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.