[onceKnowable]

Einstein alerted the authorities about the dangers on Aug 2nd, a month before the war had even started and long before the US had joined the fight.

But the authorities kept it secret, choosing to develop these weapons.

But, had those weapons not been developed in secret and an informed public debate occurred before development, that debate would have inevitably lead to the MAD doctrine. That is the only inevitable outcome of nuclear war.

Without the guidance that MAD provides, politicians in 1939 did what they thought was the rational choice, and chose to develop these weapons so that they weren’t left unprepared if the enemy developed their nukes. But with the knowledge that MAD is the only outcome in a post nuke world, totally different scenarios become possible. They may have chosen to take action at UN-level, anti-nuclear proliferation treaties even before they got developed? Stifling the public debate just delayed the notion of anti-nuclear proliferation treaties but it did not stop them. The only result of an informed public debate on nukes is anti-nuclear proliferation treaties.

If all that had been done in 1939 as opposed to the 50’s & 60’s, the war could have been prevented before it even began!

Regardless of the crazy whataboutery, the lesson is that the public debate resulted in the ethics being decided as: “nuclear technology leads to MAD when used to create weapons, therefore laws are needed to protect the public from misuse of nuclear technology”. This debate is needed for every new technology.

Technology moves fast, faster than ever these days. And currently, we’re used to a situation where we typically operate these debates retroactively, legislating against misuse after the fact, when new technologies are created and then misused. Whereas, as this article is highlighting, the ethical way of doing things would be: to have informed public debates that allow laws to be created to robustly protect the public before a new technology is misused.

Note that nobody is accusing “new technologies” as bad. Or evil. Or anything like that. The call is simply for creators to slow this public debate to take place openly, to decide if the new technology can be misused and its repercussions in the event of that misuse and if new laws are needed to protect the public, before the possibility of their new technology being misused is even a factor.