MORE IN THE MATTER OF J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER

 MORE IN THE MATTER OF J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER

 

 

“I am the new Oppenheimer“ says an unidentified man who claims to work in nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos laboratory. This is reported by a Guardian (May 2024) correspondent who attended an event that yielded the catchy headline ‘I’m the new Oppenheimer!’: my soul-destroying day at Palantir’s first-ever AI warfare conference’. The man in question had asked the correspondent if she had seen Oppenheimer – she had not. Having watched this insipid movie myself, I’d have to say she has not missed much. The only interesting consequence in my case was that I had forgotten that I have a copy in my library of In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Hainar Kipphardt, first published in German in 1964. Kipphardt, I have learned since, was a German playwright who specialised in documentary-style plays. In his foreword he says that the chief source were the records of the Oppenheimer hearings on his security clearing, as published by the United States Atomic Energy Commission in 1954. In further notes that are interesting to me as impinging on translation theories, he says that he ‘exercised his freedom only in the selection, the arrangement, formulation and condensation of the material’. I will comment on this in greater detail but suffice to say here that it is a fascinating procedure to translate English text into German (presumably by Kipphardt himself) and then have it translated back into English by a translator (in my copy given as Ruth Spiers). So, when reading the play in English translation, one does not read the verbatim text from the original documents but one reads an edited version that compresses 3,000 pages into some 120, reducing the character list to Oppenheimer, and Gray, Evans and Morgan of the Security Board, and Robb, Rolander, Garrison and Marks of the Counsel, and Radzi, Lansdale, Teller, Bethe, Griggs and Rabi of the Witnesses. As such it is an easy read, albeit a very disturbing one.

 

The literature on this subject is extensive and I do not presume to be an expert on the matter other than an interested bystander who is worried about the world’s arsenals of A and H bombs, that at the flick of a finger can blow up the whole earth in a radioactive fireball – the split-second endgame of all life on earth, not just the so-called human one. Oppenheimer as the ‘father of the atom bomb’ is obviously a subject of fascination, not as a faceless scientist, engineer & technician who coordinated the manufacture of the ‘gadget’ but as a somewhat conflicted humanist who sold his Faustian soul to the devil in the guise of the US military complex, only to be discarded once he had done his job, to be succeeded by Teller, his former colleague, who charged ahead without any scruples at all in developing the H bomb. Teller’s witness statement at Oppenheimer’s security clearance hearing was most likely the deciding factor not to grant Oppenheimer the clearance. Teller’s misgivings were mainly based on Oppenheimer’s opposition to develop the H bomb from the word go, concentrating solely on the A bomb. Combined with Teller’s anti-communism Oppenheimer didn’t stand a chance, given his previous history of being a communist sympathizer. On the other hand, the US military establishment had to have a US citizen – born in the USA - in the first instance as the lead at Los Alamos: Teller as a Hungarian immigrant didn’t make the cut on that count. Only when it emerged that Teller would have charged ahead with the H bomb from the beginning - and combined with the post-war McCarthy era – only then was Teller considered the salvation for the US military. And Teller delivered without any subsequent fanfares. Fusion-fission. And then the Soviets outdoing him with a fission-fusion-fusion bomb. As a colourless, conservative scientist cum MAD advocate, Teller is hardly the stuff of a Hollywood blockbuster. Nevertheless, Kipphardt in his theatrical version devotes quite some space to Teller, condensing his testimony in the manner of a Marc Antony speech “for Brutus/Oppenheimer is an honourable man”. Comparing the original transcripts with Kipphardt’s text one detects a clever strategy of using original phrases to construct new sentences, thereby emphasizing the points made. The effect is a negative impression of Teller, which would make sense to a youthful Kipphardt’s left-leaning tendencies, but one who becomes quite conservative in later years, which might have drawn him to Oppenheimer in the first place, i.e. a trajectory of a fairly radical leftist in his younger years, only to turn into a somewhat conflicted conservative, not actually too dissimilar to Teller in the end – after all Teller eventually nominated Oppenheimer for the Fermi Award. To exemplify my case, I compare a sample of Teller’s original text with that of Kipphardt’s, namely in answer to the original question 

 

“Do you or do you not believe that Dr. Oppenheimer is a security risk?” 

