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He ended up not being the decisive factor, but as the above said, he advocated for a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union, and was already part of the nucle

He ended up not being the decisive factor, but as the above said, he advocated for a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union, and was already part of the nuclear decision-making process - he was invited to participate in the decision for which cities to strike in Japan but was ultimately overruled because he suggested to hit target with no military importance and high concentrations of civilians. He thought (very wrongly) that coexistence with the Soviets was impossible and that they had to be eliminated as soon as possible. Here are sources if you want: "Von Neumann, four other scientists, and various military personnel were included in the target selection committee that was responsible for choosing the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the first targets of the atomic bomb. [...] The cultural capital Kyoto, which had been spared the bombing inflicted upon militarily significant cities, was von Neumann's first choice" "He was quoted in 1950 remarking, "During a Senate committee hearing he described his political ideology as "violently anti-communist, and much more militaristic than the norm". If you say why not bomb [the Soviets] tomorrow, I say, why not today? If you say today at five o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Nuclear_weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Nuclear_weapo...) I don't think that I need to give sources as to why nuking the USSR would have had a huge negative impact.

jtsuken 5y ago
I think JvN deserves at least some benefit of the doubt. As far as I am aware there is little unbiased impartial information about these meetings discussing the targets for nuclear strikes. Most information was published well after JvN has died. He also had no chance to comment even in the last years of his life. (Apparently the military was near him in hospital to make sure he didn't reveal any secrets) e.g. JvN's recommendation to bomb Kyoto is usually supported with a quote from a book that was written by the general who ran the Manhattan project and published his account of the events five years after von Neumann's death. I wouldn't be surprised if the general was doing at least some white washing in the early sixties as the peace movement was gaining momentum. More recently, looking at how various US agencies and departments reacted to accusations of human rights abuses in say Iraq, it's very easy to imagine that JvN's comments on the topic where either ripped out of context or exaggerated. So again, while it's very clear how someone with an extremely scientific mindset like von Neumann's would through outrageous comments around during a brainstorming session or during a heated argument. I'd really try to withhold any judgment on this until I see the full transcripts of these meetings.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
> He thought (very wrongly) that coexistence with the Soviets was impossible and that they had to be eliminated as soon as possible. Jeez. To drop all jokes, this guy is a lunatic. I'm not sure why people aren't pointing to this as a decisive criticism, since no amount of genius can excuse the idea that civilians need to be attacked or that populations can't coexist and need to be exterminated. This is the first I've heard of any of this. My "coziness" with the military industrial complex would be to help design weapons using AI. I'm simply fine with that. I wouldn't be advocating for the extermination of a population! That's not military-industrial coziness, that's psychopathy. The whole point of joining the military industrial complex is to advocate the opposite of what is represented here. That's the only way that real change can be made. Focus on military targets, not civilian populations. Remind people that although the goal is victory, the war will end one day (i.e. coexistence is never impossible). And so on.
- erosenbe0 5y ago
  Keep in mind Von Neumann was ethnically Jewish and the fact that the Jews he would have grown up with went from respected citizens to extermination in a matter of years might have affected him. I have no idea if that is the case but the fatalist, apocalyptic attitude you reference is the kind of thing you occasionally hear from Jews profoundly warped by the atrocities of that era.
- CheezeIt 5y ago
  Do you think Lincoln was a lunatic?
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    I think Lincoln didn't have access to an arsenal that could end humanity if used in the wrong way, so I don't know if the comparison is warranted. In general, if someone is trying to exterminate a population, then I believe that they fall under the lunatic umbrella, and that the umbrella should come down like a Venus fly trap and gobble all of them up. On balance, if we did this to every such person throughout history, then history may have fared better. There are zero populations of humans that need an exterminator (at least, an exterminator of humans).
philwelch 5y ago
When he made those comments, Stalin was still alive. You have the benefit of 70 years of hindsight and the knowledge that the Soviet Union moderated after Stalin’s death and collapsed entirely of its own accord a few decades later. Additionally, H-bombs didn’t even exist in 1950. A nuclear strike on the Soviet Union in 1950 would have been devastating but not as catastrophic as you would imagine today. It would have been closer to the Second World War—a bloody and devastating piece of business to be sure, but once it was all over, most of the people involved agreed that it had been worth fighting. If the Nazis won WWII, don’t you think it would be worth at least considering using nuclear weapons in a war to destroy their regime before they developed a competitive nuclear arsenal of their own? Or would you have argued for coexistence with them? The Soviet Union in 1950 was very much the moral equivalent of that situation.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Stalin is the guy who executed people who didn't abandon the idea of worldwide communism. He moderated the foreign policy of the USSR. He was also the guy who expended a lot of political capital and burned quite a few bridges to propose defensive alliances with Western countries, betraying those who wanted to plunge them into revolution. He was pretty evil, but Stalin was much more moderate on exporting communism by military force than the norm - his invasions were mostly about maintaining the national security of the USSR. The US by 1950 had hundreds of nuclear bombs. It would have been devastatig, the fallout would have been horrifying, and the famines that would follow would be the largest in the history of humanity. >If the Nazis won WWII, don’t you think it would be worth at least considering using nuclear weapons in a war to destroy their regime before they developed a competitive nuclear arsenal of their own? Or would you have argued for coexistence with them? The Soviet Union in 1950 was very much the moral equivalent of that situation. If it was the Nazis, I would, because there plan after winning WW2 involved killing 200+ million people. Say what you will about Stalin and he truly was evil, he had no plans of world conquest, much less of genociding hundreds of millions and literally enslaving a billion people.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  > If the Nazis won WWII, don’t you think it would be worth at least considering using nuclear weapons in a war to destroy their regime before they developed a competitive nuclear arsenal of their own? Or would you have argued for coexistence with them? That's a fascinating question. I'm not sure what to say. EDIT: Ah, my response is "That's an unfair comparison." The context was that Von Neumann was advocating the extermination of the Russian population, not their regime. I agree that it would be worth considering the strategic options at the time, but that the strategic options should not include the extermination of the entire German population.
emmelaich 5y ago
> ...as to why nuking the USSR would have had a huge negative impact. Japan has done ok.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Japan got two small nukes, the proposals were for ~300 significantly bigger ones.
emmelaich 5y ago
I would love to hear of any exchange between Einstein and Von Neumann. Einstein was famously contemptuous of soldiers.
kaba0 5y ago
It’s easy to determine a “good decision” retroactively. On what basis would one assume that the Soviets would not initiate an attack as soon as they could? In an extreme, but very much possible at the time view of the world, it was a either-or question which power remains - in that context it very much makes sense to preemptively strike them, even if that is a hard and brutal decision.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  I'd suggest you look over the distance from the USSR to the USA to see how such an attack would have played out. There was no such possibility u til ICBMs at which time MAD was a thing. It makes no sense to preemptively strike them. It's a monstrous instinct.

