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wellerstein's profile
Alex Wellerstein
Alex Wellerstein
Alex Wellerstein
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@wellerstein

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Alex WellersteinVerified account

@wellerstein

Historian of science, secrecy, and nuclear weapons. Professor of STS at @FollowStevens. UC Berkeley alum with a Harvard PhD. NUKEMAP creator. Coder and web dev.

Hoboken, NJ / NYC
blog.nuclearsecrecy.com
Joined September 2011

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    1. Casillic‏ @Casillic 9 Jan 2018
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      Often wonder if the Manhattan Project failed and the atomic bomb not worked, would General Groves really have had to live on the hill, testifying to Congresses inquisition or would it have been covered up & classified away unknown forever?

      5 replies 2 retweets 19 likes
    2. Alex Wellerstein‏Verified account @wellerstein 10 Jan 2018
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      Replying to @Casillic

      Too big to just cover up forever — too much infrastructure, too many Congressmen already curious about it in 1945. I doubt he would have had to testify forever though.

      4 replies 0 retweets 4 likes
    3. Jeffrey Lewis‏Verified account @ArmsControlWonk 10 Jan 2018
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      Replying to @wellerstein @Casillic

      As Alex is too modest to do so himself, he documented the thin veneer of secrecy hiding the effort.http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/03/29/narratives-of-manhattan-project-secrecy/ …

      2 replies 2 retweets 11 likes
    4. Alex Wellerstein‏Verified account @wellerstein 10 Jan 2018
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      Replying to @ArmsControlWonk @Casillic

      Modesty is not generally one of my attributes but thanks. There were also many leaks even during the war — the idea that a lid would have been kept on it in the postwar when the censorship regime lifted seems unlikely to me:http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/09/20/worst-manhattan-project-leaks/ …

      3 replies 1 retweet 5 likes
    5. Casillic‏ @Casillic 10 Jan 2018
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      Replying to @wellerstein @ArmsControlWonk

      What about recruitment secrecy, do you know it was as strictly enforced as claimed or do you think they told *some* of the scientist to get them to join. Heard a few found out accidentally e.g. Think Feynman and even Oppenheimer. Thoughts? Maybe you’ve written on this too?

      1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
    6. Alex Wellerstein‏Verified account @wellerstein 10 Jan 2018
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      Replying to @Casillic @ArmsControlWonk

      The scientists at Los Alamos knew what they were doing on the whole. Many at Chicago did, too. My very rough and speculative estimate is that on the order of 2,000 people in the whole project knew what it was about. So about 1% of the people involved.

      1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
      Alex Wellerstein‏Verified account @wellerstein 10 Jan 2018
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      Replying to @wellerstein @Casillic @ArmsControlWonk

      It should also be noted that many of the scientists involved (even those at the top, like Bush/Conant) believed the secrecy was a necessarily *short-term* evil. They did not believe it could persist into the postwar even if the bomb wasn't used.

      8:58 AM - 10 Jan 2018
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      • andrew casilli сука-billed blyatypus
      1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
        1. Alex Wellerstein‏Verified account @wellerstein 10 Jan 2018
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          Replying to @wellerstein @Casillic @ArmsControlWonk

          And we know that at least one scientist later claimed that he was tempted to leak about it *at the time*. Surely others would have leaked afterwards. https://nyti.ms/1kbHraF 

          0 replies 1 retweet 3 likes
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