 

which Kipphardt rephrases as 

 

“Do you regard Dr. Oppenheimer as a security risk?” 

 

(since this is a translation of the German text I will one day investigate the whole circular process, i.e. how Kipphardt translated and edited the original English text into his German version and how this German version was translated back into English, as given here).

 

                  Original answer by Teller:

 

“In a great number of cases I have seen Dr. Oppenheimer act – I understand that Dr. Oppenheimer acted - in a way which for me was exceedingly hard to understand. I thoroughly disagreed with him in numerous issues and his actions frankly appeared to me confused and complicated. To this extent I feel that I would like to see the vital interest of this country in hands which I understand better, and therefore trust more. In this very limited sense I would like to express a feeling that I would feel personally more secure if public matters would rest in other hands.”

 

Kipphardt’s Teller answer:

 

“His actions after the war appeared to me confused and complicated, and I personally would feel more secure if the vital interests of this country did not rest in his hands.” 

 

Teller’s original answer is hedging the point, requiring the listener/reader to deduce the implications for himself, i.e. Oppenheimer is a security risk. Kipphardt’s version is much more direct and to the point, pointing to Oppenheimer in saying

 

“I personally would feel more secure if the vital interests of this country did not rest in his hands”. 

 

One could argue that the gist of the matter is the same but, of course, what is lost is how it is said, i.e. Teller being very circumspect, trying to avoid making any decisive statements, lest he be accused by counsel for Oppenheimer to get his facts mixed up, and yet hint at his advice not to give Oppenheimer his security clearance.  Kipphardt perhaps had learned that a great many scientists of that time disagreed with Teller’s assessment, painting him into a corner of a nasty individual who betrayed his erstwhile benefactor, and as such let’s him speak accordingly. To put it in Hollywood terms, Oppenheimer is the good guy and Teller the bad one. In my estimation, however, they both belong in the bad category, Teller being worse than Oppenheimer. 

 

I do get this sense from a source that is quite fascinating, namely a Lacanian psychoanalysis of Oppenheimer in Hub Zwart’s (2017) Tales of Research Misconduct subtitled A Lacanian Diagnostics of Integrity Challenges in Science Novels. The trigger for selecting the Case of Robert Oppenheimer in Chapter 4 of the book is the novel by Haakon Chevalier entitled The Man who would be God, published in 1959, a classic roman á clef. As is well known, the Chevalier incident was the cause celebre that caused a lot of trouble for Oppenheimer in that he did not report Chevalier’s mention in 1942, that an acquaintance of his – presumably a fumbling English spy for the Soviets, named Eltenton - wanted to make contact with Oppenheimer in order to inform Soviet scientist about progress in making the A-bomb, or some such suggestion, which Oppenheimer had refuted out of hand. When eventually questioned about it by the security services, Oppenheimer first made up some ‘cock-and bull’ story but eventually admitted that he Eltenton and Chevalier were involved. Nothing much came of it because no information was handed over, and the FBI filed it away as an interesting but insignificant incident. Only when dug up again in 1954, it was played up as a major indictment by the McCarthyites, as a useful ruse to give cover to Teller. After the House Subcommittee on Un-American Activities hearing in 1950, Chevalier, as a nominal communist, had resigned/lost his job as Romance literature lecturer at Berkely and had moved to France to pursue his academic literary interests, including the writing of a novel that closely resembles the story of Oppenheimer and his friend Chevalier. Chevalier had first met Oppenheimer at Berkley in 1937, and they had become friends until they were eventually separated by way of Oppenheimer’s secret assignment in Los Alamos. 

