Richard Rhodes — The making of the atomic bomb

理查德· Rhodes — 原子弹的制造

Dwarkesh Podcast

2023-05-23

2 小时 37 分钟
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It was a tremendous honor & pleasure to interview Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb We discuss - similarities between AI progress & Manhattan Project (developing a powerful, unprecedented, & potentially apocalyptic technology within an uncertain arms-race situation) - visiting starving former Soviet scientists during fall of Soviet Union - whether Oppenheimer was a spy, & consulting on the Nolan movie - living through WW2 as a child - odds of nuclear war in Ukraine, Taiwan, Pakistan, & North Korea - how the US pulled of such a massive secret wartime scientific & industrial project Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (0:00:00) - Oppenheimer movie (0:06:22) - Was the bomb inevitable? (0:29:10) - Firebombing vs nuclear vs hydrogen bombs (0:49:44) - Stalin & the Soviet program (1:08:24) - Deterrence, disarmament, North Korea, Taiwan (1:33:12) - Oppenheimer as lab director (1:53:40) - AI progress vs Manhattan Project (1:59:50) - Living through WW2 (2:16:45) - Secrecy (2:26:34) - Wisdom & war Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
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  • By 1945, we were so pissed off at the Japanese.

  • We had destroyed their air force, we had destroyed their navy,

  • we had destroyed their army, and yet they wouldn't surrender.

  • The people who are working on AI right now, they're huge fans of yours.

  • The way they see the progress in the field is exactly like when they start reading this book.

  • Oppenheimer's worst enemy said to me, Robert Oppenheimer was the best lab director I ever knew.

  • And then he chased me out of the house.

  • You can make a pretty high-level nuclear explosion just by taking two subcritical pieces of uranium.

  • All this business about secret designs and so forth is hogwash.

  • We're still in a very precarious place.

  • And as long as any country in the world has nuclear weapons, we're going to continue to be.

  • That has been the price of nuclear deterrence.

  • Okay,

  • today I have the great honor of interviewing Richard Rhodes who is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the making of the atomic bomb and most recently the author of energy a human history I'm really excited about this one.

  • Let's jump in actually at a current event,

  • which is the fact that there's a new movie about Oppenheimer coming out which I understand you've been consulted about.

  • What did you think of the trailer?

  • What are your impressions?

  • They've really done a good job, I think,

  • of things like the Trinity test device, which was the sphere covered with cables of various kinds.