Wellerstein, Alex (Author)
This dissertation is a history of nuclear secrecy in the United States, from the Manhattan Project through the "War on Terror." It covers nearly seven decades of the attempts made to control nuclear technology through the control of knowledge, and looks at the overall dynamics of American secrecy policies as they unfolded over the course of the latter-half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. The project examines how nuclear secrecy served as a focal point for competing ideas about the nature of science, technology, and governance, and was a vital site for understanding the ways in which the idea of knowledge as power has been articulated and re-articulated in the years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The chapters attempt to provide a broad framework for periodizing American nuclear secrecy as a non-monolithic, ever-shifting, and always controversial series of practices of information regulation. The dissertation breaks the history of nuclear secrecy into five primary parts. Part I traces the early history of nuclear secrecy from its emergence in the years just before World War II through its massive implementation during the wartime Manhattan Project, emphasizing that most scientific, administrative, and military participants believed that secrecy would be a strictly temporary condition. Part II covers the attempts to address the immediate postwar problem of what to do about nuclear secrecy, as the wartime project was brought into the realm of public discourse. Part III covers the efforts of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to develop a coherent secrecy policy as it grappled with a fraught domestic and international political scene, and discusses the emergence of a Cold War model of secrecy. Part IV covers a series of major confrontations as the brittleness of the Cold War model became evident over the course of the 1970s, when new historical actors, threats, and public perceptions came to challenge the once-stable regime. Part V, the epilogue and conclusion, looks at the legacy of secrecy as it was viewed in the late Cold War, the immediate post-Cold War, and the beginning of the "War on Terror."
...MoreDescription Cited in ProQuest Diss. & Thes. : doc. no. 3435567.
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Alex Wellerstein;
(2021)
Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States
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Sopka, Elisabeth M.;
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The Bonebrake Theological Seminary: Top-Secret Manhattan Project Site
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Strasser, Bruno J.;
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Energie atomique, guerre froide et neutralité: La Suisse et le plan “Atomes pour la Paix”, 1945--1957
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Hollinger, David A.;
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Reappraising Oppenheimer: Centennial Studies and Reflections
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The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico
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Our Own Worst Enemy? Institutional Interests and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Expertise
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Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and the Bomb
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Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler
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Culture atomiche. Gli Stati Uniti, la Francia e l'Italia di fronte alla questione nucleare (1962-68)
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Judging Edward Teller
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Amchitka and the Bomb: Nuclear Testing in Alaska
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Alex Wellerstein;
(2019)
Manhattan Project
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The Politics of Forgetting: Otto Hahn and the German Nuclear-Fission Project in World War II
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“It’s better to forget physics”: The Idea of the Tactical Nuclear Weapon in the Early Cold War
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Timothy Andrews Sayle;
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The Nuclear North: Histories of Canada in the Atomic Age
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Discordant Memories: Atomic Age Narratives and Visual Culture
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American Physicists, Nuclear Weapons in World War II, and Social Responsibility
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