 

Before delving into the details of the novel, Zwart introduces the reader to the general Oppenheimer story, as a kind of Zeitgeist phenomenon that changed our world for ever, where science colluded with the military to bring us to the brink of extinction. Citing Husserl who maintained that science always had a moral dimension, Zwart also quotes Sloterdijk as ‘the history of science is like the burning away of a conceptual fuse winding from Athens to Hiroshima.’ Metaphors galore: Oppenheimer, the final explosion! Zwart then shows off Lacan’s schematic analysis of university discourse as applied to the science topic:

 

 

S₂                                               a

------------------------------------------------

 

 S₁                                              $

 

 

The upper level shows the actual achievements of science, S₂ being the agents (the scientists) with the ultimate achievement being alpha (a), e.g.  the discovery of the elementary particles. Below the bar is what Husserl calls the ‘normative ideal’ (e.g. latent truth, basic conviction, moral vocation) leading to an existential crisis ($).  Swart then analyses the story of Oppenheimer in these terms only, which at times yields stunning insights but at other times seems more like an academic exercise. The irony not stated is, of course, that Zwart’s treatise is subject to exactly the same scheme, especially as it falls squarely into the ‘university discourse’ model entertained by Lacan.

 

Before delving into the details, let me explain my caveat: the ‘normative ideal’ under the bar is questionable since the existential crisis ($) is triggered by all ideological players involved, be it capitalism, communism, nationalism, totalitarianism, fascism or any -ism – and all in shades of grey. Maybe the ‘normative ideal’ is not an ideology but a universal psychological trait, the Freudian death wish perhaps? Since the USA were the only military machine that actually used the atom bomb, we might have to still qualify the death wish as something peculiar to the USA, to Oppenheimer? To Teller? To General Groves? To psychoanalyse the lot, as Zwart does sort of, is likely to yield some fascinating insights, as I noted above. I will detail some of them, adding my own two cents worth on occasion:

 

The first observation is in fact a combination of Zwart and Chevalier (his novel), whereby Oppenheimer (Bloch in the novel) is described as a Jekyll and Hyde character with divided loyalties (as seen by the US Secret Service agent), with Zwart assigning Hyde as the Lacanian $ (the communist) and Jekyll as S_s (the impassive expert persona). Zwart does not spell out who/what is S₁. He does, however, provide an interesting take on ‘a’ (alpha) which in science hitherto was always in the public domain but now in the last instance, this atomic discovery has become ‘classified’ knowledge, a dangerous object that transforms into $ (the existential crisis) – a transformation that in psychoanalysis is called sublimation (according to Zwart, p.105). As such any S₂involved becomes a security risk and must be monitored day and night by the FBI. On the other hand, as I presume, a scientist like Teller presents no $ risk since his S₂  (the impassive scientist) more or less equals his S₁ personae in that he shares the ideology of the FBI – to be absolutely sure, they will still monitor him as well, just in case he has a psychotic episode and turns communist. In any case, the Jekyll and Hyde characterization of Oppenheimer seems an apt one, not so much that he had a divided personality but that he morphed from Hyde (the early communist sympathiser) into Jekyll (the mad nuclear bomb scientist) and then back to a different sort of Hyde who advocated for international control of all nuclear weapons, a pipe dream that Heller derided, saying (in Kipphardt’s version) that

 

“people will learn political common sense only when they are really and truly scared. Only when the bombs are so big that they can destroy everything there is”. 

 

A statement that is truly $ (MAD). Oppenheimer’s belated realisation that it was wrong to develop the A bomb in the first place is, of course, in terms of real politic also flawed because a (alpha) as public domain knowledge, as far back as Hahn’s discovery of nuclear fission, was bound to arouse (in Freudian terms) many a scientist like Oppenheimer who immediately thought of a big explosion (ejaculation in Freudian terms). There seems to be an inevitability in the scientific method that brought us to this point – as earlier said by Sloterdijk. Even as the various security apparatuses around the world do their damnedest to keep the latest nuclear weapons research under lock and key – as was presumably always the case in the history of weapons research and development – the genie will escape (since Zwart occasionally sprinkles German key words in the text to remind us that Germans by and large are to blame, one cannot help but point out that ‘genie’ in German means ‘genius’., i.e. genius will escape faster than any genie). 

