Malcolm Muggeridge Quotes
Find it quite impossible to get excited about the atomic bomb as such, can’t see that it really alters anything.
For a similar view from the eyes of an American, see Pearson {612242}.
Malcolm Muggeridge, 1903-1990, British Writer & Editor, Officer of British Intelligence, Diary, September 23, 1949
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This quotation represents a colossal failure of politicians to understand science and the way that it works. They assumed that the processes and methods were secrets that if kept secret, would prevent others from constructing an atomic bomb. The reality was that the most important “secrets” had emanated from Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and other published scientific papers. So any competent physicist knew immediately how the bomb worked. A triggering mechanism would need to be developed but that was just a complicated engineering project. The largest barrier was the supply of enough radioactive material with sufficient purity. That then (as today) took a lot of money and some time. But after the initial bomb, the secrets might speed things up but were not necessary. That is why the French and the Russians quickly developed their bombs, and why it did not take the Israelis long once the had decided to invest the resources. China, India and Pakistan did not need the secrets either when much later, they decided to develop nuclear weapons. With the atomic bomb, spying and obtaining secrets shorten the required time and reduce the cost, but are not necessary. This is why nuclear proliferation is so hard to stop.
This prediction was sadly terribly accurate. Nuclear terrorism is a realistic threat at the millennium. Pannekoek was one of the first to predict it.
The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb. Oppenheimer was the great physicist who directed the successful development of the atomic bomb so as to build the weapon before Hitler did in World War II. However, as the technology evolved, he had doubts as to the wisdom of creating even more powerful hydrogen weapons. His viewpoint was hurting the administration’s policy of rapid unlimited nuclear weapons development, and he was the victim of a character assassination whereby his security clearance was withdrawn. The “father” of the atomic bomb was the first American casualty of atomic weapons development.
The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb
- Born: March 24, 1903
- Died: November 14, 1990
- Nationality: British
- Profession: Journalist, Author, Satirist
Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist and satirist. His father, H. T. Muggeridge, was a prominent socialist politician and one of the early Labour Party Members of Parliament for Romford, in Essex. In his twenties, Muggeridge was attracted to communism and went to live in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, but the experience turned him into an anticommunist.