jtsuken 5y ago

I think JvN deserves at least some benefit of the doubt. As far as I am aware there is little unbiased impartial information about these meetings discussing the targets for nuclear strikes. Most information was published well after JvN has died. He also had no chance to comment even in the last years of his life. (Apparently the military was near him in hospital to make sure he didn't reveal any secrets) e.g. JvN's recommendation to bomb Kyoto is usually supported with a quote from a book that was written by the general who ran the Manhattan project and published his account of the events five years after von Neumann's death. I wouldn't be surprised if the general was doing at least some white washing in the early sixties as the peace movement was gaining momentum. More recently, looking at how various US agencies and departments reacted to accusations of human rights abuses in say Iraq, it's very easy to imagine that JvN's comments on the topic where either ripped out of context or exaggerated. So again, while it's very clear how someone with an extremely scientific mindset like von Neumann's would through outrageous comments around during a brainstorming session or during a heated argument. I'd really try to withhold any judgment on this until I see the full transcripts of these meetings.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

> He thought (very wrongly) that coexistence with the Soviets was impossible and that they had to be eliminated as soon as possible. Jeez. To drop all jokes, this guy is a lunatic. I'm not sure why people aren't pointing to this as a decisive criticism, since no amount of genius can excuse the idea that civilians need to be attacked or that populations can't coexist and need to be exterminated. This is the first I've heard of any of this. My "coziness" with the military industrial complex would be to help design weapons using AI. I'm simply fine with that. I wouldn't be advocating for the extermination of a population! That's not military-industrial coziness, that's psychopathy. The whole point of joining the military industrial complex is to advocate the opposite of what is represented here. That's the only way that real change can be made. Focus on military targets, not civilian populations. Remind people that although the goal is victory, the war will end one day (i.e. coexistence is never impossible). And so on.

