Compassionate Spy 2022

The movie "A compassionate spy" is an interesting "side read" in the context of the "Oppenheimer" hype. The movie makes a point that there were times, when the US industrial complex was out of bound, like when planning to nuke Russia to "defeat them". The movie illustrates the dilemma to betray in order to save the world. Hall saw the danger of a fascist US unilaterally dominating the world and the Kaku-Axelrod's book "To win a nuclear war" book illustrates that there were leaders who after WW2 dreamed of "winning the arms race". The Rosenbergs, who passed along much less were both electocuted in 1963. In retrospect, sharing the knowledge about nuclear weapons had a positive aspect that a grand nuclear war was avoided so far. How the story of the use of nuclear weapons on our planet will end is however not yet decided. What does it have to do with math? Well, it is first of all hard core game theory or "theory of conflict". It is an optimization problem: how do the individual players have to behave so that it is the best for all. Also a bit of physics is mentioned, Bohr and Oppenheimer appear. In a letter to Truman, a letter with Wigner's and Millikan's signatures appears. How many atomic bombs are needed to defeat the Soviet union? There were serious calculations done to figure this out.

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Oliver Knill, Posted January 29, 2024,