Carl Robichaud

And so, this new weapon enters the world

at a time when all of the constraints on humanitarian behavior have already been washed away.

We need to put that into context when we think about the decision to use the weapon.

It didn't seem like using a weapon of this sort against civilians was anything different than what had already been going on for months within the war.

You'd have fire bombings of Tokyo where they would try to create these conflagrations that would kill 10,000 people in a night.

And you had similar atrocities by the Japanese in China.

And it's just a, you know, if you think about even the origins of nuclear weapons, right?

The

Nuclear weapons were not born from the Manhattan Project.

They started in Nazi Germany.

There was a nuclear weapons program, and the US only decided to pursue nuclear weapons because of a fear that Nazi Germany might get there first.

And so these weapons enter the world.

in the hands of this victorious democratic nation and part of the arsenal of democracy.

But if Nazi Germany had taken a different path with their technology, these nuclear weapons could very much have entered the world in the hands of Nazi Germany.

And in some ways that would have sort of revealed the mask of what they're capable of doing.

And I think right after the war, there was an attempt to pull back and to return to a different approach.

And that's part of the debate that plays out is, should we go on and develop this thermonuclear weapon that's even larger?

And

capable of a thousand times more destructive power, like a true city-busting weapon.

And that's the debate.