Thread

Nazi Germany had no hope of making an atomic bomb, uranium cubes reveal

137 points · 121 comments · xqcgrek2

expedition32 · 1790925650 · focus · HN ↗
This was already known. The British put the German scientists into a big country house after the war and bugged all the rooms. After the US dropped the atomic bombs the German scientists spent weeks discussing with eachother how the Americans could have done it. They never got it right.
1. amsully · 1790960324 · focus · HN ↗
  It’s a great read from beginning to end <a href="https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/nazi-germany-1933-1945/transcript-of-surreptitiously-taped-conversations-among-german-nuclear-physicists-at-farm-hall-august-6-7-1945" rel="nofollow">https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/nazi-germany-1933-1945/tran...
  1. yalok · 1790962529 · focus · HN ↗
    Amazing. Kind of reminds of the modern day discourse on potential dangers of AGI and humans misuse of it.
    Robotbeat · 1790963455 · focus · HN ↗
    Yup. The race-to-AGI-because-China in particular. I’m basically a China Hawk and generally in favor of AI development, but I can recognize the same pattern.
    aaroninsf · 1790969003 · focus · HN ↗
    That would be a false similarity in some important ways.
    This was a very specific single technical problem, requiring a silo from basic science to theoretical physics to advanced engineering, etc., with each layer having its own space of failure modes.
    Something like the reverse is true with sufficiently-capable and sufficiently-efficient AI, which we are rapidly evolving to.
    In our current situation, the attack surface is quite literally our entire highly interdependent civilization and its components. AI does not need to be autonomous, it just needs to employed, either will wilful bad intent, or, poorly stated goals, or, poor alignment, or, simple mistakes and errors, to break things.
    The challenge with security is always that the attacker need only succeed once.
    This does not mean doomerism has it right, especially in narratives based on poor understanding or extapolation beyond what is now konwn. The chance of "extinction" in particular is overstated.
    The chance of one or more compounding "Chernobyl scale" gray swan events however is ever increasing.
    Personally I don't think that's remotely contestable.
    As a civilization and society and industry we need to have process, and public process at that, about the nature of the risks faced.
    That process has not yet emerged in any coherent way; a hundred letters have been signed and such but to no actual effect, bar one performative "executive order" this week.

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