“The Man in the White Lab Coat: Civil Defense, Scientific Expertise, and the Challenge of Public Opinion”

Sarah Robey (Idaho State University)

In the early Cold War, American civil defense agencies struggled to convince citizens to take measures to protect themselves in the event of a nuclear war. Policymakers imagined Americans as ignorant and apathetic, and framed scientific expertise and instruction as an antidote to this problem of public opinion. Civil defense agencies employed specialists in a range of fields and publicized scientific research relating to nuclear survival, all the while using generic fictional scientists to deliver such information to the public in civil defense media. By positioning themselves as nuclear experts, civil defense policymakers attempted to manage their image as public safety authorities. However, these officials promoted civil defense expertise against the backdrop of growing public skepticism about the role of nuclear science in American society and politics. Accusations of nuclear espionage, disloyalty, scientific oligarchy, and government secrecy stood in stark contrast to civil defense messages of benevolent knowledge and rational preparation. Thus the public reception of civil defense plans became subject to a range of shifting cultural ideas, images, and expectations about scientific expertise. This paper argues that the increasing public ambivalence about nuclear science in democracy contributed significantly to a decline in public trust in civil defense programs. As new authorities emerged who questioned the efficacy of civil defense practices, they also cast doubt on the wisdom of nuclear policies and the authority of the state more broadly.

“How to Sell a Neutron Bomb: Captain John Morse and Technopolitical Network-Building, 1958- 1964”

Annie Adams (Cornell University)

“Mr. Cohen’s concept could fill the need as a politically acceptable weapon within the fiscal limits which apply, and without the devastating side effects feared by so many.” So wrote John H. Morse, a strategic planner for Aerojet General Corporation, in a 1961 letter describing his colleague Sam Cohen’s neutron bomb concept to General Lauris Norstad, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander. The bomb as Morse described it was a small, “discriminatory” nuclear weapon that could resolve the challenge of defending Western Europe against Soviet invasion without destroying the very territory requiring protection. Yet the neutron bomb was highly controversial. The benefits Morse extolled were hardly self-evident, even to officials endorsing continued nuclear weapons development over a testing agreement. In this paper I will use a combination of technopolitics (Hecht 2009) and Matthew Evangelista’s theory of the directional nature of nuclear weapons innovation in the U.S. (Evangelista 1988) to analyze Morse’s promotion of the neutron bomb. How did Morse practice technopolitics to advocate for a “more usable” nuclear weapon during the era of the Cuban Missile Crisis? How did Morse leverage his technical expertise as an engineer, military background an Air Force Captain and the head of NATO’s Nuclear Planning Section, and his political experience as aide to AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss in his efforts to construct a network of support for the neutron bomb? This paper will draw from the John H. Morse papers and from digital repositories maintained by the National Security Archive, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, and the Gale Declassified Document Group.

“A Conspiracy of Ignorance: The United Kingdom, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and Nuclear Winter”

Anthony Eames (Georgetown University)

In 1983, Ronald Reagan’s announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative and the revelation of the Nuclear Winter thesis by the TTAPS committee spelled trouble for the British government’s commitments to minimum deterrence and nuclear cooperation with the United States. As British society engaged both issues, the representation of underlying scientific concepts became a battleground for pronuclear and antinuclear proponents. Combatting the emerging scientific consensus in support of Nuclear Winter and in opposition to SDI proved particularly challenging to the Thatcher government. The Thatcher government rejected participation in Nuclear Winter conferences and studies on the grounds that research on the issue was preliminary, but simultaneously justified its participation in SDI by emphasizing the research benefits of the program and downplaying potential military applications. The inconsistency with which Thatcher the politician applied the scientific method to research on nuclear issues undermined the credibility of Thatcher the scientist. To shore up public and scientific support for its nuclear position, the Thatcher government dispatched experts from the Aldermaston Weapons Research Laboratory into communities across the U.K to oppose scientists supporting nuclear disarmament. The resulting insider versus outsider dynamic accelerated the politicization of British science and shattered public confidence in civil defense schemes, the notion of deterrence, and Thatcher’s image as a scientist, which had all been employed to allay public fear of nuclear war.