Interview With Dr. Edward Teller, Father of the H-Bomb
This article originally appeared in the May 29, 1967, edition of U.S. News & World Report.
How urgent is it for the U. S. to build a defense against Soviet missile attack--to try to save millions upon millions of American lives?
That is the big debate boiling over between Defense Secretary McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Congress, too, is involved.
Now one of the country's top nuclear scientists--a man who fought hard to put the H-bomb in the U.S. arsenal--questions whether the U. S. is being led on a "catastrophic" course.
Dr. Edward Teller, still on the inside of U.S. nuclear activities, came to the conference room of "U. S. News & World Report" for this interview on an issue of growing importance.
Q Dr. Teller, you have been involved in controversy over nuclear defense for many years. When did this all start? When did you learn, for example, about the atomic bomb?
A In January of 1939, more than six years before we actually exploded our first test bomb in New Mexico, we had a conference at which I first heard about fission. The possibility of making a nuclear bomb was there at that time, but I did not know it.
A few weeks later--I think it was in March of 1939--I got a phone call from Dr. Leo Szilard, who was in New York, and he told me that they found the neutrons, the chain carriers. At that time I would have bet much more than even money that a nuclear explosion could be performed.
READ: [70 Years Later, The Bomb Still Casts Fear]
Q Your concern started then?
A From that time--not in the first week, but certainly within the first few months--I started to worry about the consequences of all of this. And while I may be mistaken about many things that I have said, at least these have not been snap judgments. They are based on 28 years of worrying, discussing, thinking about things as conscientiously as I could.
There is one thing I should like to add. It is my conviction that a scientist's responsibility is to apply science--and to explain as best he can both what he has found and the applications that appear possible, or have been accomplished. And there his responsibility stops.
I am afraid I have transgressed: I have done more than explain in the sense in which a scientist should explain. I would be quite happy to say that I apologize for it.
Q Dr. Teller, we are now living in a period in which many people feel there is a lasting nuclear stalemate with Russia, and it will continue to deter any all-out war. Is that a safe assumption? Is "atomic blackmail" in the future no longer a possibility? Is there no chance that Russia may get the upper hand and try to dictate to us under the threat of annihilation?
A I am firmly convinced that, in our technological age, technological surprises can occur. For me to predict or even to pretend to know, what may be on Russian minds is entirely inappropriate. I cannot.
At the same time, many people have pointed out that, in some phases of our work in antiballistic missiles, we have not gone ahead with sufficient rapidity. The Russians have said that they are deploying antiballistic missiles, and Robert McNamara, our Secretary of Defense, has confirmed this.
Under these conditions, I wish I could rule out future developments that may result in nuclear blackmail, but I cannot. I cannot rule it out coming from Russia, because new developments are possible. I might not even be able to rule it out coming from China because, while they are obviously much weaker, and while we might rightfully expect that we can deter China, they also might proceed in unpredictable directions.
READ: [Nuclear Warfare and the American Presidency]
I personally would not expect that China would try to blackmail us. But if they do try, five or 10 years hence, and we know they have a few rockets which could do enormous damage in one blow--even though we will have excellent reason to suspect that all this is bluff--I worry what our reaction might be. I wonder whether an American President would want to risk many millions of lives and perhaps even the existence of the United States for the defense, let us say, of Taiwan.
I believe that if we want to be more confident that we can avoid a situation of this kind--the risk of nuclear blackmail--we should move faster with our own antiballistic missiles.
Q How expensive would that be?
A It would take less money than Vietnam. To my mind, the most cost-effective procedure is foresight. In Vietnam we did not happen to have foresight.
As to what a ballistic-missile defense would cost: If we want to insure ourselves against blackmail from China, it might cost no more than two or three months' fighting in Vietnam.
If we deployed a missile defense against China, we would learn more about the cost of the system and perhaps even about its effectiveness. We then might be in a better position to decide whether it is worthwhile to deploy a bigger and more costly system that could also possibly stop, or at least blunt, a Russian attack.
In other words, I would strongly urge that we go ahead with deploying an antiballistic-missile system.
Q Would deploying the bigger system against the Russians cost much more than one full year of the war in Vietnam -- say, 20 billion dollars?
A These are costs which seem to be comparable.