 

Chevalier’s novel is also partly a discourse on the psychological make-up of the chief FBI agent who tries to figure out Oppenheimer. While there is no factual background to this particular scenario, Chevalier uses the device, Dostoyevsky-like, as in all good, old fashioned detective stories, trying to psychoanalyse – in crude terms – the criminal mind of Oppenheimer. Of course, there were any number of FBI agents who questioned and monitored Oppenheimer, and one can assume that in the FBI hierarchy there were agents who busied themselves writing up psychological profiles, adding to the ever-growing pile of secret files. Since Chevalier was a good friend of Oppenheimer, he could hardly forgive Oppenheimer for what he thought of as a friend’s betrayal, i.e. naming him in what became known as the Chevalier incident, as mentioned above. However Chevalier main puzzle was to make sense of his friend’s overall trajectory (nachvollziehen in German), especially his seeming abandonment of communist ideas and ideals.

 

Which brings me to Zwart’s chapter (4.5) entitled ‘The Case of Communism’. Since the polyglot Oppenheimer is reported to have read – in German - all three volumes of Das Kapital over a weekend, one can hardly claim he was not sufficiently acquainted with communism, so as to let go of it. There is no evidence upon reading that Das Kapital and other such literature which was provided at that time by his fellow travellers, his brother, wife, mistress and Chevalier himself, Oppenheimer decided that dialectical materialism was all wrong on logical, scientific grounds, hence there must have been other factors that led him to such abandonment of an ideology he seemed to agree with in the beginning. Indeed, as Zwart points out via Chevalier’s authentic voice, communism as an ideal in those early days – and presumably up to this day – was/is the equivalent of the scientific method: 

 

Communism is social engineering and decidedly strives to be science-based (p.102).

The Soviet Union and Western allies battling the Nazis and axis powers seemed a reasonable basis for many allied scientists to assume that nuclear science and the development of the ‘bolt’ aligns S₂ and S₁, i.e. science and communist ideology (Marxism) are compatible even in the USA, expecting that after the defeat of the Nazis an international atomic agency would take control over all nuclear weapons and their development. The events that disrupted this alignment were the surrender of the Third Reich and later Khruschev’s secret speech that condemned Stalin. Stalinism became discredited and with it discredited communism as a whole – at least in the eyes of some. Combined with the rabid anti-communism in the USA, many a left-leaning scientist began to doubt even the basic tenets of communism. Is this what happened to Oppenheimer? Such a philosophical reorientation seems unlikely in a personal environment (brother, wife, best friends) that still believed in the communist idealism, if not in the real politic power applications in the Soviet Bloc countries, China and Cuba. However, according to Zwart’s interpretation of Chevalier’s novel, Oppenheimer, after the dropping of the bombs, is ‘frantically’ trying to secure some sort of control over nuclear weapons within the confines of the USA, and in this quest is even willing to betray his former communist friends and colleagues, giving names to security agents, making ‘fabrications’ that lead to the Chevalier incident. In other words, Zwart is assuming that Oppenheimer is so desperate to keep a hold on the scientific, political and miliary establishment in the USA, even as he must see McCarthyism on the horizon, as to abandon any communist sympathies. It’s an interesting theory but I am not totally convinced. 

 

