Cofounder, Raytheon
MIT Science Reporter: Looking Back At The Bomb - Interview with Vannevar Bush
About Vannevar Bush
In a 2023 interview on MIT Science Reporter, Vannevar Bush reflected on the development and use of the atomic bomb, stating that his first reaction was "great relief that the program had been successful." He expressed support for President Truman's decision to use the bomb, saying it "saved 100,000 or more American casualties and saved the lives of Japanese for that matter." Bush also remarked that it was "well that the bomb came into effect in our hands, not in the hands of some other country, perhaps Russia." He described the post-war situation as a "stalemate" between the U.S. and Russia, adding that "that deadlock is preferable to continual warfare." Bush also discussed the relationship between scientists and government, noting that "scientists and Engineers are getting along with Congress a lot better than they used to" and that "mutual respect" has developed. He cautioned against German errors such as "complacency, deterioration of interest in pure science, and regimentation in the administrative control of science." On automation, Bush said it "creates skilled jobs and obsolete unskilled jobs," causing "temporary dislocations," but argued it is "not a calamity" if society gains "greater leisure time." He praised the American public for backing the Marshall Plan, calling it "a magnificent thing to do."
Transcript (54 segments)
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Narrator0:10
Always think of him as a Cape Codder. His roots are deep in the soil of that historic bit of sterile land, and metaphorically speaking, his shoes are full of its sand. In this summary we can glimpse the force and crisp character of the man. During the last 40 years, Dr. Bush has been one of the nation's leaders in the great onrush of science and engineering. Today, in the workshop at his home in Belmont, Massachusetts, he is still busy working at his hobbies in the newest of his long list of inventions. Of these, he is best known for his analytical machines, which were pioneers in the evolution of computer technology. Dr. Bush has served as dean of the School of Engineering at MIT and now is honorary chairman of the MIT Corporation. As an administrator of scientific research and development, he was responsible for mobilizing the forces which produced many of the technological advances that played an important part in the winning of the war. Dr. Bush worked closely with President Roosevelt and Truman and in effect was the first of our scientific advisors. He shared the enormous responsibility for the development and use of our most fearsome weapon, the atomic bomb.
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John Fitch1:53
Hello, I'm John Fitch, MIT Science Reporter. Today on Science Reporter, we are going to look back over the years with this extraordinary man and share his views on some of the great events of his time. Let's meet Dr. Bush. John, good to have you here. Well, Dr. Bush, this is certainly a beautiful home that you have here.
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Vannevar Bush2:43
I think it's a very nice one. We built it soon after the war, some eight years ago, soon after I came up from Washington.
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John Fitch3:10
The program had been successful and the bomb had gone off on schedule. Well now, when you look back from a vantage point of 18 years, do you have any regrets about it?
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Vannevar Bush3:19
No. Of course President Truman made the decision to use the bomb, but I thought then and I think now that he was right for a number of reasons. One, by ending the war abruptly, it saved 100,000 or more American casualties. It saved the lives of Japanese for that matter. Then two, the bomb was bound to appear, and I think it is well that it appeared in a dramatic fashion so that civilization would face up to it, as it wouldn't have if it had come in in some test way. And the world has got to learn to live with the bomb.
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John Fitch4:10
Well, you hear people say today that everything would be lovely if there were no A-bomb, if we could abolish it.
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Vannevar Bush4:20
What happened was not the production of an A-bomb simply. It was the modern application of science and engineering to warfare. If we had no A-bombs today, we might be thoroughly worried about the possible advent of, let's say, biological warfare, which in my opinion is a more horrible thing and a much more threatening thing to civilization. Fortunately pushed in the background today.
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John Fitch4:49
Well now, what about other weapons of warfare at that time? There were some that were pretty devastating in addition to the use of fire bombs, because they were accepted standard weapons, conventional weapons. I've read too that many of the scientists and engineers working on the bomb had moral qualms about it at the time. Was there any evidence of a struggle about this?