Q Were you concerned about the fantastic situation in which we found ourselves in Cuba in 1962? There, within 90 miles of our coast, the Russians had missile bases. Were there any nuclear warheads in Cuba?
A A person may be excused if he tries to speculate: What would such a missile carry? The suspicion that it might carry a nuclear warhead does not seem to me at all farfetched.
Q What could they have done with those--destroyed a number of American cities?
A They could have done a lot.
Q Would you call Cuba a historic example of a Soviet attempt at nuclear blackmail?
A Yes. But, of course, we met the threat, and we were able to meet it because we had considerable strength.
I am worried now that we might do so much to insure that we are in a justifiable position with cost-effectiveness that we might lose our ability to defend ourselves as a result.
This point should be made very clear: In choosing between various possible procedures, the one which gives you most for the least money and effort is reasonable. But when you carry this policy to the point where you try to calculate the minimum you need to deter a nuclear attack, then you are faced with a situation where you have made a number of assumptions which are hard to verify--if not impossible to verify.
The apostles of cost-effectiveness have not been 100 per cent correct in their predictions on Vietnam. This is bad, but it is not catastrophic. If they should err in a similar way with respect to what is sufficient to deter the Russians, this may be the end of the United States.
Q Are you convinced that our antiballistic missile is reasonably effective?
A The truth is that I don't know. Further, I will tell you the whole truth, and the whole truth is that no one else knows, either. It is for that very reason that I would like to see work stepped up.
I am convinced--and there is nothing that the Department of Defense has said which conflicts with this--that a deployment of missile defense would be effective against China, and incidentally also against any other newcomer to the "nuclear club."
By deploying against China and by getting rid of one important possibility of blackmail, we would then be in a better position to answer the real question which you asked: whether such a deployment could be effective against Russia.
Q Wouldn't we need to test our antiballistic missile in the air?
A Parts of it--the rocket--we can test. An explosion in the atmosphere or space is ruled out by the test-ban treaty. This is a real handicap, but at the same time what we can do is still incomparably better than doing nothing.
Q On this matter of cost-effectiveness--would you not cut the spending on new weapons at all?
A Let me point out that, apart from Vietnam, the amount that we have spent on defense over the last 15 years has steadily declined as a percentage of our gross national product.
Since the safety of the United States, the survival of the United States, is at stake, it would be hard to argue that it will wreck us if we doubled our defense expenditure. We could double it. I don't think we should, however, because very rapid increase in expenditure makes for inefficiency.
A planned increase in expenditure over the next few years which attacks these problems in a well-conceived manner and in which we could spend 10 to 20 billion dollars per annum--this looks to me entirely possible and, I think, justified.
Q What do you have in mind in addition to the antiballistic missile?
A One of the most important things we need is civil defense--shelters, and the capacity to recover after a nuclear attack. The fact that we are a rich country makes it much easier for us to establish a recovery capability and to build shelters against blast and fallout. In Russia, there is an acute housing shortage. For them, shelter-building would be a greater strain than for us.
We should have critical items in reserve--a stockpile--that we can use to break bottlenecks when it counts.
These things could be done and should be done. And while, no matter what we do, a big nuclear war would be terrible and would result in millions of casualties, we could insure that the majority of our people would survive, and we can insure that as a nation we survive. Today we are not prepared to survive as a nation in case of a big nuclear conflict.
Q Where would you put all those shelters you mention?
A Everywhere, distribute them everywhere. Build them directly under your house, or two doors away. Incidentally, the Swiss are doing a lot about that. But, of course, not everybody can be as warlike as the Swiss.
Q Aren't the Swiss making their shelters useful also as parking lots?
A Oh, yes. But a peaceful nation like the United States would not dare build shelters in earnest because it would be provocative to the Russians. Yet the Swedes are also doing it. They are building underground tunnels. They also have a very detailed evacuation plan. I don't want to argue for evacuation of our cities because I doubt that it would work. For the Swedes it may be the right choice.
Q Is it possible to stockpile strategic goods so they're impervious to nuclear attack?
A Yes. A little distance underground is surprisingly effective.
Q Why aren't we doing these things?
A Because nuclear war is unthinkable--at least in the minds of some of our officials.
