In 1942, when an elite team of physicists set out to produce an atomic bomb, military leaders took elaborate steps to conceal their activities from th

Opinion: We Need Better Data for Hurricane Threats

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2024-12-26 22:30:05

In 1942, when an elite team of physicists set out to produce an atomic bomb, military leaders took elaborate steps to conceal their activities from the American public and lawmakers.

There were good reasons, of course, to keep a wartime weapons development project under wraps. (Unsuccessfully: Soviet spies learned about the bomb before most members of Congress.) But the result was striking: In the world’s flagship democracy, a society-redefining project took place, for about three years, without the knowledge or consent of the public or their elected representatives.

After the war, one official described the Manhattan Project as “a separate state” with “a peculiar sovereignty, one that could bring about the end, peacefully or violently, of all other sovereignties.”

Today’s cousins to the Manhattan Project — scientific research with the potential, however small, to cause a global catastrophe — seem to be proceeding more openly. But, in many cases, the public still has little opportunity to consent to the march of scientific progress.