He was a great guy, and remains an inspiration

Oh, and if you want my full thoughts on the film Oppenheimer — as well as Ukraine and the nuclear taboo, and the AI-nuclear nexus and how we took the wrong lesson from the Cuban Missile Crisis — listen to the podcast! www.samharris.org/podcasts/mak...

And *you* can help. The new Longview Nuclear Risk Policy Fund aims to find and fund the most effective ways of reducing nuclear risk. We want to make it easy for you to make a difference. Find out more and donate here: www.longview.org/fund/nuclear...

My main message: we need not accept anything — even nuclear war — as inevitable.
People decide what to do with these weapons.
Collectively, our decisions can make us safer, or put our future at risk.
We have stepped back from the nuclear brink before, and we can do it again.

My colleague Matthew Gentzel has written with Christian Ruhl on this need to revitalize nuclear philanthropy in
vox.com:
It’s time for a new atomic altruism
Philanthropies are pulling back from programs meant to address the risk of nuclear war — at precisely the wrong moment.

We urgently need more investment to reduce risks: in public service fellowships, academic research, movement building & tech innovation. On the podcast I could only mention a few groups doing vital work, but there are many, many others.

Despite these dangers, the field of nuclear risk reduction is in a very unstable place. Donors have pulled out, nuclear weapons have lost political salience, and we face a shrinking pool of expertise. (See this excellent article from
@BryanDBender
politico.com/news/magazin...)

How will we manage nuclear deterrence when war moves at machine speed? Cyber risks and advanced artificial intelligence in military systems seem likely to further raise the risk of inadvertent nuclear war.

Why is now so dangerous? With Russia “suspending” participation in New START and China building up its nuclear stockpile, we’re on the verge of a new nuclear arms race. The Ukraine war is being fought in the nuclear shadow. And that’s not mentioning North Korea or India-Pakistan.

So true. The central drama is over policy decisions, not personal grudges and humiliations. Strauss and others wanted Oppenheimer neutralized because they thought his ideas were dangerous.
I think the policy debates at the heart of the conflict will be lost on most viewers, which is unfortunate.

Thanks for the invite