Latest news with #Soviet-American
New York Times
14-05-2025
- Science
- New York Times
Richard L. Garwin, a Creator of the Hydrogen Bomb, Dies at 97
Richard L. Garwin, an architect of America's hydrogen bomb, who shaped defense policies for postwar governments and laid the groundwork for insights into the structure of the universe as well as for medical and computer marvels , died on Tuesday at his home in Scarsdale, N.Y. He was 97. His death was confirmed by his son Thomas. A polymathic physicist and geopolitical thinker, Dr. Garwin was only 23 when he built the world's first fusion bomb. He later became a science adviser to many presidents, designed Pentagon weapons and satellite reconnaissance systems, argued for a Soviet-American balance of nuclear terror as the best bet for surviving the Cold War, and championed verifiable nuclear arms control agreements. While his mentor, the Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi, called him 'the only true genius I have ever met,' Dr. Garwin was not the father of the hydrogen bomb. The Hungarian-born physicist Edward Teller and the Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, who developed theories for a bomb, may have greater claims to that sobriquet. In 1951-52, however, Dr. Garwin, at the time an instructor at the University of Chicago and just a summer consultant at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, designed the actual bomb, using the Teller-Ulam ideas. An experimental device code-named Ivy Mike, it was shipped to the Western Pacific and tested on an atoll in the Marshall Islands. Intended only to prove the fusion concept, the device did not even resemble a bomb. It weighed 82 tons, was undeliverable by airplane and looked like a gigantic thermos bottle. Soviet scientists, who did not test a comparable device until 1955, derisively called it a thermonuclear installation. But at the Enewetak Atoll on Nov. 1, 1952, it spoke: An all-but-unimaginable fusion of atoms set off a vast, instant flash of blinding light, soundless to distant observers, and a fireball two miles wide with a force 700 times greater than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. Its mushroom cloud soared 25 miles and expanded to 100 miles across. Because secrecy shrouded the development of America's thermonuclear weapons programs, Dr. Garwin's role in creating the first hydrogen bomb was virtually unknown for decades outside a small circle of government defense and intelligence officials. It was Dr. Teller, whose name had long been associated with the bomb, who first publicly credited him. 'The shot was fired almost precisely according to Garwin's design,' Dr. Teller said in a 1981 statement that acknowledged the crucial role of the young prodigy. Still, that belated recognition got little notice, and Dr. Garwin long remained unknown publicly. Compared with later thermonuclear weapons, Dr. Garwin's bomb was crude. Its raw power nonetheless recalled films of the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico in 1945, and the appalled reaction of its creator, J. Robert Oppenheimer, reflecting upon the sacred Hindu text of the Bhagavan-Gita: 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' For Dr. Garwin, it was something less. 'I never felt that building the hydrogen bomb was the most important thing in the world, or even in my life at the time,' he told Esquire magazine in 1984. Asked about any feelings of guilt, he said: 'I think it would be a better world if the hydrogen bomb had never existed. But I knew the bombs would be used for deterrence.' A Pivot to I.B.M. Although the first hydrogen bomb was constructed to his specifications, Dr. Garwin was not even present to witness its detonation at Enewetak. 'I've never seen a nuclear explosion,' he said in an interview for this obituary in 2018. 'I didn't want to take the time.' After his success on the hydrogen bomb project, Dr. Garwin said, he found himself at a crossroads in 1952. He could return to the University of Chicago, where he had earned his doctorate under Fermi and was now an assistant professor, with the promise of life at one of the nation's most prestigious academic institutions. