September 1, 2023

Re: OPPENHEIMER, Nuclear Weapons, and the “National Security State”

Like many cinephiles, I have been looking forward to Christopher Nolan’s new film Oppenheimer for the better part of a year. So, when it was finally released on July 21, 2023, I was sure to see it on the opening weekend—in 70mm format no less. The movie did not disappoint: Oppenheimer is a wonder. Clocking in at 180 minutes, it is a long film. And yet, Nolan and crack editor Jennifer Lame (Marriage Story, Hereditary) have imbued it with a breathless pace. The film is constantly shifting between subjective and objective points of view, between color and black-and-white, between past, present, and future. Of course, Nolan is already known for this sort of thing. Most of the time he pulls it off with savvy (Memento, Dunkirk), but there have been slip-ups too (Tenet). Not only does Oppenheimer belong in the former category, but it may be Nolan’s masterpiece—a genuine example of bravura filmmaking, which would be rightly numbered among films such as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 (1968) and Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990).

To be sure, Nolan’s skill as a filmmaker is beyond dispute. When he errs, it is the result of talent and ambition, not incompetence or diffidence. Perhaps the biggest knock on Nolan’s filmography is his penchant for labyrinthine plots, but even this “problem” indicates a refusal to spoon-feed the audience. Yes, Nolan wants to wow the viewing public, but he also wants to make people synthesize, ponder—sometimes a bit too much. In movies such as Inception (2010) and Tenet (2020), Nolan’s narrative stylings threaten to overwhelm the story, but the ending of Dunkirk (2017) demonstrates why Nolan is willing to take such risks. As the movie comes to close, Nolan combines its three asynchronous plots (the air, land, and sea “theaters” of the Dunkirk evacuation) into a rousing whole:

Oppenheimer is more Dunkirk than Tenet. By no means does Nolan simplify the story—the movie almost necessitates “Wikidives” into figures such as Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss (1896-1974) and theoretical physicist Edward Teller (1908-2003)—but at no point does Oppenheimer centrifugally break down. The film remains laser-focused on its protagonist J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-67), the renowned yet controversial American physicist, who helmed the Los Alamos Laboratory (also known as Project Y) of the Manhattan Project during World War II. In Oppenheimer, Nolan’s storytelling is complex but never impenetrable.

As a film anchored in history, Oppenheimer does not have any major “shocks” or plot twists. Still, it has a tripartite structure that, at each juncture, conveys a particular concern. The film’s opening section establishes Oppenheimer’s character. It picks up with Oppenheimer during his doctoral studies at Cambridge University. He is solemn, anxiety-ridden, and vindictive, yet brilliant enough to associate with many of the day’s leading scientists—Patrick Blackett (1897-1974), Niels Bohr (1885-1962), Werner Heisenberg (1901-76), and Albert Einstein (1879-1955). In one early “flash forward,” to which Nolan poignantly returns at film’s end, Oppenheimer has a chance meeting with Einstein, leaving both of them flustered. After taking a teaching position at Cal-Berkeley, where he hopes to introduce quantum physics to American students, Oppenheimer emerges as a key figure among California’s leftwing intelligentsia. He associates with people such as Haakon Chevalier (1901-85), professor of French literature at Berkeley, with whom he starts a teachers’ union. He also begins a volatile affair with Jean Tatlock (1914-44), a graduate student at Stanford Medical School and a prominent Bay Area member of the Communist Party USA. The young Oppenheimer, then, is something of an “academic superstar,” respected by his peers and adored by his students. Moreover, he does not hesitate to exploit his status for personal gain.

These qualities, ironically, are instrumental to his role in the Manhattan Project. In Oppenheimer’s second act, we see the protagonist marshal both his theoretical intelligence and vocational shrewdness in service of the war effort. Recruited by US Army General Leslie Groves (1896-1970), who directed the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer is tasked with assembling a veritable “dream team” of quantum physicists and relocating them to the Los Alamos Ranch School in northern New Mexico. It is there that, in a race against the Nazis, they are to develop the first atomic bomb. This part of Oppenheimer moves at a frenetic pace: Nolan instantiates the tension with an array of jump cuts, punctuated by the pulsing score of Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson. The effect is akin to that of a Terrence Malick film—and Nolan is on record as a Malick fan—but more in the tradition of The Thin Red Line (1998) than of The Tree of Life (2011). Oppenheimer’s depiction the “Trinity” nuclear test, undoubtedly the pinnacle of the movie, resembles Malick’s depiction of the Battle of Mount Austen during the Guadalcanal Campaign of 1942-43. Both portrayals are action-packed, and yet both leave the viewer ruminative, philosophical.

Oppenheimer’s third movement reckons with the fallout (pun intended) of the Manhattan Project. Cinematically, this is the weakest third of the film. It is largely set in a cramped boardroom in Washington, D.C. Nolan gussies up the proceedings with his usual barrage of techniques and tricks, but this section of the film ultimately plays out like a “courtroom drama,” and not an especially riveting one at that. Nevertheless, the final act of Oppenheimer makes a number of strong historical claims that are ripe for debate. Oppenheimer, for example, is portrayed as something of a tragic figure—an Icarus whose genius and aspiration brought him too close to the sun. Nolan suggests that no sooner had Oppenheimer developed the bomb than it was used in haphazard and horrific fashion by callous establishmentarians such as President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972). Oppenheimer tried to protest, but his concerns were taken either as signs of weakness or of latent communism. In fact, as the movie shows in great (excess?) detail, Strauss was personally hellbent on diminishing Oppenheimer’s influence over the American nuclear weapons program. The AEC chairman was successful in this endeavor, albeit in Pyrrhic fashion. Oppenheimer ends with its protagonist uneasily confronting the devastation, both past and future, that he has unwittingly unleashed.

Even in just reading over this synopsis, it is not hard to see why Oppenheimer is the odds-on favorite to win several Oscars, including Best Picture. It takes on some of humanity’s most time-honored issues: the ambiguous nature of genius, the relationship between politics and science (broadly construed), the human attempt to wrest control of nature, and the looming specter of nihilism. Further, it raises these concerns in connection with the most violent period in world history—a period whose repercussions are still being felt today. Nolan himself has emphasized this point. In July 2023, he participated in a lengthy panel discussion of Oppenheimer hosted by Chuck Todd of NBC News. Towards the end of the panel (28:05), Todd asks Nolan what the United States Congress might learn from his film:

To be sure, Nolan’s answer is reasonable. Nuclear weapons are clearly dangerous, and there has been renewed concern in recent years that a rogue military power might dare to detonate a nuclear warhead. As Nolan points out, the Russo-Ukrainian War has made this possibility uncomfortably newsworthy. In June 2023, for instance, Russia moved a batch of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus and thus ever closer to Western Europe. Roughly a month later, the Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, said Ukraine’s recent counteroffensive could potentially set off a nuclear holocaust:

Just imagine that the offensive…in tandem with NATO, succeeded and ended up with part of our land being taken away. Then we would have to use nuclear weapons by virtue of the stipulations of the Russian Presidential Decree. There simply wouldn’t be any other solution. Our enemies should pray to our fighters that they do not allow the world to go up in nuclear flames.

Such talk, especially when widely disseminated on social media, does indeed give Oppenheimer a sense of urgency. And yet, it is precisely here that a question arises: Is the lingering significance of the Manhattan Project that it facilitated an extant means of killing tens of thousands of people instantaneously? Or are there far more subtle, but no less significant, ways that Oppenheimer’s work has changed the world?

Oppenheimer is content to stop with the former question. For all of its complex artistry, the movie’s thesis is self-evident: Oppenheimer developed a horrifying bomb that has been used in the past and perilously could be used again. Of course, this statement isn’t wrong, but it’s also partial and potentially misleading. While Nolan has elected to center Oppenheimer’s final act on Strauss’ efforts to blackball Oppenheimer, he eschewed an opportunity to explore one of the film’s underlying themes: the modern state’s cooption of science and technology for the sake of military power and, with it, socio-political dominance. This is an “underlying” theme because it is assumed rather than explained—a telling omission.

For example, there is much discussion in the film about Oppenheimer’s communist sympathies. In this case, the dramatic tension centers on whether or not Oppenheimer can be trusted to work for the American government: is he with the “good guys” or the “bad guys”? For a film otherwise dedicated to framing its protagonist in chiaroscuro, Oppenheimer is straightforward on this point. The race to develop the bomb is between nation-states of divergent ethical status. That society writ large is now understood in terms of a global “state system,” which since the French Revolution has systematically invested in warmaking technology, is never interrogated. It is simply presupposed. In the end, then, Oppenheimer’s precise political views are incidental. It doesn’t matter if he supports communism or free-market capitalism; he’s poised to develop a weapon of mass destruction for someone. Such is the evolving role of science in the modern world.

This is why Oppenheimer’s admittedly rousing finale nevertheless struck me as hollow. While Oppenheimer gazes despondently towards the audience—in a look that seems destined to bring talented Irish actor Cillian Murphy his first Oscar—he begins to imagine a “chain reaction” of nuclear weapons being fired off in succession.

The implication seems clear: the Manhattan Project could indeed lead to the end of the world—not through an atmospheric chain reaction, as Oppenheimer originally feared, but through the geopolitical competition for and usage of nuclear arms.

But there is a problem here: this possibility, however concerning, has not yet come to pass. Despite a number of close calls—the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, the Oko system malfunction in September 1983, and other such incidents—an atomic weapon has not been used in combat since the bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945. But what has come to pass—and what Oppenheimer does not seem to ponder at all—is the propagation of international military alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), founded in April 1949. These alliances indicate the fragility of the global order after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All states, no matter how large or powerful, are vulnerable to a nuclear strike, particularly after the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles in the 1950s and 1960s. Global dominance, then, is more of a nationalistic myth than a live reality. International coalitions and pacts have become increasingly necessary, and, in their train, a host of consequences have followed—the globalization of trade, the mushrooming of international bureaucracies, and the quotidian movement of people around the world—what philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) famously termed “planetary homelessness.”

Whether or not these socio-political changes are beneficial or deleterious is a separate issue. The point here is simply that this new global order—sometimes generically referred to as “postmodernity” or, in other quarters, as “late capitalism”—is made possible and sustained by post-nuclear military alliances. In his book War, Armed Force, and the People: State Formation and Transformation in Historical Perspective (2016), Walter Opello, Jr. notes that atomic weapons altered “the trinitarian relationship between the state, the army, and the people.” In the time between the French Revolution and World War II, the state required bigger and bigger armies in order to fight bigger and bigger wars, thereby creating a “more managerial, interventionist, and welfarist” state. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however, the state no longer needed to control its citizenry in this fashion. Who needs a huge army when you have Oppenheimer’s bomb? As Opello, Jr. puts it:

Nuclear-armed states need scientists and engineers, research laboratories, high-technology manufacturing facilities, and skilled technicians. And they need a new kind of soldier: the military technician who knows how to operate increasingly complex, advanced weapons systems.

But this shift has an additional effect. Although ordinary citizens are increasingly released from military service, they are also asked to “accept their exclusion from an active role in the security of the state, and willingly leave national security in the hands of a small elite of high-level defense intellectuals and high-ranking military officers educated in the arcane technicalities…of air-atomic war.” The post-Oppenheimer state has “reduced the role of the people to that of passive subjects.”

This insight sheds uncomfortable light on a number of postwar socio-political developments, ranging from the rise of the “counterculture” of the 1960s to the still-evolving COVID-19 pandemic. Ours is a society in which people have the time and resources to invest in their own individuation—say, a new AI-generated Facebook profile picture or the purchase of an “In Science We Trust” t-shirt on Amazon—but struggle with feelings of anxiety and of powerlessness. Even the fractious tension that now characterizes political debates on social media often seems more akin to “politainment” than a sign of actual change. People are encouraged to argue, mock, and criticize, generating likes, upvotes, and “reposts” in the process. Yet, in a world where power is framed by nuclear weapons and wielded by those who manage them, such activities mostly amount to shadowboxing. In the Platonic “cave” of our daily lives, what we are watching is not necessarily what is.

This is the real legacy of the Manhattan Project, and it is no wonder that Oppenheimer neglects it. After all, the final third of the film essentially functions as an apology for what Opello, Jr. calls the “national security state” and its worldwide alliances. Sure, figures such as Strauss come in for a drubbing, but the implicit meaning of the film is that scientists such as Oppenheimer—serious people, bona fide Ivy Leaguers, who know their Marx from their molecular dynamics—should have control over our nuclear weapons systems. The situation is indeed dire; the risks are many. Who, alas, will save us? Oppenheimer already knows the answer, delivering it with so much aplomb that it’s easy, all too easy, to forget who ultimately benefits from such a conclusion.