Tucker Carlson Regrets the Atom-Bomb

Tucker Carlson, today’s leading figure of what could be called populist-right media, was recently the guest of Joe Rogan,[1] to whom he stated a number of unexpected opinions. He showed himself to be, on one hand, a hardcore adherent of certain traditional Christian beliefs (specifically creationism), but in other ways a very independent thinker. He had much to say about UFOs, which he supposes to be not interstellar travelers but “spiritual beings.”

Rogan, however, proceeded with questions on the premise that UFOs are extraterrestrial. This developed into a discussion about technology and evolution, since interstellar travel could happen only with a level of technology far beyond what humans possess. Rogan suggested that sufficiently advanced technology might become “a god,” and supersede humans. Apparently, Rogan had in mind that UFOs might be technological creations that have become independent of their creators.

As a God-believer, Carlson rejected the suggestion that technology could become literally a god (and also, most likely, does not believe in extraterrestrial life), but accepted the premise that technology could take control – which he regards as a terrible prospect. Carlson declares that we must make choices according to what is good for humans, which may mean aborting development of certain kinds of technology, above all artificial intelligence:

“AI – Ted Kaczynski was likely right – will get away from us; we will be controlled by the thing that we made. […] We need to say unequivocally: it’s bad. It’s bad to be controlled by machines. Machines are helpmates. We created them to help us, to make our lives better, not to take orders from them. I don’t know why we’re not having any of these conversations right now. […] We’re just acting as if this is like some kind of virus like Covid that spreads across the world inexorably: there’s nothing we can do about it; just wait to get it. […] If we agree that the outcome is bad, and specifically it’s bad for people. […] If it’s bad for people, then we should strangle it in its crib, right now.” (33:30-34:20)

Tucker Carlson on the Morality of the Atomic Bomb

After Carlson proposes that the development of artificial intelligence is dangerous and should be halted, Rogan suggests:

“You could say the same about the atomic bomb.”

Tucker agrees emphatically:

“Yes you could!” (33:40)

As a counterpoint, Rogan cites the imperative that Robert J. Oppenheimer (portrayed in a much-ballyhooed motion-picture last year) supposedly felt to develop an atomic bomb “before the Nazis did” (arguing in effect that competition makes the advancement of technology inexorable).

Tucker Carlson derides the suggestion that the USA was obliged to compete with Germany to have the first atomic bomb:

“I love that! How’d that work? […] I love, by the way, that people on my side – I’ll just admit it, on the right – have spent the last eighty years defending dropping nuclear weapons on civilians. Like, are you joking? That’s just like prima facie evil.” (34:45-35:40)

Carlson dismisses arguments about the advantages or necessity of using nuclear weapons.

“And if you find yourself arguing that it’s a good thing to drop nuclear weapons on people, then you are evil. […] It’s not a hard call for me. So, with that in mind […] why would you want nuclear weapons? […] How about spending all of your effort to prevent this from happening?” (34:45-35:40)

It seems significant that Carlson has just dismissed an argument based on the supposed menace of Adolf Hitler. People who take that supposed menace very seriously will be wondering what Tucker Carlson could be thinking. At the very least, it means that, in Tucker Carlson’s view, somebody worried about Hitler too much. This is a rejection of the underlying myth of all interventionist political discourse. It implies that the conservative American isolationists of the early1940s were right. Perhaps to obfuscate the implication of what he has just said, to prevent being caricatured as a Hitler-lover, Carlson then compares the development of the atomic bomb to Hitler himself, asking a rhetorical question that was directed at Ben Shapiro a few years ago:

“Would you kill baby Hitler?” (35:40)

Rogan again brings up the supposed relative advantage and “necessary evil” of developing the atomic bomb (36:57). Tucker Carlson’s wariness of unlimited development of technology, and skepticism about human calculations of the relative benefit, seem related to his religiosity:

“It comes from the same place, which is hubris, like: imagining that you’re God, you have unlimited power, and you have omniscience – you [believe that you] can imagine what the future’s going to be. You can’t. You’re a f-cking idiot. You’re a person. […] The limits of your power are really obvious. The limits of your wisdom, same. So, like, don’t jump into shit – big things – whose outcomes you can’t predict with certainty.” (37:10-37:37)

This attitude, this wariness of innovation or radical action, because of uncertainty about the outcome, is fundamental to conservatism.

Perhaps Rogan’s curiosity was piqued by the fact that Carlson had dismissed the supposed menace of Adolf Hitler without really addressing it. After a few minutes Rogan returns to that point. He says:

“Obviously the Manhattan Project was done in secrecy, but they wouldn’t have stopped it, because the imperative of getting this weapon before Hitler got the weapon was what was on everyone’s mind.” (41:00-41:15)

Carlson’s response is weak and incoherent:

“Well, Hitler was kind of done by then. […] But we were in the middle of the logic of war. […] It was four years of gotta beat the other guy. […] But no, we should pause and ask: is the machine we’re building worth having?” (41:12-41:29)

This is a weak response, because the supposed menace of Adolf Hitler, and the alleged necessity for development of the atomic bomb in the light of that supposed menace, has not been dispelled. He avoids taking any explicit position on whether developing an A-bomb to use against Hitler’s Germany was right. He seems to say that it was understandable but wrong.

