Knowledge and Violence: Mythologizing the Business of Math

            Von Neumann was a mathematician who loved numbers, games, war and power.

His biography offers many insights into the close relation of the top levels of Big Business, the military and the academic worlds, and how these worlds interpenetrate and support eachother. For instance he was one of the principle advisors of General Groves in the choice of targets in Japan on which to drop the atom bomb, as well as being instrumental, at Los Alamos, in convincing Oppenheimer of changes in the bomb design.  Von Neumann's design was used in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Von Neumann refused to join any of the associations, like the American Federation of Scientists, which advocated limiting atomic weapons and putting them under international control. He posed as the "disinterested  expert" and the "neutral scientist" and said "I do not want to appear in public in a not primarily technical context".[1] Von Neumann's biographer notes that he "often sought relationships with men of power,  especially those dealing with the interface between technology and military planning, with himself in the role as technical advisor" and he "found leading industrialists, bankers, military men and political figures personally highly congenial" the mathematician Stanislaw Ulam observed the Von Neumann admired "people who had power...and people or organizations that could be tough or ruthless"[2] Like Himmler, Columbus and Oppenheimer "disinterestedness" and neutral objectivity required a service to power and the pursuit of "truth" and knowledge was simultaneously a pursuit of power. Von Neumann worked with Edward Teller in helping to design the Hydrogen bomb. Courting important financiers, such as Lewis Strauss[3], and military people for funding and support, Von Neumann, after designing the first mathematical model of the computer, proceeded to build the first computer at Princeton in order to meet the calculating needs of thermonuclear weapons. He advocated unlimited nuclear testing  whatever the cost to innocent victims because "every worthwhile activity has a price". He eventually gained control of most of the weapons and strategy development surrounding nuclear weapons, because, according to one observer, the "combination of scientific ability and practicality gave him a credibility with military officers, engineers, industrialists, and scientists that no one else could match". He became the "dominant advisory figure in nuclear misslery at the time".  He also advocated "preventative war" against the Russians, which basically means attack them before they can think of attacking you. He is quoted as having said in 1950 that "If you say why not bomb them [the Russians] tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say why not at 5 o'clock, I say why not 1 o'clock"[4].This willingness to murder over a hundred million people should be compared with the similar willingness of Himmler and Columbus.

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