Q But some of these officials insist that more money cannot buy more security against nuclear attack, yet you say it can--
A I'm sure it can.
READ: [Hiroshima, Nagasaki and How the H-Bomb Split the Manhattan Project Team]
Q Isn't it the argument of these officials that any defense we build can be saturated, that there is no way to prevent total annihilation of both the U. S. and Russia in a nuclear exchange?
A That is their argument. But when they talk about shelters for protection, for example, they are talking about fallout shelters--a very cheap system. That that is insufficient is clear. I am talking about a combination of ballistic-missile defense, blast shelters and recovery capability.
It is probably impossible to defend the country against a big sophisticated attack, if we have only antiballistic missiles and fallout shelters, and no blast shelters and no recovery capability. If, however, we build blast shelters, if we have procedures to get people into these shelters in not more than half an hour, and if we have stockpiles, then I believe that we have a chance to save 90 per cent of our population.
Furthermore, take a situation where even half of us may be lost. If we have the right kinds of stockpiles, then we can recover to a reasonable standard within five years. In this kind of planning, we can be way ahead of the Russians. For us to have big food stockpiles is easy; for the Russians it is difficult. Unfortunately, we choose not to compete with the Russians precisely in the area where we could be much stronger than they are. To make ourselves completely invulnerable--I doubt that can be done. But to make ourselves much less vulnerable than the Russians--that can be done.
Since the Russians are not crazy, since they are chess players rather than poker players, if we put ourselves into an inherently stronger situation, then we can very greatly limit the chance that we shall be attacked at all.
Q If the Russians are not crazy, as you say, why wouldn't the threat of a counterattack by our nuclear missiles deter the Soviets in the first place? This seems to be the point made by Defense Secretary McNamara--
A They are not crazy and they haven't attacked us s. So Mr. McNamara is right in that respect. But I don't want see this country defended with a 51 per cent probability, not even with a 70 per cent probability, I can't insure the survival of this country with a 100 per cent probability, but I want at least to insure survival with a 90 per cent probability.
RISK OF NUCLEAR WAR--
Q Dr. Teller, this question bears re-asking: Is it conceivable that the Russians can break the present stalemate and place us at their mercy?
A There are many ways, none of them very probable, but in the aggregate not at all very improbable, that in one way or the other the Russians might deploy weapons by which they could prevent or blunt an attack to a sufficient extent that it would become at least tolerable for them to risk a nuclear war. I hope I'm making myself clear.
Q Can you give an example?
A Yes. Consider a first strike--a surprise attack--on Russia's part which might destroy a considerable portion of our retaliatory force. The Russians still haven't been hit and are still in full possession of their antimissile missiles, waiting to use them in defense against what is left of our own damaged offensive force. I ask you: How well off would we be in such circumstances?
Q Then do you want to increase our offensive superiority over the Russians--not to let them achieve parity, as some civilian officials suggest?
A Have you thought seriously of having parity with a bear? He has two arms and you have two arms. That seems at to be parity, and you might feel absolutely safe. Except that perhaps the arms of the bear may be a little stronger, and somehow bears keep their secrets better. The Russians, on top of that, are better able to evaluate whether parity is really proper in their sense of coexistence. Their idea of parity may be a little different from our idea of parity.
Q You obviously don't think much of that strategy --
A Well, it is cost-effective, but it may well lead to the end of the United States. This is a very serious situation.
Q Do you think it is conceivable that anyone in Russia, for any consideration, would ever push a button and cause the destruction of millions and millions of people?
A I do not know. No one knows, really.
If we were talking about the Russian people, I would feel safe. But we are talking about a small number of men in the Kremlin.
I don't even know who the Russian leader will be in 1972 or 1975. I do know that a Russian leader in the past killed at least 10 million of his own people in concentration camps, which I consider a more cruel way of killing than sudden death, and he did it for less dramatic reasons than are involved at present.
I hope that Stalin was a unique monster. But for me to say that I know that none of his kind is left would be obviously a stronger assertion than I feel capable of making.
RED CHINA'S WEAKNESS--
Q Dr. Teller, what is your estimate of Red Chinese capabilities in building a nuclear arsenal?
A I do not think that Red China is likely to be a really significant power in the foreseeable future.
Q In the next 10 years, 15 years?
