I think it was easier in that era; AFAIK they used conventional secrecy methods (project names, locations, misdirection, need to know, obfuscation) to pull it off. Feynman’s “Surely you’re joking” and Rhodes “making the atomic bomb” are good sources for some examples (and otherwise recommended)
Hmm. Perhaps a related question is “prior to the Manhattan Project, had there ever been anything like a Manhattan project before?”. It seems like quite plausibly the answer was “no, not really”, which makes security through obscurity much easier.
I read Feynman, but I don’t think he said anything about how the US government explained the withdrawal of top physicists from public space.
Maybe it was the case that “the US military is using top physicists to do something” was not a secret; it only was a secret what exactly they’re working on.
In that case this would not be repeatable either, because “the US military is using top AI researchers to do something” is not quite the same level of vague :)
I think it was easier in that era; AFAIK they used conventional secrecy methods (project names, locations, misdirection, need to know, obfuscation) to pull it off. Feynman’s “Surely you’re joking” and Rhodes “making the atomic bomb” are good sources for some examples (and otherwise recommended)
If ever there was a question with your name on it… ;-)
Hmm. Perhaps a related question is “prior to the Manhattan Project, had there ever been anything like a Manhattan project before?”. It seems like quite plausibly the answer was “no, not really”, which makes security through obscurity much easier.
I read Feynman, but I don’t think he said anything about how the US government explained the withdrawal of top physicists from public space.
Maybe it was the case that “the US military is using top physicists to do something” was not a secret; it only was a secret what exactly they’re working on.
In that case this would not be repeatable either, because “the US military is using top AI researchers to do something” is not quite the same level of vague :)