On Oppenheimer’s concept of 'security risk'

"The cause celebre in 1954 in the USA was the Oppenheimer case. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who had directed the building of atom bombs during World War II, had subsequently come to disagree with the politically dominant figures in the government who were eager to develop and build with the greatest possible speed hydrogen bombs a thousand times more powerful than the atom bombs which had devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Oppenheimer urged delay, as he preferred that a further effort be made to negotiate with the Soviet Union before proceeding with such an irreversible escalation of the arms race. This policy difference lay behind the dramatic Oppenheimer hearings, humiliating proceedings at the height of the anti-Communist 'McCarthy era' (and of the US Congressional 'Un-American Activities Committee'), leading to, absurdly, the labelling of Oppenheimer as a 'security risk'.! - STEVE HEIMS' Introdution to "Norbert Wiener. Human Use Of Human Beings" (HEIMS 1989:xviii)

Bibliography

• Norbert Wiener Human Use Of Human Beings, 1954.