The legacy of nuclear secrecy in the United States

The announcement of the discovery of nuclear fission in early 1939 heralded a new era of secrecy in American science, ushered in by physicists and centered around the discipline of physics. Nuclear weapons held out the possibility of both re-making the existing geopolitical order, while threatening national and even global destruction. Over the course of World War II and into the Cold War, American scientists, led largely by physicists, grappled with what they called the "problem of secrecy": how could the United States simultaneously promote national security while also allowing scientific research to flourish? In this talk, I will briefly sketch the long history of nuclear secrecy in the United States, with an emphasis on the interactions between scientists, policymakers, and their context. I will discuss the unique and lasting input that physicists in particular had on shaping and critiquing secrecy policy, and indicate some of the lessons that might be learned from this history for both thinking about our present scientific and security moment, as well as those that may aid in thinking about the use of information controls as a means of regulating other emerging technologies that may pose novel existential risks.