela raid earlier in the year–demonstrates what access to the latest AI tools may mean for American national security. More significant, though, is the war’s rationale. The primary explanation for American involvement has been to prevent Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. To accept the existential stakes of that prospect while simultaneously treating the next frontier of superweapon proliferation as an ordinary issue of private property betrays a deep confusion about the problem that this moment presents.
It seems entirely reasonable to wish that nuclear weapons had never been invented, and to have objections about many of their potential uses. The same is true for superhuman AI. But whether we should accept a world in which Oppenheimer and his friends have greater access to the atomic bomb than the United States government does, or tolerate his attempts to extract concessions in exchange, seems like quite a different concern. If Dario is right, then he has access to such a weapon right now, with his own value system to guide it. Others may as well, or may soon follow. Our choice is therefore no longer whether to build such weapons, but only whom to entrust with their responsible use in military affairs. Any criticism that fails to acknowledge this question is pointless.
There is no iron law of the universe that implies every new invention will be good for humanity, much less that the United States government will always be its most responsible steward. But those raising hue and cry about the government’s unsurprising attempt to wield a technology for military purposes that all parties agree will define humanity’s fate must at least attempt to justify why they believe someone else deserves that power.
Until then, America is all we have.
