This reminds me of Neal Stephenson’s “Cryptonomicon”. One of the themes, and I have no idea if it really happened, is that mathematicians worked with the Allied armed forces to bury the signals of their future actions. They end up doing things like launching fake paratrooper landings in Norway to cover the signs of the impending D-Day attack - all mathematically calculated to generate maximum entropy.

My second thought : I’m a little surprised that the use of lithium in nuclear weapons represented enough of an increase in the total demand to boost the stock price that much.