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Vannevar Bush5:26
No. Some had qualms, and those were expressed very carefully to Secretary Stimson and to President Truman, and every protest of that sort was further followed through. But there were very few who protested. I think nine out of ten scientists that had to do with it felt just as I did.
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John Fitch5:47
I would like to quote one modern writer, a man named Jacob Bronowski, who said that nothing happened in 1945 except that we changed the scale of our warfare.
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Vannevar Bush6:12
Science became suddenly applied to warfare in a very thorough way, and the result was proximity fuses, radar, anti-submarine weapons, guided missiles, rockets. It was bound to happen. That's the thing that happened, and that's the thing that civilization has to learn to live with. The application of science produces beneficial things and it also produces dangers to the race. The great thing that happened is that science became thus applied.
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John Fitch6:46
Well, don't you think it's sort of a paradox that this tremendous instrument of warfare, the greatest we've ever known, may very well be the strongest force for peace in the world?
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Vannevar Bush7:14
We may be able to learn to live with it that way. Certainly in my opinion, a deadlock of the sort that we have today is preferable to the situation we've had for some three or four thousand years of continual warfare every generation, devastating and just as cruel as any war. I'm glad we're out of that sequence.
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John Fitch7:37
Ahead of our wartime research efforts, you must have been very alert to what was going on in other countries. Why was it that Germany, which had been attempting to make an A-bomb, was unsuccessful?
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Vannevar Bush7:48
Because their organization was wrong, and because their scientists and their military, instead of cooperating, were fighting with one another. In fact, various agencies were doing everything wrong.
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John Fitch8:10
And did you know this at the time?
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Vannevar Bush8:11
Oh certainly, and we knew where they stood on the A-bomb at the time.
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John Fitch8:15
How is that possible?
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Vannevar Bush8:17
Well, I can tell you. In fact, I've got a book on that. I'd like to show you. Let's go into the study a moment and I'll show you that because it's worth looking at. It's written by a man by the name of Goudsmit, Sam Goudsmit, and the name of it is 'Alsos'. And I think you'll find it a fascinating affair. What Goudsmit and his men found out in regard to German efforts on the A-bomb was really that they hadn't got into the principal ones that we too can make if we're not on guard against them. But that's a great book.
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John Fitch9:18
Well now, what about the Japanese? I don't believe they were working on atomic energy worthily, but how did they do in other technical fields? They didn't produce during the war any new weapons.
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Vannevar Bush9:29
They produced some new techniques of fighting in jungle fighting, but as far as any scientific application to weapons, there wasn't any. Even their airplanes were just copies of common planes.
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John Fitch9:43
Now we worked pretty well with the British, didn't we? Sharing very well.
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Vannevar Bush9:45
Indeed. We shared all of our reports. We worked together on nearly every project and with great harmony.
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John Fitch10:10
What about the Russians? How were they in technical matters during the war?
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Vannevar Bush10:15
Well, again, nothing new in the way of weapons came out of Russia. They did enormous things in producing great masses of artillery and so forth, but no innovations that I know of that amounted to anything.
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John Fitch10:32
That's changed somewhat.
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Vannevar Bush10:34
Changed very much, and I can tell you the reason that it's changed, and it's an interesting one. Right after the war, I said that I didn't believe that Russia would produce much in the way of science or technology, and the reason was that their laboratories were all commissar-ridden, they were politically controlled, and their programs were made up by politicians. But that has changed. They have had a burst of scientific achievement and technological engineering achievement. It's the exuberance of newfound freedom perhaps.
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John Fitch11:22
Well, in this country, World War II was certainly an important turning point for science. What about the role of the science advisor? How has that changed over the years since then?
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Vannevar Bush11:31
Well, you spoke of me as being the first presidential advisor. Actually, my post was somewhat different from that. I was advisor to the president, but my principal job was running a government agency as an executive. On the other hand, Dr. Killian and Wiesner, the ones that have followed since the war, have been able to give the best possible scientific advice available anywhere in the country. That's in contrast with the situation they had in Britain, and that's one thing that I think we did right. In the case of the British, it was the personal opinion of the advisor that was very important. That was not the fault of the scientist; that was the fault of Churchill. That's the way he wanted it.
