Still More Thoughts Occassioned by Oppie!

The physicists of Oppenheimer's time provided advice to government on whether an atomic weapons could be developed and what its characteristics would be if developed. This was true both for nuclear weapons and for thermonuclear weapons. There was no other possible source of knowledge to provide that advice.

Oppenheimer had exceptionally wide interests. He had lived and traveled abroad and spoke several foreign languages. He had become actively involved with the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany, of the loyalists in the Spanish Civil War, in the plight of the poor during the Depression, and of course in the fight against Fascism of World War II. He was cosmopolitan, brilliant, and could be a charming advocate for the positions in which he believed.

Having said all that, he must surely have been less expert about foreign policy that the foreign policy professionals such as those who led the Department of State. Similarly, he must have been less expert about military affairs than the best military leaders, or about foreign cultures than the social scientists who studied those cultures (for example, Ruth Benedict about Japanese culture).

Oppenheimer was not diffident in expressing his views not only about what weapons were possible, but also about whether they should be developed and if developed how they should be used. One must assume that political, diplomatic and military leaders of the time faced similar decisions as to how forcefully to express their opinions, and faced similar issues of the domains of their relative expertise and the degree of force of diffidence with which to express their opinions on issues within or outside their areas of special expertise.

How difficult is it then to properly organize the advice for the President? How does the White House staff assure that he receives scientific, diplomatic, military, cultural, and the other kinds of advice he should receive. A scientist might be right about the non-scientific issues, and presumably has both the need and right to express wider views; so too do experts in other fields have opinions about scientific issues.

Edward Teller apparently felt that Oppenheimer's views on the thermonuclear weapons were so defective that they should not be heard at all within the halls of government. It seems to me that those views were worth considering, and that Teller's approach that would stifle debate would be often counterproductive.

How then can the White House staff coordinate the advice from all the relevant sources, and is it desirable (or even possible) to indicate for the President the degree to which each aspect of the advice from each advisor is warranted by that advisor's relative expertise relevant to that piece of advice.

Clearly that is a wildly challenging task. Perhaps not surprisingly the domestic, economic and security councils have been criticizes as often not having done it well. Of course, if a President doesn't want, will not take, or does not understand advice, the problem becomes worse.