erosenbe0 5y ago
Keep in mind Von Neumann was ethnically Jewish and the fact that the Jews he would have grown up with went from respected citizens to extermination in a matter of years might have affected him. I have no idea if that is the case but the fatalist, apocalyptic attitude you reference is the kind of thing you occasionally hear from Jews profoundly warped by the atrocities of that era.
CheezeIt 5y ago
Do you think Lincoln was a lunatic?
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  I think Lincoln didn't have access to an arsenal that could end humanity if used in the wrong way, so I don't know if the comparison is warranted. In general, if someone is trying to exterminate a population, then I believe that they fall under the lunatic umbrella, and that the umbrella should come down like a Venus fly trap and gobble all of them up. On balance, if we did this to every such person throughout history, then history may have fared better. There are zero populations of humans that need an exterminator (at least, an exterminator of humans).

philwelch 5y ago

When he made those comments, Stalin was still alive. You have the benefit of 70 years of hindsight and the knowledge that the Soviet Union moderated after Stalin’s death and collapsed entirely of its own accord a few decades later. Additionally, H-bombs didn’t even exist in 1950. A nuclear strike on the Soviet Union in 1950 would have been devastating but not as catastrophic as you would imagine today. It would have been closer to the Second World War—a bloody and devastating piece of business to be sure, but once it was all over, most of the people involved agreed that it had been worth fighting. If the Nazis won WWII, don’t you think it would be worth at least considering using nuclear weapons in a war to destroy their regime before they developed a competitive nuclear arsenal of their own? Or would you have argued for coexistence with them? The Soviet Union in 1950 was very much the moral equivalent of that situation.

sudosysgen 5y ago
Stalin is the guy who executed people who didn't abandon the idea of worldwide communism. He moderated the foreign policy of the USSR. He was also the guy who expended a lot of political capital and burned quite a few bridges to propose defensive alliances with Western countries, betraying those who wanted to plunge them into revolution. He was pretty evil, but Stalin was much more moderate on exporting communism by military force than the norm - his invasions were mostly about maintaining the national security of the USSR. The US by 1950 had hundreds of nuclear bombs. It would have been devastatig, the fallout would have been horrifying, and the famines that would follow would be the largest in the history of humanity. >If the Nazis won WWII, don’t you think it would be worth at least considering using nuclear weapons in a war to destroy their regime before they developed a competitive nuclear arsenal of their own? Or would you have argued for coexistence with them? The Soviet Union in 1950 was very much the moral equivalent of that situation. If it was the Nazis, I would, because there plan after winning WW2 involved killing 200+ million people. Say what you will about Stalin and he truly was evil, he had no plans of world conquest, much less of genociding hundreds of millions and literally enslaving a billion people.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
> If the Nazis won WWII, don’t you think it would be worth at least considering using nuclear weapons in a war to destroy their regime before they developed a competitive nuclear arsenal of their own? Or would you have argued for coexistence with them? That's a fascinating question. I'm not sure what to say. EDIT: Ah, my response is "That's an unfair comparison." The context was that Von Neumann was advocating the extermination of the Russian population, not their regime. I agree that it would be worth considering the strategic options at the time, but that the strategic options should not include the extermination of the entire German population.

emmelaich 5y ago

> ...as to why nuking the USSR would have had a huge negative impact. Japan has done ok.

sudosysgen 5y ago
Japan got two small nukes, the proposals were for ~300 significantly bigger ones.

emmelaich 5y ago

I would love to hear of any exchange between Einstein and Von Neumann. Einstein was famously contemptuous of soldiers.

kaba0 5y ago

It’s easy to determine a “good decision” retroactively. On what basis would one assume that the Soviets would not initiate an attack as soon as they could? In an extreme, but very much possible at the time view of the world, it was a either-or question which power remains - in that context it very much makes sense to preemptively strike them, even if that is a hard and brutal decision.

sudosysgen 5y ago
I'd suggest you look over the distance from the USSR to the USA to see how such an attack would have played out. There was no such possibility u til ICBMs at which time MAD was a thing. It makes no sense to preemptively strike them. It's a monstrous instinct.