A This century. I say this because what they need in order to become such a power is great progress in technology. Such technology must be based on skilled and educated people. They are trying to educate their people in technological ways, but this is a lengthy process, because they don't have enough educators.
Let me say that the Chinese nuclear explosions proved something that is not too surprising: It is not particularly difficult to solve a tricky technological problem in isolation. They have a few good men. But big and reliable production is an entirely different matter. I would not be surprised if the Chinese have in five or 10 years--in small numbers--not only big nuclear explosives but rockets to carry them. If we take the appropriate defensive measures, this need not worry us very much. Perhaps it will worry us anyway, but it need not be a lethal threat to the United States. It may be a lethal threat to big groups of people, but it need not be a threat to the continued existence of the United States.
The main point, in my mind, is that the real danger comes two sources:
One is the real strength of Russia, which started from a higher technological level in 1917 than China had attained in 1949. Russia has worked on the technological revolution very diligently, for a half century, and the results are coming in now. This is one of our real sources of danger.
The other is our overconfidence, sluggishness, optimism, unpreparedness.
Q Would you say misinformation, in addition?
A Incomplete information certainly is a danger. After all, there is a temptation for anyone who is in power to classify his own mistakes and thus exempt himself from criticism. I am of course not the first one to raise the point.
Q Is this country's security airtight?
A We are doing such an excellent job with respect to security regulations within this country that we are confusing our own public. But we are not doing a similarly excellent in keeping secrets from the Russians. Less secrecy and more speed would be both in greater consonance with democratic procedures and would be better insurance for our survival. I would say that, if we appropriately revise our security regulations, it might be beneficial.
Incidentally, there is one field where we really are ahead of the Russians: That is in computing machines. There we did not use secrecy, but we used speed.
Q What would you say has been the real effect of the theft of nuclear information by one country from another through various clandestine methods?
A Not much. To make a nuclear explosive is basically simple and we cannot keep simple facts secret, any more than we can keep secret the multiplication table.
Q Do you mean Klaus Fuchs, the atomic spy, was not important to the Russians?
A I suspect that he was important in one very unfortunate way. From the point of view of the Russians' being able to make nuclear weapons more rapidly, his importance amounts to weeks, months, probably not years, by my estimate. That is unimportant. Who cares whether the first Russian explosion was in September, 1949, or instead would have been in February of 1950? I don't know this--I'm just guessing. But I'm giving you an impression of what I think the difference was.
However, you remember that horrible poker game in Potsdam [in 1945] when Truman tried to tell Stalin that we had a nuclear weapon and Stalin was not interested? He was probably not interested because he knew it all from Fuchs, you see. And, then, after the war we came up with the Baruch Plan for controlling nuclear weapons--and the Russians refused it.
Quite probably they would have refused it anyway. But whatever chance it had of being accepted was destroyed by Fuchs, because if there had been no leaks of this kind, then the Russians would have been faced by an unknown threat. Now they were faced by a threat whose extent they knew. They were not taken by surprise. That was, I think, the real importance--not the knowledge in a technological sense, but the preparedness in the diplomatic sense.
REAL PROBLEM IN ESPIONAGE--
Q Are you saying that we don't have to worry about Russian espionage?
A Of course we do have to worry about Russian espionage in some respects. What worries me more is the question of the durability of our secrets.
In other words, if the Russians could find out where every one of our Polaris submarines is, that would be a tremendous advantage to them. This is a secret worth keeping. The loss of that secret would be very significant.
But if we insist on keeping secret things that we do keep secret for years, I will say that a considerable fraction of these secrets are secrets only in our imagination, information kept from our own people and to a great extent from our allies--not from the Russians. I think that "operational" secrets can be kept; "long term" secrets cannot.
Q Is the knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons inevitably attainable by any nation with competent scientists, without outside help?
A The United States, Russia, Britain, France, China-- each performed a nuclear explosion. They didn't wait very long after they had the nuclear materials. Draw your conclusions.
Q Can many nations now get materials through reactors designed for peaceful purposes?
A Reactors are becoming economically very attractive--no secrets about how to make good reactors. Reactors can be used as effective and ample sources of strategic nuclear materials.
Q Do the Japanese have any special capacity to develop a nuclear arsenal?
