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Comment by mynameishere | Hacker News Reader

Just flipping through, here's a sentence I never noticed before:

There is some thing very _American_ about Feynman breaking into safes during the Manhatten project

American? Geez, I hope the internationale wasn't playing in the background when he wrote that. Stalin (and the soviet scientists) knew everything about the atom bomb the whole time because of people breaking into safes. Frankly, Feynman should have been hanged, if that comment is true--romanticism over the word 'hacker' notwithstanding.

EDIT: I'm going to head off a cliche'd argument in favor of such break-ins, that they detect defects in the system. First point: The authorities have no way of distinquishing happy-go-lucky hackers from spies, and second, the real protection against break-ins is, and always was, the noose, not a combination lock. The lock just makes it clear what is and isn't hands-off.

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Remind me to never, ever, in a million years become your co-worker.

"You stole my stapler! The sentence is DEATH!"

Meanwhile, you are presumably aware that (a) the key atomic spy at Los Alamos (Klaus Fuchs) was a co-inventor of the bomb and didn't need to break into anything in order to learn any secrets; that (b) as a co-inventor of the bomb himself, Feynman presumably had sufficient clearance to read the documents inside the safes that he opened; and that (c) nobody ever accused Feynman of being a spy. Well, until you, anyway.

Feynman did confess, in his autobiography, that he borrowed Klaus Fuchs' car once, on the occasion of his wife's death. Presumably you would only have sentenced him to ten years of hard labor for that.

"Meanwhile, you are presumably aware that..."

Meanwhile you are presumably aware that breaking into a top secret military safe during a war (or at any time) is a federal crime, and that exceptions cannot be made based upon our personal preferences in celebrity scientists, and that the atomic bomb was, in fact, not a stapler, but a device capable of killing millions of people. You are probably also aware that there were co-inventors of the atomic bomb who did, in fact, pass secrets onto the soviets, and you are aware that a person breaking into a safe would be suspect #1 for that in addition to the more specific crime of breaking into a safe.

You are probably also aware that security clearances are compartmentalized on a need-to-know basis and that having such a security clearance does not entitle you to all secrets at that level. No doubt you are also aware that the "hacker" ethics that evolved in-between games of hunt-the-wumpus at MIT are not universally applicable. You are probably also are aware that you are wrong in this line of arguing, and so I finish there.

Are you crazy? The safes didn't provide security sufficient to keep spies out - some didn't even have the codes set to anything other than the default. Feynman strengthened the whole system. Most of the safe cracking was done in order to provide access for the owners of said safes. His activities were quite well known: would you presume to advise the corrections department at Los Alamos to hang their scientists leading their technical divisions?

Additionally, he kept Oak Ridge from blowing up when he noticed the water moderated uranium was stored closely enough to be near-critical. Were he hanged, there would have been hundreds of direct deaths, and the entire effort would have been held up for months: they kept all their enriching equipment there, not to mention that it housed their enrichment experts.

Were he hanged, there would have been hundreds of direct deaths

Well, you're looking forward from a past point of time, and that shouldn't be done. Actually hanging someone probably wouldn't be a good idea. It depends on the circumstances: If he made it clear what he was doing, a loss of clearance would have been more appropriate.

Of course, in the back of my mind are a lot of hypotheticals--using the bomb was partly strategic, ie, to scare the Soviets. That didn't work, partly because of the spying. North Korea and Red China were tragedies of the highest order, and the lost nuke secrets were a part of that game...

"breaking into a top secret military safe during a war (or at any time) is a federal crime, and that exceptions cannot be made based upon our personal preferences in celebrity scientists"

Right, because laws are laws, and must be blindly followed, always, without regard to circumstances or logic. Surely, it would have been beneficial to hang one of the people instrumental in developing the atomic bomb for exposing flaws in the security at Los Alamos.

Well... if it were a red Swingline stapler...

In the scheme of Americans who should be hanged for treason, Feynman wouldn't be at the top of the list.

The only thing that has prevented nuclear genocide is mutually-assured destruction. If the U.S. could've gotten away with it, who knows how many cultures we'd have nuked in pursuit of the American Dream.

If anything, the spies who stole U.S. secrets inadvertently did the world a favor. Countries with a nuclear arsenal don't get invaded.

If Iraq had had nukes, we might have made major strides to become energy independent by now, instead of thinking it was easier to go in there, beat them up, and steal their oil.

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