On Oppenheimer
The editorial board discusses the movie, the man, and the moment
Today the Reboot editorial board is discussing the film Oppenheimer (2023), probably the most popular film about the ethics, politics, and risk of new technology to come out in the last few years. The movie is a three-hour portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer: theoretical physicist, director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, suspected Communist, and so-called “father of the atomic bomb.”
We’re going to be borrowing the text podcast format from the late and great Chaoyang Trap—having a few members of the new Reboot editorial board weigh in on the News of the Day™—basically a slightly less unhinged version of our internal group chat. We hope this will be a nice way to inject more timely analysis than our essays usually cover. And we’ll bring in external guests when relevant too!
(There will be spoilers, insofar as history can have any.)
Reboot Reacts: Oppenheimer (2023)
Jasmine: I’ll start by saying that the tech discourse on Oppenheimer has largely sucked—perhaps best exemplified by this tweet from Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI:
I saw the film at a private screening in San Francisco with a bunch of engineers, researchers, and startup people; and heard various versions of Altman’s sentiment in the post-theater chatter: Why wasn’t there more physics? More engineering? Why did Nolan spend all this time portraying bureaucratic procedure instead of making scientific progress look sexy and aspirational? Couldn’t they have talked more about, like, theorems?
I feel like these questions totally miss the mark in the way that tech discourse often does: They assume that innovation happens in a vacuum, in labs and offices among technical staff, when in fact technology—especially the risky, experimental, capital-intensive kind—is totally ensconced within politics. As Altman knows all too well, doing technology often requires federal funding and policy cooperation. Seriously dude, don’t be obtuse!
Ultimately, the “boring” conference room montages were why I liked the film. It was about the inevitable gap between theory and practice—between the elegance of theoretical physics and the messy morality of real-world deployment.
Jacob: Seeing this with actual engineering maximalists seems like a fascinating (but maybe not particularly enjoyable) exercise—one that I was not able to complete myself. Instead, I experienced my Oppenheimer the way a normal person would—in the first half of a Barbenheimer double feature that truly captured the shock of the Anthropocene.
Hal: Jacob, I’m so glad that you saw Oppenheimer as the first half of your Barbenheimer double-feature, rather than the other way around. I would be emotionally shattered if I had to see them the other way around, lol. For me, the suspension of disbelief in the movie was broken by Josh Peck being the one to press the big red button during the Trinity Test.
I think the film did a good job of portraying science as a social process of creating meaning in the world and consensus among a community, rather than the product of lone geniuses laboring in a lab. (Bruno Latour would be proud.) I would hope that the highly-paid beneficiaries of a DARPA research project could see that politics is foundational to science, but the simplistic discourse around Oppenheimer makes that seem like too much to ask. Institutions, bureaucracies, ideologies, and interpersonal conflicts shape the ideas that can be considered, the experiments that can be run, and ultimately the systems that can be deployed to the real world (oftentimes with murderous force).
The most important part of the movie comes when Oppenheimer is questioned about the ethical paradox at the heart of his life: Why would he, as someone who personally ensured the success of the atomic bomb and whose professional success was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, object to the development of the hydrogen bomb? “When it became clear to me that we would use whatever weapon we had,” he replies.
Those who wished for the film to be a Progress Studies hagiography of the Manhattan Project are, at their core, advocating for a whitewashing of history, and display a dangerous misunderstanding of how science interacts with the world.
Jasmine: Lol I somehow doubt that “Progress Studies” has ever crossed Christopher Nolan’s mind.1 But why do we think there was such a demand for that narrative from Silicon Valley?
Jacob: “The Manhattan Project for X” has become such a tired trope in big, solutions-oriented tech discourse. Most of the time, it’s slightly unclear what people mean by that—is it just that their project is more Serious and Important than the standard “Uber for X”s that have abounded over the last decade?
Yet when I was watching Oppenheimer, I was struck by how the story of technological progress being told is fundamentally a pessimistic one—there’s triumph here on the most basic level of bombs being built and Big Science being done, but the model of governmental-scientific-technological collaboration is portrayed as a sort of original sin for the military-industrial complex rather than a model to emulate.
Hal: “Manhattan Project for X” = they just want billions of dollars of military money for their pet project, no strings attached?
Tian: …and that project is a Chrome extension.
It is a great paradox that the contemporary tech world is enthralled by two simultaneous narratives: one of techno-libertarianism, that all government interventions are seen as an impediment to all entrepreneurial spirits of the free market; the other of what we might call techno-militarism, which sees the expansion of US military power as a vehicle for the scientific progress. Whereas the former has largely dominated our tech discourse after the Cold War, the industry’s close historical associations with the military-industrial complex are conveniently swept under the rug. What we now see as technological progress is arguably shallower—building a consumer software startup isn’t nearly as hard as developing missile guidance systems, but it generates sufficient returns in our venture-backed world.