When Oppenheimer and his colleagues at Los Alamos compromised on the security arrangements under the then ideological alignment, that required some sort of secrecy in order to defeat the Nazis’ attempts to develop a nuclear weapon, there was no need to abandon communist sympathies, as indeed everyone was on the same page – maybe even the security agencies (or at least some of the MI5 players in the UK). Oppenheimer at that stage was at the top of the pile – even able to sideline hardcore anti-communists like Teller – and he must have felt that this arrangement would continue, and that his advice on further nuclear weapons development and production would be heeded. Even some stiff resistance did not deter him, believing that the security clearance hearing in 1954 would be in his favour. He was firmly of the belief that his past communist sympathies, especially when they aligned with the allied ideology to defeat Nazism, would have no bearing on his present situation in which he has virtually no such sympathies left, recognizing that the Russians – the nominal communists – are now the enemy of the free world. He further believed that his opposition to the H-bomb had absolutely nothing to do with his past sympathies. Oppenheimer miscalculated that such rational sounding argumentation would not fall foul of anti-communist zealots like Robb and Rolander who subjected him to questioning that was both insulting and unfair in legal terms. In participating in this semi-legalistic procedure, Oppenheimer had to continuously lower his guard, trying to minimize his communist past even when false accusations were made – only once did he remove himself as a witness when asked highly personal questions. Oppenheimer let himself be forced into the defensive when attacked. His counsel was not much better. In the end the humiliation was exactly the dream come true for the prosecution: Oppenheimer having denied being a fellow traveller ever since 1942 or so, was now judged to still be a fellow traveller, and on his own admission had to rule himself out of a security clearance. Had he stuck to his argument that as a mildly communist sympathiser in terms of left-wing idealism he was perfectly able to discharge his duties at the Atomic Energy Commission, in 1954 and beyond, he would have prevailed. Oppenheimer’s most powerful argument, in my opinion, as phrased in Kipphardt’s version is his answer to Robb’s bizarre claim that he and his fellow scientists are solely there to protect the freedom of the world, like universal soldiers:

 

There are people who are willing to protect freedom until there is nothing left of it.

 

Another good argument that was swept under the carpet by the prosecution, was Oppenheimer’s assertion that being a communist does not mean one is engaged in espionage:

 

Juliot-Curie in France … He is a Communist, and he is in charge of the French atomic weapons program.

 

As such, I feel that Oppenheimer, in his unwarranted eagerness to argue with the deaf  prosecution, pursued a flawed defensive strategy. Sure, Oppenheimer never was a communist in the sense of a Party member but dialectical materialism as a scientific enterprise continued unabated in the USA, as much as in the rest of the so-called free world. In denying this history and instead cosying up to the conservative political and military machinery in the USA, Oppenheimer also revealed a weakness in his character that in the end did not distinguish him much from the likes of Teller and Co.

 

In conclusion, Zwart’s Lacanian treatment of Oppenheimer via Chevalier’s novel is a fascinating effort to disentangle – to psychoanalyse – a complex persona that has certainly changed the course of history, if not always intentionally, then arising from his conflicted conscience between S₂ and S₁. It would be interesting to learn what Lacan himself would have made of Zwart’s analysis, not least since Lacan was on occasion associated with the French far left student rebellion, hence he would be unlikely to endorse Zwart’s exercise, i.e. an Oppenheimer character not deserving the attention given, Oppenheimer being a mere reactionary. Then again, Lacan would be accused by Lenin as being a symptom of the ‘childhood diseases’ common to leftist causes. 

 

