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wellerstein's profile
Alex Wellerstein
Alex Wellerstein
Alex Wellerstein
Verified account
@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. Alex Wellerstein‏Verified account @wellerstein 9 Feb 2018
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      Working on my book (steady progress lately...) — one graph I'm fairly pleased with at the moment: a combined cost and personnel graph for the entire Manhattan Project (1942-1946). Really lets you see how "big" it was at any given point, by a variety of metrics.pic.twitter.com/pupn8PMR7G

      4 replies 58 retweets 131 likes
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    2. John Greer‏ @JohnCGreer 9 Feb 2018
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      Replying to @wellerstein

      No real dollars? A hundred million is about 1.4 billion in 2018 dollars.

      1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
    3. Alex Wellerstein‏Verified account @wellerstein 9 Feb 2018
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      Replying to @JohnCGreer

      It depends on how you convert it (which is tricky for big wartime projects) but yeah, it's about 15X. But we are much more used to dropping $30BN on a weapon project (cheap compared to the F-35) than they were in 1945. I am more interested in magnitudes.http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/05/17/the-price-of-the-manhattan-project/ …

      1 reply 2 retweets 10 likes
      Alex Wellerstein‏Verified account @wellerstein 9 Feb 2018
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      Replying to @wellerstein @JohnCGreer

      When I want to help people today to understand the size of the project, I tend to emphasize the number of people. It's about 500,000 total over the war; that's almost 1% of the entire US civilian labor force during WWII. A hard thing to keep secret!http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/11/01/many-people-worked-manhattan-project/ …

      12:59 PM - 9 Feb 2018
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      • Kongo of The World Jeffrey B. Layton Brad Felix Albert Lunde Sachi Mohanty Joseph O'Mahoney John Greer Binyizdabbalah Awe Onisokuso
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        2. John Greer‏ @JohnCGreer 9 Feb 2018
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          Replying to @wellerstein

          That's a great point regarding the percent of the population! Seems like keeping it secret in modern times would be impossible today with the proliferation of cell phones, the internet, etc...

          1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
        3. Alex Wellerstein‏Verified account @wellerstein 10 Feb 2018
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          Replying to @JohnCGreer

          It wasn't easy to do then, either. (Which is what a big chunk of this chapter is about.) They arguably *didn't* keep it secret by a number of measures, though on some of the ones that matters (e.g., the Germans, the Japanese) they were, somewhat miraculously, successful.

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        4. Alex Wellerstein‏Verified account @wellerstein 10 Feb 2018
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          Replying to @wellerstein @JohnCGreer

          But information and stories about it did leak into the press, did circulate in a variety of circles during the war, and so on. They spent almost all of their security work trying to keep leaks and "indiscretions" from getting out — a far larger problem than the spies.

          1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
        5. John Greer‏ @JohnCGreer 10 Feb 2018
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          Replying to @wellerstein

          Do you think something on that scale could be kept secret today? (Or is being kept secret)

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        6. Alex Wellerstein‏Verified account @wellerstein 10 Feb 2018
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          Replying to @JohnCGreer

          Not for a long period of time, not in the sense of "the fact that there is a secret is the secret." It's different if you can acknowledge the general outline of things, e.g., "what the NSA does is secret" is different than the entire NSA and its mission being a secret.

          2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
        7. Alex Wellerstein‏Verified account @wellerstein 10 Feb 2018
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          Replying to @wellerstein @JohnCGreer

          (And just to point out an interesting fact — within a year of its creation, the existence of the NSA, its location, and its general mission could be discovered by reading the New York Times.)pic.twitter.com/8VlsDaf0iy

          0 replies 1 retweet 0 likes
        8. End of conversation

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