But this model is met with discontent: It is the subject of Peter Thiel’s criticism that “we were promised flying cars, instead we got 140 characters,” or Marc Andressen’s spiel that America has forgotten how to build. The pandemic and diminishing returns in consumer tech have triggered a pivot to deep tech. But most critically, this turn to hard science and research—often involving military applications—is facilitated by China’s challenge to Washington’s technological supremacy. It is our current historical juncture, of the insecurity about a faltering Pax Americana, that Oppenheimer has captured—the nostalgia for a moment in which America’s technological hegemony was consolidated, however briefly.
Now we’re seeing calls for a return to that world of techno-militarism, in which a militarized US government propels technological development. The trend undergirds contemporary discussions of metascience, progress studies, American dynamism, et cetera.2 But Oppenheimer should also remind us that whatever progress was made by techno-militarism, and the resulting military-industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned us against, came at a cost. Neither the Cold War nor the Second World War were great times to live in, even for the scientists themselves—as shown in the McCarthy persecutions of left-wing academics.
This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t invest in scientific progress. But if the nostalgia for the Manhattan Project is founded on selective amnesia, is it possible to embrace the 20th century R&D dynamism without returning to the militarism and paranoia that haunted J. Robert Oppenheimer after 1945? Can we imagine an American industrial policy—driving everything from housing development to vaccine research—that centers on building a more equitable society, as opposed to engaging in an aimless tech arms race?
Jacob: It was hard not to notice how much this movie seemed to reflect the paranoias of aspiring great men of history and (especially) technology—by the movie’s end, poor J. Robert is left marginalized by the political forces that used his brilliance for their gain, ostracized by his scientific peers, and forced to reckon with the terrible gravity of his prize invention.
Yet it’d be wrong to say the movie is a straightforward endorsement of that Great Man theory—we’re never given a particular indication of Oppenheimer’s brilliance among an already brilliant scene of physicists and engineers aside from his own self-regard, no scene indicating that Oppie was the only guy who could have achieved it: he just happened to be the one who did achieve it, and the burden of this knowledge was what overtook and dismantled him.
One place where the movie toys with this notion (maybe too subtly!) is in its presentation of Oppenheimer’s self-construction as a singular figure, broken apart from all the communities—political, religious, etc—that might hold him. Unlike other Jewish characters/historical figures in the movie, Oppenheimer is shown as self-consciously worldly and secular—he speaks German, the language of Physics, rather than Yiddish, the language of his people. Of course Christopher Nolan doesn’t do much with this—but would we really want Christopher Nolan to make a film about the nuances of Jewish identity in World War II?
Hal: I completely agree that the film left Oppenheimer’s relationship to Jewishness underexplored (and that Christopher Nolan is probably not the best person to explore that). One of the chunks of the biography that did get cut entirely was Oppenheimer’s childhood: he was born into a higher-class, non-observant, uptown NYC, German-Jewish family, which has serious implications for his socialization with respect to American identity. He also spent his entire childhood enmeshed in the Ethical Culture movement in New York City, a Progressive (in the early-20th century sense of the term), secular congregation that focused on social and individual moral development and education.
In my opinion, this family history and personal context is key to understanding Oppenheimer’s disposition later in life towards the political ideologies of his time (fascist, communist, and capitalist) and the goals of capital-S Science. Before he becomes a figure of world-historical importance, he is a dilettante, an individualist, and an intellectual, always engaging with the world at a psychological remove. His upbringing allows him to look past (or willfully ignore) the institutions that he is serving, and instead self-identify with the success of the Manhattan Project. Hiroshima and Nagasaki break his sense of remove, but his psychological disposition is illuminated by that history.
Ashwin: The movie only hints at it, but I’d argue that one cannot truly understand Oppenheimer without recognizing his relationship to the Bhagavad Gita. As a young professor tasked to establish a theoretical physics department at Berkeley, Oppenheimer didn’t just organize leftists and labor unions. He’d sit with Professor Arthur W. Ryder and study such Sanskrit classics as the Gita and Bhartrhari’s Satakatrayam. “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” isn’t just a pithy quote from the movie—it represents an entire worldview.