A The Japanese have been working on their technology for over a century, have done it diligently and effectively. There is no technological feat that we can accomplish that the Japanese could not accomplish, although on an appropriately smaller scale. I have very considerable respect for the Japanese. They have the background of technology which the Chinese are lacking.
Q And they have an intellectual curiosity--
A Oh, the Chinese, too. I don't want to underestimate the Chinese at all. It is specifically in technology where they are behind, where they must catch up, but where they won't catch up fast.
Q What about India--do they have a background of science?
A The little experience I have with Indian scientists seems to indicate more interest in theory than in application. In fact, the Indians have anticipated, by millennia, Western thought about infinity.
Q How about France? Do you think France can become a major nuclear power?
A France can do a lot. Here, there is one point I would like to mention:
I have told you that a "light" missile defense can be set up rather inexpensively to stop the Chinese, or for that matter, anyone else--with the exception only of the Russians. I think one of the interesting possibilities--merely as a theoretical possibility--is that, if the Russian system cannot do anything else, it can defend the Soviet Union against the French or the Chinese. And a situation where we can be blackmailed by smaller powers but Russia can't be blackmailed would in itself be of a very serious nature.
Q A lot of people think that France's program is essentially just a matter of political pride--
A I am quite sure that there are many intelligent experts in France who believe in their own offensive-missile program as something effective and logical. They are misguided, and I would like to convince them otherwise, but I don't have a chance as long as our own policy is completely based on retaliation--on offensive weapons--and not on building an effective missile defense.
Q With so many nations lining up as potential nuclear powers--will a nonproliferation treaty be practical?
A I don't believe in unpoliced treaties. I don't believe in treaties that have no te?th in them. I don't believe in anyone's ability to restrict knowledge. I do believe in the practicability of developing a situation where it is not to the advantage--at least, less to the advantage--of a country to have retaliatory weapons. If we could equip more countries with instruments that can be used for defense and defense only, that would make a powerful contribution.
Q Can that be done, technologically--missiles for defense only?
A It is not easy, but I believe that it can be done. You can have an electronic program which will allow the defensive missile to explode only at a safe distance from the ground and only over the planned defended area. And we can so arrange this electronic system that, if anybody wants to take it apart, lift the nuclear warhead and use it for a nonprogrammed purpose, that attempt would destroy the nuclear warhead.
I think a defensive umbrella is a possibility. It would help to hold the free world together and would diminish any nation's desire for retaliatory weapons.
Q Dr. Teller, what is your official relationship to the Government now?
A I am working actively on the Science Advisory Board of the Air Force. Also, while I am an employee of the University of California and have a professorship there, I actually spend a very considerable fraction of my time helping at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory--the Livermore project--which is under contractual relation with the Atomic Energy Commission.
Q Is there any parallel between the fight you had in late '40s with some of your associates and the Administration in trying to get work started on the hydrogen bomb and the experience you are going through now, arguing your case in private and public for the antiballistic missile?
A Not one parallel, but any number--a whole sheaf of parallels.
Q Is history repeating itself?
A All the time. I mean, make it the H-bomb, make it civil defense, make it the antiballistic missile, make it any important step of preparedness.
Q Are people listening to you, having been proven right before?
A At this point I had better not say anything. You are asking me to explain a situation in which I'm deeply involved. For me to try to explain would be much too difficult. An outsider can judge much better than I can.
PSYCHOLOGY OF A-BOMB --
Q Perhaps there's another way to ask it--
A Look, we are influenced by many factors--emotional factors. You probably know--I have written about it in my book, "The Legacy of Hiroshima"--that in the war against Japan I felt that we should demonstrate our atomic bomb and not actually use it, or use it only if the demonstration did not convince the Japanese.
I told this to some of my colleagues, who strongly disagreed. They were for dropping the bomb. I believed, at a time when the war was practically won, a mere demonstration would have sufficed.
So the two atomic bombs were dropped. ?hey brought about a strong emotional reaction.
This seems to be the summary of our attitude of the atomic bomb: In war, go ahead and use it. Right after the war you say, "It's horrible. Don't ever touch it again."
This, to my mind, is certainly not good and practical behavior. Perhaps it is not even rational behavior. But it is the psychological reality of today.
