Arrogance and the Power that Fuels the Stars

            Freeman Dyson, another physicist who worked on nuclear weapons explains the seduction of power and knowledge involved. 

I felt it myself, the glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist.  To feel it is there in your hands to release the energy that fuels the stars; to let it do your bidding to perform these miracles; to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people a feeling of illimitable power, and it is in some ways responsible for all our troubles- I would say- this technical arrogance that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.[1]

            The will to power through knowledge, and its "technical arrogance" had corrupted Oppenheimer, and he realized this too late and his conscience never quite recovered. Men who wanted the power promised by nuclear weapons such as Edward Teller or Harry Truman, reviled him, because they saw their own bad conscience in him. Truman called Oppenheimer a "crybaby scientist" because he tried to talk to Truman about limiting nuclear weapons. Teller helped destroy Oppenheimer's credibility as member of the Atomic Energy Commission. Teller was the 'father of the H bomb', and had an ambition as strong as Oppenheimer's had been before Hiroshima. But though Teller participated in the Manhattan Project he seems to have had no remorse about the deaths it caused. As an obedient nuclear bureaucrat Teller would go on to promote Reagan's "Star Wars program", which resulted in an enormous corporate welfare giveaway of taxpayer moneys to the nuclear, computer and telecommunications industries, contributing significantly to a huge deficit that continues to harm many people, especially women, children and the poor.

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