Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Technology
Episode: Alex Wellerstein, "Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
Description: The American atomic bomb was born in secrecy. From the moment scientists first conceived of its possibility to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and beyond, there were efforts to control the spread of nuclear information and the newly discovered scientific facts that made such powerful weapons possible. The totalizing scientific secrecy that the atomic bomb appeared to demand was new, unusual, and very nearly unprecedented. It was foreign to American science and American democracy--and potentially incompatible with both. From the beginning, this secrecy was controversial, and it was always contested. The atomic bomb was not merely the application...