The Bhagavad Gita is an extended conversation from the Hindu epic poem, the Mahabharata, where Prince Arjuna is convinced by the divine Krishna to overcome his qualms and fight a just war in order to fulfill his dharma, or duty. Oppenheimer saw himself as Arjuna. He needed to absolve himself of moral culpability—and indecision—around his actions. To do so, Oppenheimer believed in performing his dharma as dictated by those in power and focusing on excellence in his actions rather than fixating on their consequences. He assiduously followed his dharma as a scientist and built the atomic bomb from Los Alamos, a decision he would never regret. And his postwar nuclear activism reflected his changed dharma in his new policymaking role as advisor to the Atomic Energy Commission. But it’s clear that Oppenheimer always worked within the system. After losing the debate to build the H-bomb he actively dedicated himself to help build it. He gave only a lackluster effort to defend himself from losing his security clearance and virtually disappeared from political activism after he lost it. As Murray Kempton put it: “as there could be no disrupting a government decision to immolate Hiroshima, there could be no real disputing its decision to immolate him.”
Yet there is much that Oppenheimer’s interpretation of the Gita leaves out. The Gita speaks of the imperishable self, the atman: a divine Truth from which all dharma follows. There’s no indication Oppenheimer believed in this. Without a belief in a divine to ground him, he looked elsewhere: science, power, politics. “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” is how Krishna describes his divine form to Arjuna in the Gita. Oppenheimer used this very phrase to describe the mushroom cloud of the Trinity test. Science—with all its political baggage—was his divine.
If the point of the movie is, to paraphrase Jasmine, “it’s not just the science, the politics matters too,” it’s equally important to note the momentous impact of belief systems in scientific and technological development. A millenia-old Hindu text provided the inspiration to carry through the Manhattan Project. And Eastern philosophy has had an enormous impact on Silicon Valley and technologists today.3 Tech companies abound with mindfulness and yoga practices. Sam Altman believes in the “absolute equivalence of brahman and atman” (one interpretation of the Gita’s message).
But we must ask ourselves: are these authentic expressions of ancient traditions? Or do they selectively pick aspects of the traditions and ignore the moral and religious frameworks that underlie them? Most importantly, does this phenomenon lead us to develop better technology and intentionally design values into what we build? I’m not sure Oppenheimer’s story says so.
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🌀 microdoses
I was pleasantly surprised at how much justice Christopher Nolan paid to the source material, the book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherman. I would strongly encourage you to read it—it won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for good reason. Nolan did a good job at getting lots of throwaway references/five-second pieces of dialogue in the movie about things that got a deeper dive in the book. Biopics can be surprisingly dense as texts! (—Hal)
One thing largely left out of both Oppenheimer and the discourse around it: the Shinkolobwe mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where the uranium used in the Manhattan Project came from—an early outpost in the long history of tech projects using the natural resources of the Congo basin with… not much concern for the people who live there. (—Jacob & Ashwin)
I am become FUN! creator of SCIENCE EDUCATION! (—Jacob)
We have to know!!
💝 closing note
Let us know if you like the new format! For fun, I’ve footnoted some of the comment exchanges from our collaborative Google Doc because this post is a pluralistic discursive process and not a static artifact, obvs.
From the community this week:
Taper submissions are due in about a month! Taper is an online literary journal for small computational pieces. We've had Reboot submissions in the past and would love to see more. (—Katy Ilonka Gero)
Launched this open-source library I’ve been working on to magically enhance html elements with collaborative interactivity! (—Spencer Chang)
We’re excited to announce the fourth version of the Stanford Ethics, Technology + Public Policy online course this fall. Participants will join three Stanford professors and a curated group of technologists, public officials, civil society leaders, and scholars in a tight-knit cohort environment. Guests this year include Jacinda Ardern and Sam Altman. Apply by August 25th. (—Rob Reich)
Who’s building the Manhattan Project for Substack text podcasts ?? ? ???
—The Reboot editorial board
Jacob: christopher nolan reading an IFP blog is a great mental image tho
Jasmine: cillian murphy in cartoon avatar with purple background
Ashwin: How do we distinguish [techno-militarism] from plain old industrial policy, eg the CHIPS Act? Or are they the same thing?
Jacob: maybe that's the angle! it's a nice wrapper/branding for something we already do in a less glamorous/dramatic fashion
Ashwin: [Also], why include metascience in this list? I don’t think it has much to do with militarized S&T development but I could be wrong…
Tian: I would say most of the basis for US metascience discourse - particularly revolving around NSF ideas - is historically rooted in military science
Tian: Have you read The Buddha in the Machine by R. J. Williams?
Jacob: omg i picked a copy of that up from a zen monastery on the central coast
Tian: Check out Faded Paper Figures
Ashwin: I haven’t but will check it out!
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