The Absolute Weapon

AN ABSOLUTE WEAPON is one which conquers the enemy because he cannot or will not oppose it. The hydrogen bomb does not meet this definition because both sides have it and are willing to use it in retaliation. The result is a stalemate. It was in 1960 that the USA Central Intelligence Agency got its first inkling that the USSR was developing in project "G" a truly absolute weapon. The year is now 1975, and we are beginning to appreciate the future effectiveness of that weapon. Our failure to foresee Russian intentions in 1957, when we were shocked by their first earth satellite, can be explained primarily in terms of our own defensemindedness-our willingness to match the enemy in building military devices, but our reluctance to suppose that he had the intellectual aggressiveness which is the essential characteristic of a nation bent on conquest. Beyond complacency, as we shall see later, there were some special reasons for our blindness. Another historic date must be added to those mentioned above. The pilot study for project G was begun by the Russians in 1946 at the end of World War II, and the program laid out at that time has been adhered to without change. The project was originally expected to reach effectiveness by 2050 AD, but recent technical developments may allow the Russians to attain their goal in another 20 years. Such a long-term project, requiring perhaps a century for its completion, may seem surprising to those who think of national supremacy as a military goal to be won or lost in the course of a single war. But it must not be forgotten that the later greatness of nations has often hinged upon some slight but far reaching effort, followed by continuing exploitation over several generations. In the history of the USA the purchase of the Louisiana Territory in 1803 was such a trigger effort. Although it is a weapon of biological warfare, project G derived its inspiration directly from the atom bomb. For it was only the Russians who saw at once the true significance of nuclear fission as a discovery of one of nature's deeper secrets. They perceived that the future of military power lay, not in atomic energy alone, but in the whole of scientific knowledge. From that time onward the Communist Party put a major effort into gaining scientific supremacy for the USSR. Within the Party the struggle for personal power continued, producing plots, purges, and other manifestations of dynamic totalitarianism. And as we know from Lysenkoism, scientific research did not escape political involvement. But project G was preserved from interference by the simplicity of its program and the moderateness of its immediate purpose. The first earth satellite brought to the Western countries a realization that the USSR was running an all-out educational race. If we did not recognize that education was only half that race, it was because in our egalitarian tradition we had never understood the nature of civilization. In our pride of achievement it had never occurred to us that all we are we owe to a tiny fraction of our population. Remove from history 1000 great names in science, 1000 in philosophy and religion, 1000 more in the arts, and the rest of us would still be Bronze Age savages. Unable to understand that man's progress had depended upon the outer fringes of the statistical distributions of his abilities, we were unable to appreciate how that progress might be speeded up by a relatively small eugenics program. Because the leaders of the USSR were without our cultural handicap, project G was developed by them as an obvious supplement to intensive education.