Sharing Nuclear Secrets
Title | Sharing Nuclear Secrets PDF eBook |
Author | John Baylis |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 369 |
Release | 2023-06-27 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 0198875118 |
Nuclear alliances are high stakes partnerships with the potential to enhance security, goodwill, scientific and technical innovation, and economic well-being; or, they risk a state's very existence, generate social and political unrest, and fracture frameworks for international cooperation and jeopardize global reputations. Now entering its eighth decade, the Anglo-American nuclear alliance is the oldest and most complex in the world. Sharing Nuclear Secrets is the first comprehensive single-volume study of the Anglo-American nuclear relationship, illuminating both its fragility and durability. It has waxed and waned based on the preferences of presidents and prime ministers, weathered war scares, overcome isolationist impulses and imperial decline, persisted despite public antipathy, and has survived and been strengthened by scientific rivalries. Trust and ambiguity are entangled at the core of the Anglo-American nuclear relationship. The interplay between trust and ambiguity has influenced the way the nuclear partnership has been institutionalized at bureaucratic and technical levels, but also the ways in which political actors and private citizens have maintained the relationship through periods of crisis, moments of triumph, and through decades of cultural reckoning with nuclear weapons. From the days of the Manhattan Project, through the crisis of Suez and criticism of Dr. Strangelove, to the end of the Cold War, and into present day circumstances brought about by the JCPOA, AUKUS, and Russian nuclear threats over Ukraine, Sharing Nuclear Secrets reveals that ambiguity is key to keeping the balance between sentiment and interests and the corresponding equilibrium between trust and mistrust in the special relationship.
Restricted Data
Title | Restricted Data PDF eBook |
Author | Alex Wellerstein |
Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
Pages | 558 |
Release | 2021-04-09 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 022602038X |
"Nuclear weapons, since their conception, have been the subject of secrecy. In the months after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American scientific establishment, the American government, and the American public all wrestled with what was called the "problem of secrecy," wondering not only whether secrecy was appropriate and effective as a means of controlling this new technology but also whether it was compatible with the country's core values. Out of a messy context of propaganda, confusion, spy scares, and the grave counsel of competing groups of scientists, what historian Alex Wellerstein calls a "new regime of secrecy" was put into place. It was unlike any other previous or since. Nuclear secrets were given their own unique legal designation in American law ("restricted data"), one that operates differently than all other forms of national security classification and exists to this day. Drawing on massive amounts of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time at the author's request, Restricted Data is a narrative account of nuclear secrecy and the tensions and uncertainty that built as the Cold War continued. In the US, both science and democracy are pitted against nuclear secrecy, and this makes its history uniquely compelling and timely"--
Enemies Within
Title | Enemies Within PDF eBook |
Author | Matt Apuzzo |
Publisher | Simon and Schuster |
Pages | 336 |
Release | 2014-09-16 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1476727945 |
Two Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists take an unbridled look into one of the most sensitive post-9/11 national security investigations—a breathtaking race to stop a second devastating terrorist attack on American soil. In Enemies Within, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman “reveal how New York really works” (James Risen, author of State of War) and lay bare the complex and often contradictory state of counterterrorism and intelligence in America through the pursuit of Najibullah Zazi, a terrorist bomber who trained under one of bin Laden’s most trusted deputies. Zazi and his co-conspirators represented America’s greatest fear: a terrorist cell operating inside America. This real-life spy story—uncovered in previously unpublished secret NYPD documents and interviews with intelligence sources—shows that while many of our counterterrorism programs are more invasive than ever, they are often counterproductive at best. After 9/11, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly initiated an audacious plan for the Big Apple: dispatch a vast network of plainclothes officers and paid informants—called “rakers” and “mosque crawlers”—into Muslim neighborhoods to infiltrate religious communities and eavesdrop on college campuses. Police amassed data on innocent people, often for their religious and political beliefs. But when it mattered most, these strategies failed to identify the most imminent threats. In Enemies Within, Appuzo and Goldman tackle the tough questions about the measures that we take to protect ourselves from real and perceived threats. They take you inside America’s sprawling counterterrorism machine while it operates at full throttle. They reveal what works, what doesn’t, and what Americans have unknowingly given up. “Did the Snowden leaks trouble you? You ain’t seen nothing yet” (Dan Bigman, Forbes editor).
