Every now and then, science serves up poison pills. Knowledge gained in the course of exploring how nature works opens doors we might wish had stayed shut: For much of the past year, our newsfeeds were flooded with stories about how computational superpowers can create amoral nonhuman “minds” that may learn to think better than we do (and then what?). On the big screen, the movie Oppenheimer explored a threat people have lived with for nearly 80 years: How the energy of the atom can be unleashed to power unimaginably destructive bombs.
When potentially catastrophic inventions threaten all humanity, who decides how (or whether) they’re used? When even scientists toss around terms like “human extinction,” whose voice matters?
Such questions were at the core of the Oppenheimer film, a blockbuster now nominated for more than a dozen Oscars. To me, the movie hit home for a different reason. I spent a great deal of time with Frank Oppenheimer during the last 15 years of his life. While I never knew his brother Robert, Frank remained anguished over what he felt was Robert’s squandered opportunity to engage the world’s people in candid conversations about how to protect themselves under the shadow of this new threat.
During the post-World War II years, the emotionally close ties between the brothers (Robert — the “father of the atom bomb” — and his younger brother, Frank — the “uncle” of the bomb, as he mischievously called himself) were strained and for a time even fractured. Both hoped that the nascent nuclear technology would remain under global, and peaceful, control. Both hoped that the sheer horror of the weapons they helped to build could lead to a warless world.
They were on the same side, but not on the same page when it came to tactics.
Robert — whose fame surged after the war — believed decisions should be left to experts who understood the issues and had the power to make things happen — that is, people like himself. Frank believed just as fiercely that everyday people had to be involved. It took everyone to win the war, he argued, and it would take everyone to win the peace.
In the end, both lost. Both paid for their efforts with their careers (although Frank eventually resurrected his ideas as a “people’s science museum” that had a worldwide impact).
Given that the question “Who decides?” underlies so much of today’s fast-evolving sciences, the brothers’ story seems more compelling and relevant than ever.