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John Fitch12:33
I wonder if you'd care to comment on the increasing role and importance of the scientist in our society and in government.
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Vannevar Bush12:41
Well, of course we see it everywhere. Science has been remaking our lives in every way. It's going to do so in the future, and it's inevitable therefore that scientists and engineers have far more to do with government than they used to. That inevitably brings scientists in contact with government on all sorts of fronts as appointed men, usually in the administrative branch, the executive branch of government. Scientists and engineers don't run for Congress very much.
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John Fitch13:30
Yes, that's an interesting point. I wonder how they get along with congressmen. Their methods are quite different.
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Vannevar Bush13:37
I know they are, and I think you'll find this, that scientists and engineers are getting along with Congress a lot better than they used to. There has been developing a mutual respect both ways. Scientists, for one thing, have discovered that the art of politics is a very difficult one and that politicians are human beings. We had a similar thing during the war. When the war started, military men and scientists were just like this. At the end of the war, they had developed mutual respect and they collaborated effectively and harmoniously.
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John Fitch14:29
Do you see any danger of a certain scientific elite gaining too much power in a situation like that?
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Vannevar Bush14:34
No, I don't. I hear it mentioned every little while. Of course, there is enormous power in the hands of some scientists, such as the one who heads the National Science Foundation, but most of his decisions are made on the basis of recommendations of committees of scientists in the various fields. It's not very easy, you know, to dominate a group of scientists. They're about as independent a crowd as you can find. It's almost impossible.
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John Fitch15:10
Well, what about this recent study on the West Coast, I believe, which points out an alleged irresponsibility on the part of scientists who are so busy working for the military in many cases that they're really not willing to take the responsibility for what they do?
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Vannevar Bush15:27
It is charged right along that scientists are now working for government so much that it warps their judgment, that they will recommend on the basis of what's going to make more money flow through the channel that they're connected with. There undoubtedly is some of that. There are some in every profession that would take that point of view. But in my opinion, nine out of ten scientists in this country are honest and are trying to do a good job. That's a responsibility. I think that's their responsibility, and I think that's what nearly all of them will do.
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John Fitch16:18
Well, Dr. Bush, you spoke about the relationship of the politician to the scientist and the fact that they do get along together and understand. What about the rather larger problem of the whole mass of our citizenry, the widening gap between science and the general public? How are they to learn more about science so that they can make intelligent decisions?
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Vannevar Bush16:41
That's quite a problem. Incidentally, we keep talking about scientists. A great many of the things that we are talking about are really engineering accomplishments, and we ought to couple the two nearly every time. For example, in the atomic energy problems, after the scientists had got through, the engineers had to take it and make it work on a reasonable manner. Now, all of the media, television, radio, magazines, and so forth, are not only helping that, but their presentation of science to the public is marvelously better than it was some years ago. It's improving all the time. And on the other hand, that is possible because the American public is acquiring an understanding. The criticism that I have is this: that the public generally, naturally enough, is likely to be beguiled principally by the spectacular, the things that, oh, so-and-so had a leg cut off or something. But CP Snow has pointed out that there is an unbridgeable gap between two cultures, that there's no hope for people to understand the scientist or engineer. I disagree with CP Snow. There are indeed two cultures, but not the way he divides them.
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John Fitch18:34
Would you explain that?
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Vannevar Bush18:36
He would say that there is one that depends on science and one that depends on the humanities, they shall never meet, and they're bound to diverge. No such thing. There are two types of culture. One, a pragmatic type, a practical affair, the culture that has to do with getting things done. Only when those are merged do you get a man who is truly cultured. But having said that, there is beyond that a second type of culture that has nothing whatever to do with practicality: music, art, literature, the study of things for the sake of knowing about them with no practical utility, even such a thing as appreciating the sparkle of sun on a brook in the woods or the flight of a gull. That's all culture, and culture of a higher sort. Now you can't teach that kind of culture. You can exemplify it. You can teach the techniques that underlie it. But there is a great gap between those two cultures, and there are no such things as the two cultures that CP Snow talks about.
