In Heinlein’s Expanded Universe, he has an incredible short story about the US getting nuclear weapons- and enforcing a worldwide ban on planes/military spending. It was BEFORE we dropped the bomb, and the army interviewed him- he guessed everything correctly.
What’s the best thing to read about the window of world-imperial opportunity in which the US alone had the bomb?
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It’s a lens into how people closely following events felt about them, at the time. He includes public statements from military officials, showing how unprepared they were for the scale of the threat. LOTS of parallels to drone warfare / cyberwar / infowar today. Fascinating.
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Thanks for the rec - I like Heinlein but haven’t read those stories. You ever see this Von Neumann anecdote btw? You get the sense he saw it all, and saw it all slipping away.pic.twitter.com/AZVOnlbVZW
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Christ. That’s chilling. That he saw automation as inevitable, coming out of cheaper energy, is incredible. The shocking thing is how straightforwardly dumb our leadership was. Truman legitimately thought it’d be 20 years before the Soviets had the bomb.
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New conversation -
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Well, George Kennan's memoirs are good on how and why it didn't feel like that at the time...
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