Tucker Carlson’s rejection of what looks like an unpleasant necessity (developing an atom-bomb to use against Hitler), without explaining away the alleged source of that necessity (the menace of Hitler), makes him look, on this particular point, like a foggy-minded, sentimental hippie. This is a false appearance very likely caused by inhibition against saying all of what he thinks, but in the jargon of Israel First propagandists like Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro, it will be said that Tucker Carlson “lacks moral clarity.”

A German Atomic Bomb?

Tucker Carlson’s strongest option for dismissing the claim of necessity to beat Hitler to the atomic bomb would have been to point out that Hitler’s government was apparently not even trying to develop one, and was certainly not close to developing one.

According to Albert Speer’s memoir (which, like many memoirs, is not entirely trustworthy on every point) Hitler himself did not believe that an atom-bomb was worth pursuing:[2]

“In the twenty-two hundred recorded points of my conferences with Hitler, nuclear fission comes up only once, and then is mentioned with extreme brevity. Hitler did sometimes comment on its prospects, but what I told him of my conference with the physicists confirmed his view that there was not much profit in the matter. […]

On the suggestion of the nuclear physicists we scuttled the project to develop an atom bomb by the autumn of 1942, after I had again queried them about deadlines and been told that we could not count on anything for three or four years. The war would certainly have been decided long before then. Instead I authorized the development of an energy-producing uranium motor for propelling machinery. The navy was interested in that for its submarines.”

Incidentally, Adolf Hitler seems to have shared Tucker Carlson’s belief in the danger of technology:[2]

“Professor Heisenberg had not given any final answer to my question whether a successful nuclear fission could be kept under control with absolute certainty or might continue as a chain reaction. Hitler was plainly not delighted with the possibility that earth under his rule might be transformed into a glowing star. Occasionally, however, he joked that the scientists in their unworldly urge to lay bare all the secrets under heaven might some day set the globe on fire.”

Speer’s account is generally confirmed by the USA’s postwar investigation of the presumed German effort to develop a nuclear weapon. Samuel Goudsmit, in charge of that investigation, wrote in the final report:[3]

“They had given up altogether the idea of making a bomb and were concentrating their efforts on constructing an energy-producing machine, which they called a ‘Uranium Burner.’ At the end of the war, they had not even succeeded in constructing a self-sustaining reaction or ‘pile’.”

Speer also indicates that developing an atomic bomb would require an extraordinary investment of resources that Germany, unlike the USA, could not afford. When Germany could no longer import wolframite, Speer released Germany’s uranium stocks to be used in armor-piercing projectiles, a move that Speer says “showed that we no longer had any thoughts of producing atom bombs.” These facts were surely knowable by some experts in the USA during the war, but the Manhattan Project went on anyway.

Since flattening cities with bombs was an Anglo-American strategy and not a German strategy (see Richard Overy[4] or F.J.P. Veale[5] on that), it made sense for the USA or the UK to try to develop such a bomb, but it did not make sense for Germany to invest enormous resources in a weapon that would not have fit into their approach to war. There were some things that the Germans were unwilling to do in the struggle for victory. One of Germany’s secret weapons was nerve-gas, which, Speer says, certain individuals urged Hitler to use. Although Hitler was personally averse to gas-warfare, he proposed to a conference of generals in the autumn of 1944 the possibility of using Tabun strictly to stop the Red Army. When not one general endorsed the idea, because they “feared the unpredictable consequences,” (suggests Speer) the idea was dropped. (Speer 413-414) This difference in the overall attitude and approach to war, rather than the supposed imperative to get the bomb before Hitler, is probably closer to the truth about why the USA was the first to have and the first to use a nuclear weapon. The supposed imperative to get the bomb before Hitler looks like an excuse, and certainly does not explain the actual use of it – against Japan.

In Germany only nuclear power-generation was being pursued. The idea that the USA was in a race with Germany to develop the first nuclear weapon was false. This would have been a helpful point, if Tucker Carlson had known it, to justify his position.

If he did know it, but chose not to say it because it would have looked like defending Hitler, then this is an inhibition that Tucker Carlson ultimately will need to overcome in order to argue coherently against keen verbal assailants like Ben Shapiro and Rabbi Dennis Prager. Even the friendly Joe Rogan seems to have been dissatisfied with Carlson’s evasive response to the claim that the atomic bomb had to be developed because of Hitler.

Endnotes