Probably the best book I’ve read last year was “The making of the atomic bomb” by Richard Rhodes1. Nuclear physics, international intrigue, sharks! The book covers the importance of having a good scientific hypothesis over a deluge of data, that ideas are cheap but ambition and execution are not, and that science cannot ignore ethics. This last topic is particularly interesting in the context of this book; how come so many scientists willingly undertook a work they very well understood would have lead to a terrifying weapon? The answer to this question is perhaps a good reason why we should strive for an open society in general and open science in particular.
The person responsible for setting the whole Manhattan project in motion is a good example of this apparent paradox. Leó Szilárd had a good reason to feel the urge to help the US obtain such a terrible weapon; to make sure Nazi Germany didn’t get it first. This fear is the main reason why many decent scientists could overcome their ethical concerns. This fear was not unfounded; the idea of using nuclear fission to make a bomb had in fact also occurred to German, Soviet and Japanese scientists, though few of the military and political elites grasped how deeply transformative such an invention would be. In the end only the US could afford to build the large industrial capacity needed to obtain Uranium 235 and Plutonium; but crucially the lack of information made taking the risk of Germany to become a nuclear power untenable.
The same Leó Szilárd who almost single-handedly made the Manhattan project a reality was also one of the first people to try to stop the bomb from being used2. By the time the US knew they were likely going to make it, it was abundantly clear that no other country was anywhere near developing it. What’s more, many started to understand how a world in which multiple countries had access to this power would look like: a dangerous arm’s race that could result in unimaginable suffering and devastation at any moment. The solution to which Leó Szilárd and Niels Bohr independently came to was that of open science: if all the major powers could know how to obtain the bomb and could understand how terrible a weapon that was, then they would be deterred without the need to even posses one. It’s easy to imagine how this radical idea was received by the high-ups in the US and the UK. Winston Churchill in particular thought that the idea was borderline seditious, and as a result very little information was shared during and after the war. More sadly, even the idea that the danger of the arm’s race was self-evident even without ever using the bomb turned out to be false; Stalin supposedly took the matter seriously only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, despite knowing of the existence of the Manhattan project through spies.
Would the arm’s race have been averted if the development of the atomic bomb was run as an open science project? That is of course impossible to tell, but since multiple powers have now nuclear weapons, the result is the same as if the information was shared from the beginning, plus the unimaginable cost of developing vast arsenals and the existential risks that come with them, including accidents.
What are the next scientific discoveries that could pose an existential threat to humanity and could benefit from an open process? There seems to be multiple ones, from applications of artificial intelligence to nuclear fusion, but maybe molecular biology would be the most likely candidate. The Sars-Cov-2 pandemic has reminded how a relatively simple piece of self-replicating matter can have devastating effects. Advances in gene synthesis and more importantly in designing biomolecules could very well eventually lead to new biological threats, from malicious actors as well as from accidents. The responsibility of making sure these risks do not become a reality rests in large part on the shoulders of the scientific community, which can use the tools of open science to avoid both an arm’s race as well as censuring/regulating dangerous research activities.
I had this post as a draft for some time now, as the idea that the world was about to face a “molecular biology arms race” seemed a bit silly. It most certainly is, but as current events in Ukraine have now reminded everyone of the existence of nuclear weapons, it might be timely to remember that secrecy and mistrust can have terrible consequences.