Tristan Harris

Hello, everyone.

Welcome to Your Undivided Attention.

This is Tristan Harris.

In 1965, 20 years after the first test of a nuclear weapon, the Trinity test, a reporter asked Robert Oppenheimer whether it was too late to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

And at the time, five countries had developed their own atomic bombs.

His answer was short and chilling.

It's 20 years too late.

It should have been done...

the day after Trinidad.

But Oppenheimer was wrong.

It wasn't too late.

Nuclear deproliferation and disarmament did happen.

And over 60 years later, only nine countries have nuclear weapons.

Even the person who created this technology, who was convinced of its inevitability, couldn't imagine how the future might unfold.

So how did this nuclear nonproliferation happen?

Well, it happened largely because of technology.

The biggest obstacle to agreeing on nuclear red lines was that adversaries couldn't trust any promise the other made.

They needed to be able to verify the number of warheads, and they needed to know if a nuclear device was for a weapon or a power plant.

Now, none of that was possible until we built the technology needed to verify those things.

And today we're in a similar situation with AI.