Atomic Spy
Title | Atomic Spy PDF eBook |
Author | Nancy Thorndike Greenspan |
Publisher | Penguin |
Pages | 416 |
Release | 2020-05-12 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 0593083415 |
"Nancy Greenspan dives into the mysteries of the Klaus Fuchs espionage case and emerges with a classic Cold War biography of intrigue and torn loyalties. Atomic Spy is a mesmerizing morality tale, told with fresh sources and empathy." --Kai Bird, author of The Good Spy and coauthor of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer "Enthralling and riveting."--The New York Times Book Review The gripping biography of a notorious Cold War villain--the German-born British scientist who handed the Soviets top-secret American plans for the plutonium bomb--showing a man torn between conventional loyalties and a sense of obligation to a greater good. German by birth, British by naturalization, Communist by conviction, Klaus Fuchs was a fearless Nazi resister, a brilliant scientist, and an infamous spy. He was convicted of espionage by Britain in 1950 for handing over the designs of the plutonium bomb to the Russians, and has gone down in history as one of the most dangerous agents in American and British history. He put an end to America's nuclear hegemony and single-handedly heated up the Cold War. But, was Klaus Fuchs really evil? Using archives long hidden in Germany as well as intimate family correspondence, Nancy Thorndike Greenspan brings into sharp focus the moral and political ambiguity of the times in which Fuchs lived and the ideals with which he struggled. As a university student in Germany, he stood up to Nazi terror without flinching, and joined the Communists largely because they were the only ones resisting the Nazis. After escaping to Britain in 1933, he was arrested as a German émigré--an "enemy alien"--in 1940 and sent to an internment camp in Canada. His mentor at university, renowned physicist Max Born, worked to facilitate his release. After years of struggle and ideological conflict, when Fuchs joined the atomic bomb project, his loyalties were firmly split. He started handing over top secret research to the Soviets in 1941, and continued for years from deep within the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. Greenspan's insights into his motivations make us realize how he was driven not just by his Communist convictions but seemingly by a dedication to peace, seeking to level the playing field of the world powers. With thrilling detail from never-before-seen sources, Atomic Spy travels across the Germany of an ascendant Nazi party; the British university classroom of Max Born; a British internment camp in Canada; the secret laboratories of Los Alamos; and Eastern Germany at the height of the Cold War. Atomic Spy shows the real Klaus Fuchs--who he was, what he did, why he did it, and how he was caught. His extraordinary life is a cautionary tale about the ambiguity of morality and loyalty, as pertinent today as in the 1940s.
Seeking the Bomb
Title | Seeking the Bomb PDF eBook |
Author | Vipin Narang |
Publisher | Princeton University Press |
Pages | 400 |
Release | 2022-01-11 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0691172625 |
The first systematic look at the different strategies that states employ in their pursuit of nuclear weapons Much of the work on nuclear proliferation has focused on why states pursue nuclear weapons. The question of how states pursue nuclear weapons has received little attention. Seeking the Bomb is the first book to analyze this topic by examining which strategies of nuclear proliferation are available to aspirants, why aspirants select one strategy over another, and how this matters to international politics. Looking at a wide range of nations, from India and Japan to the Soviet Union and North Korea to Iraq and Iran, Vipin Narang develops an original typology of proliferation strategies—hedging, sprinting, sheltered pursuit, and hiding. Each strategy of proliferation provides different opportunities for the development of nuclear weapons, while at the same time presenting distinct vulnerabilities that can be exploited to prevent states from doing so. Narang delves into the crucial implications these strategies have for nuclear proliferation and international security. Hiders, for example, are especially disruptive since either they successfully attain nuclear weapons, irrevocably altering the global power structure, or they are discovered, potentially triggering serious crises or war, as external powers try to halt or reverse a previously clandestine nuclear weapons program. As the international community confronts the next generation of potential nuclear proliferators, Seeking the Bomb explores how global conflict and stability are shaped by the ruthlessly pragmatic ways states choose strategies of proliferation.
Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea
Title | Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea PDF eBook |
Author | Jeffrey Richelson |
Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company |
Pages | 732 |
Release | 2007-09-17 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0393329828 |
'Spying on the Bomb' focuses on the past & present nuclear activities of various countries, intermingling what the US believed was happening with accounts of what actually occurred in each country's laboratories, test sites and decision-making councils.
The Nuclear Express
Title | The Nuclear Express PDF eBook |
Author | Thomas Reed |
Publisher | Zenith Press |
Pages | 407 |
Release | 2010-11-10 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1616732423 |
This is a political history of nuclear weapons from the discovery of fission in 1938 to the nuclear train wreck that seems to loom in our future. It is an account of where those weapons came from, how the technology surprisingly and covertly spread, and who is likely to acquire those weapons next and most importantly why. The authors’ examination of post Cold War national and geopolitical issues regarding nuclear proliferation and the effects of Chinese sponsorship of the Pakistani program is eye opening. The reckless “nuclear weapons programs for sale” exporting of technology by Pakistan is truly chilling, as is the on-again off-again North Korean nuclear weapons program.