Review: Dark Sun - The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb

 I enjoyed The Making of the Atomic Bomb so much that I checked out Dark Sun, the sequel. If anything, this book is even better! For one thing, it's not just about the science and engineering of the hydrogen bomb. The book covers the interaction between the USA and Russia, including the espionage that allowed Russia to catch up rapidly to the bomb. What impressed me was that the entire operation was run very cheaply, as the spies embedded in Los Alamos (one of whom was a hot shot scientist in his own right) had ideological motivations, not monetary motivations.

Igor Gouzenko, the Soviet cipher clerk who visited Moscow during the October 16 panic, characterized the Soviet espionage system from personal experience as “mass production.”369 “There were thousands, yes thousands, of agents in the United States,” he estimated; “thousands in Great Britain, and many other thousands spread elsewhere throughout the world.”370 America and England were particularly well covered, Gouzenko reported. “When I worked in the Special Communications branch [in Moscow] the vast majority of the telegrams came from England and the United States. Telegrams from other countries were lost in the flood.” The military attaché at the Soviet Embassy in Washington had five cipher clerks working for him, added Gouzenko, “which gives some indication of the amount of information he alone sent.” (kindle loc 1926)

 “Fuchs held the envelope containing the 1,500 dollars as if it were an unclean thing,” Gold remembered at another time, “and flatly refused to accept it.”643 Five years later, Fuchs was still insulted. “He turned down this offer,” he told the FBI, “and stated he would not do such a thing.” (kindle loc 3113)

 The development of the hydrogen bomb itself was also not obvious --- there were many dead-ends, and at one point the entire project had to be paused while computers were developed to aid with the calculations. I thought that was pretty amazing. The lead characters here included Stanislaw Ulam, Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller, the last being notorious for being the model for Dr. Strangelove. Unlike the project for the original A-bomb, the hydrogen bomb project was full of strife and politicking, with Oppenheimer trying to discourage work since he didn't think it would actually help the US strategic position. This led to him being accused of being a soviet agent and he had his security clearance revoked.

The soviet side of the story was no less interesting. Rather than just copying and implementing the espionage information they were given, the soviet team's director had his own team do design and implementation from the basic ideas, only using the espionage data as a cross-check against his team. This was to guard against misinformation as well as to ensure that they had the capability of generating new ideas as well.

When the spies were finally uncovered, the sentences for them were wildly different. For instance, Fuchs, who actively leaked the diagrams was sentenced to 15 years in prison, while Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were given the death penalty. The differences was that Fuchs was tried in England, while the Rosenbergs were tried in the US, and Truman wanted them to become an example and so refused to give them a reprieve from the death penalty:

I must say that it goes against the grain to avoid interfering in the case where a woman is to receive capital punishment. [But] . . . if there would be any commuting of the woman’s sentence without the man’s, then from here on the Soviets would simply recruit their spies from among women. . . . We know that the Rosenbergs were part of [a spy] ring.2375 If the Soviets can convince prospective recruits that the worst possible penalty they would ever have to pay for exposure as spies would be a relatively short term in prison, then their blandishments and bribes would be much more effective. . . . If it were possible to assure that these people would be imprisoned for the rest of their natural lives, there would be no question that the vast bulk of the argument would rest on the side of commutation. But the fact is that, if they do not go to the chair, they will be released in fifteen years under federal law. (kindle loc 11288)

The book ends with an analysis of how much the US spent on its nuclear armaments:

By one estimate that properly counts delivery systems as well as weapons, it cost the United States $4 trillion—roughly the US national debt in 1994.2623 Soviet costs were comparable and were decisive in the decline of the Soviet economy that triggered the USSR’s collapse.2624 Cold warriors have argued from that fact that spending the Soviet Union into bankruptcy itself justifies the arms race. Their argument overlooks the inconvenient reality that the expense of the arms race contributed to US decline as well, decline evident in an oppressive national debt, in decaying infrastructure and social and educational neglect. The potlatch theory of the arms race also overlooks the unconscionable risk both superpowers took of omnicidal war. (kindle loc 12635)

 In many ways, Oppenheimer was right --- by sparking the arms race, the USA was trapped into spending an ever increasing amount on its military, and that prevented it from other spending on valuable infrastructure. Of course, many of the USA's other choices were entirely self-inflicted --- no other country spends as much on healthcare for so poor an outcome. It could be that not spending the money on nuclear armaments would simply have poured more money into insurance company executive pockets or into the hands of Wall Street instead.

All in all, the book was fascinating and well worth reading. Recommended.