Session B5: Secrecy and Physics

Secrecy and Physics

Secrecy in matters of national defense goes back far past antiquity. But our modern form of national secrecy owes a huge amount to a the large scale, systematic, and technical system of scientific secrecy that began in the Radar and Manhattan Projects of World War II and came to its current form in the Cold War. Here I would like to capture some of this trajectory and to present some of the paradoxes and deep conundrums that our secrecy system offers us in the Post-Cold War world.   

Secrecy and Physicists: Intersections of Science and National Security

Physicists have been proponents as well as critics of government secrecy affecting their work. Enrico Fermi once wrote (in Physics Today) that ``Contrary to perhaps what is the most common belief about secrecy, secrecy was not started by generals, was not started by security officers, but was started by physicists.'' Yet Edward Teller, Frederick Seitz and others argued that secrecy in science and technology could profitably be reduced by 90\% or more. Secrecy in physics is of course most pronounced in research related to nuclear weapons development. Though this is a longstanding concern it is still not a settled one. Disputes over nuclear weapons-related secrecy continue to resonate today as researchers and authors challenge the boundaries of official disclosure regarding the nuclear weapons enterprise. This paper will survey the current landscape of secrecy in science, and will discuss recent controversies involving publication of nuclear weapons physics, the infrastructure of nuclear research, and the prospects for secrecy reform.   

How Much Secrecy?

Some secrecy is needed to optimize the wellbeing of societies. This has been recognized since antiquity. It is also clear that too much secrecy is counterproductive. The right balance depends on how pluses and minuses of secrecy are weighed against other important values