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John Fitch20:19
That's very interesting. Well, Dr. Bush, having been aware of what's important in science and technology and engineering in the past and being very much aware of what's going on at the present time, I wonder if you would speak for a moment or two about what you feel are the significant advances that have been made.
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Vannevar Bush20:38
Oh, there are so many of them. You see, there are more scientists working today than were alive in the whole history of the race, and science is going ahead on a hundred fronts at an accelerated pace. It's hard to pick out any one thing because there was so much happening. But you can say this in general: that the physical sciences made a great burst during the war, a great step forward after the war, and their applications flowed in in great numbers because the basic science, the fundamental science, had been done and was ready to be applied. Now we have a similar thing today in biology. A great mass of fundamental knowledge built up so that one day a dam will break and this will begin to be applied in a thousand ways with the results that no man can predict. I think that's the most exciting thing that lies ahead.
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John Fitch21:54
This fundamental knowledge you refer to as the new understanding of the gene. Is that the most exciting thing going on today in science? Why do you say that?
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Vannevar Bush22:11
Well, here we have a gene. You got a few of them inside here, and when you were born, or conceived rather, they proceeded to dictate how your body would be formed. They did it by sending out messages to tell what cells to do. The language that they used was a coded language. We are now breaking that code, translating their language so that we can read the language of the genes. Now you can see what that might lead to. It certainly might lead to a lot of implications in just understanding it. Indeed, there are dozens of laboratories working on it. You know, one finds out one little thing, and then somebody puts it all together. Gradually this whole thing is being translated. I think one person I talked to marveled at it more because it was as though it had finally unlocked the real secret, gotten down to the basic essentials. But all the way through biology, there are all sorts of things going on. We're getting a whole new understanding of physiology. The work that's being done on the way in which the nerves operate is fascinating, and the relations, the resemblances between the brain's operations and the operations of a computer.
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John Fitch24:10
Well, you said a minute ago that there was so much happening in the world that it would probably be impossible to understand it or keep up with it.
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Vannevar Bush24:20
Well, that would be true if it wasn't for the fact that we have far better means of understanding than we used to have, far better media communication, better ways of presenting things, including the little job that you and I are doing, I hope. And that's helping a great deal. But as time goes on, the analytical machine, which will supplement a man's thinking methods, which will think for him, will have as great an effect on his grasp of the world and his access to knowledge as the printing press did.
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John Fitch25:11
Do you see any danger in the increasing reliance on the machine to think for us?
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Vannevar Bush25:16
No, I don't see any. Once in a while, somebody that likes to write for spectacular purposes will talk about a race of self-reproducing machines that will take over civilization, banish humanity like the old Frankenstein story. Well, we still believe in fairy tales, but they're amusing, that's all.
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John Fitch25:39
Of course, computers are closely related to automation. How do you feel about that?
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Vannevar Bush25:44
Very closely. Well, automation makes quite a problem. We have to realize two or three things in looking at that problem. One is that when you automate, you create skilled jobs and obsolete unskilled jobs, and that does indeed make a problem. But we also have to think of this: that while temporary dislocations are sad and we have to contend with them and we have to prevent people from being thrown into distress through no fault of their own, having said all of that, it's not a calamity if we learn to make all the things we need for our civilized existence with less effort on our parts. You see, then a greater leisure time.
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John Fitch26:51
Certainly, certainly. Although I'm not at all sure what the American public will do with that leisure time.
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Vannevar Bush27:10
They'll show their old caliber. And I'll tell you one time when they did that cheered me up good for another many years. That was when they endorsed and backed the Marshall Plan. The first time that any nation ever came voluntarily to the succor of other nations to see that they were helped out of the aftermath of the war. It was a magnificent thing to do, and the American public was behind it.
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John Fitch27:42
Well, thank you very much, Dr. Bush. We've been visiting Dr. Vannevar Bush at his home in Belmont, Massachusetts.