So let us turn to Chevalier’s ‘setting the record straight’ book from 1966 which tells us to be careful not to take his earlier novel as the one and only truth (as perhaps Zwart does many years later), given it is a fictionalized account. Reading the 1966 version one does not learn much more, except Chevalier’s unsolved puzzlement as to how Oppenheimer could have betrayed him in the way he did. His main explanation seems to be that Oppenheimer played a silly game (his cock ‘n bull story that he had been approached by three unidentified people asking for information but that nothing had come of it – all to satisfy the dumb security agents eagerness to find spies under every bed) that backfired when the security apparatus (FBI and military intelligence) took it more seriously than anticipated – although nothing came of it at the time even when he named himself and Chevalier to be the ‘three’ contacts – but years later in 1954 provided the ammunition with which to deny Oppenheimer his security clearance to be renewed. Chevalier is of course disappointed in his ‘best friend’ to have abandoned his socialist if not communist sympathies for the sake of getting the job with General Groves – who by the way, secured the clearance for Oppenheimer despite misgivings from the FBI, which in turn begs the question why a general would want to give a left leaning scientist such a job. Maybe General Groves had an inkling that only Oppenheimer could manage a crazy lot of scientists under military curfew. Chevalier does not comment on Oppenheimer’s main motivation that seems to have been his antifascist stance, in doing everything possible to defeat the Nazis who were said to have advanced plans for an atomic weapon. As such Oppenheimer had to fry a much larger fish than keeping up with Chevalier who played absolutely no role in this endeavour other than equating anti-fascism with communism. For if the Germans had succeeded in developing an atomic weapon, Hitler and Co. would have no doubt used it and turned WWII into a conflagration far beyond anything conceivable. Neither communists in general, nor the Soviet communists in particular, could do anything about it – only the Americans could, be they capitalist or whatever (the Soviets were after all allies). Of course, as Chevalier also notes, when it emerged in 1945 (or earlier) that the Germans did not have the capacity or even the plans to develop an atomic weapon, and that the Nazis were close to defeat, thus negating the need to atom-bomb the Nazis out of existence, why shift the now un-necessary atomic bomb that Oppenheimer had successfully developed to atom-bomb the Japanese? Oppenheimer’s excuse that he did not advocate the actual use of the ‘gadget’, that he only advised Truman and the generals where to potentially drop it, that in Chevalier’s eyes – and in many others – was of course flatly rejected. Oppenheimer did of course have no say in how to use the bomb once it had been assembled (and could be assembled again and again without his input) and it is understandable that he cheered the dropping of the bomb since it was him, and him alone, who made it possible. It lifted his ego to heights unmatched in the history of science. Who could blame him? That along the way he had to manoeuvre in fields unknown to him, especially the top-secret security aspects that from a military point of view seemed to make some sense in the face of potential Nazi spies, all that and more must have swirled around his head, what with General Groves buzzing around like a fly on the wall, with everyone under surveillance, with everyone suspected not of Nazi sympathies but increasingly of former and present communist sympathies, as the Soviet Union and communism became a red flag for rabid anti-communists. While the Nazis were on the forefront this did not matter but once their influence waned, Oppenheimer had to contend with this new trend. What Chevalier does not realise – or at least does not comment on – is that Oppenheimer faced other opposition as well that fed into this alarming new trend, namely that of Teller and his ilk. Teller as a brilliant scientist and anti-communist breathed down Oppenheimer’s neck with his insistence to go to the next step and develop the H-bomb., which Oppenheimer resisted. This was the real reason that in 1954 Oppenheimer was accused of treason – obliquely – by Teller, i.e. that Oppenheimer had stalled the H-bomb that could have given the anti-communist Americans a clear advantage over the Soviet Union. Once Teller had been given the go-ahead for the H-bomb by the US military machine, he kind of turned around and did recommend Oppenheimer for various awards to make amends for the 1954 betrayal. While Chevalier kept writing letters to Oppenheimer – from Paris – wanting him to explain his betrayal of him, and not getting any satisfactory replies other than Oppenheimer’s contention that there was nothing to explain – as everything had been explained in the 1954 AEC hearings, namely that he had been an ‘idiot’ involving Chevalier in his cock and bull story. Presumably Oppenheimer did not feel that he had betrayed Chevalier and in some way resented his missives to the contrary, nevertheless keeping the correspondence on a polite level. It is also interesting to learn from Chevalier himself, that as a matter-of-fact Oppenheimer did not as such destroy his academic career at Berkely, since he had resigned from Berkely because he could not get a promotion he felt he had deserved. To argue that Oppenheimer was to blame for that as well might be a step too far, even though Chevalier had been interrogated by the FBI who did not take the matter any further, realising that the story told by Chevalier was nothing but the truth, which in turn was of no interest to the security services other than their fascination with all things Oppenheimer, e.g. not even interviewing-interrogating Eltenton who was the real prospect. That the FBI sent a message to Berkely about this issue is unlikely since it was already well known that Chevalier is a left-leaning socialist, if not a true red communist, and as such not exactly material for promotion to full professor. Oppenheimer might have expected that Chevalier understood all this and as such not play the victim in a drama that had very little to do with him, other than being used by the rabid McCarthyites to bring down Oppenheimer. That Chevalier made his own personal publishing drama out of it is understandable as well, for who would not use all this material that saw him attached, however loosely, to history in the making. Make hay while the sun shines on you. However, Chevalier is honest enough to acknowledge this at the end of his book, saying it ‘may perhaps at least serve as a footnote to that history’. 

 

Oppenheimer at that stage in 1966 had turned into a celebrity scientist who travelled the world giving talks about this and that, like a latter day Einstein whom Oppenheimer had denounced when meeting Malraux and Chevalier in Paris, to the surprise of everyone there, as having done no science for the last 20 years, basking in the sun, and as the salacious story goes (not told by Oppenheimer), having Playboy mags hidden between his science papers. Even worse for Chevalier, Oppenheimer at that occasion also denounced Malraux – Chevalier’s hero – as having 

 

“some understanding as to what science isn’t. But he has no conception of what science is”. 

 

Wow, what a put down! Anyway, Oppenheimer who himself never had done any real fundamental science to crow about - unlike Einstein - but politically like Einstein supported the liberal American establishment – the Democrats – which is anathema for seasoned socialists and French communists (which Chevalier had morphed into) but cannot be reduced to individuals like Oppenheimer and Einstein. Chevalier knows that as well. It is of course painful to know one personally. For example, I know my hero Noam Chomsky quite well, and when it transpired that he was vaguely associated with the notorious Epstein, I hesitated for a moment. If Chomsky were to be unmasked as a fervent supporter of the politics of the Democrats (Chomsky nevertheless advises to vote for Biden to prevent Trump from returning, which may be fair enough, or maybe not) I would be crestfallen. Oppenheimer, to his credit as far as I can see – nevertheless quoted by Chevalier as evidence of his ‘perverted kind of reasoning’ – did say in a 1961 Time Magazine (sic) interview that he would 

 

“like to see a general strike by the officers of all the armed forces on earth, refusing to drop nuclear bombs or to push the fatal button”. 

 

which echoes my sentiment exactly: if only all people on earth would refuse to wear uniforms and bear arms, all the problems of the world would be solved at once. I also know that this is not going to happen anytime soon, and so I can enjoy my retirement in the countryside without fear of any upheavals that might eventuate along the way, like the revolution eating her children again. I take it, Chevalier enjoyed his last years in Paris like any good champagne socialist should, passing at a ripe old age of 83. Poor old Oppenheimer paid for his sins as a chain smoker at the age of only 62.

 

Fast forwarding to the present situation, we are not really concerned with Lacan or Zwart or Chevalier but rather with the legacies of Oppenheimer and Teller: the latter’s prediction that people are too scared to use H-bombs seems to hold so far but Oppenheimer’s concern with an ever-increasing threat of MAD – also voiced presently by the likes of Noam Chomsky – lurks in the foreground. Who would have thought that with the demise of Soviet-style communism, a new Russian-style nationalism would emerge to upset the ‘free world’ yet again, what with Putin threatening all and sundry with annihilation if attacked, for example warning the UK she could be obliterated in one go  by exploding a rather large nuclear device carried on a submarine, no doubt a fission-fusion-fusion-fusion (…) ‘bolt’. NATO is at the Russian border to deliver likewise, testing, testing with conventional warfare delivered to the Ukraine. Other countries like China, India, Pakistan, Israel and various rogue states basteln an den H  Bomben, exploiting Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, turning the security of the world into a nightmare. So, while we are waiting, or not waiting for the new Oppenheimer to emerge, we can only watch the old Oppenheimer for a forgettable night at the movies.

 

 

Chevalier, Haakon 1966. Oppenheimer, the story of a friendship. Andre Deutsch.

 

Kipphardt, H. 1969. In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer. A Spotlight Dramabook.

 

Zwart, H. 2017. Tales of Research Misconduct. Springer Open.

 

‘I’m the new Oppenheimer!’: my soul-destroying day at Palantir’s first-ever AI warfare conference.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/17/ai-weapons-palantir-war-technology

 

Oppenheimer (2023) The Movie.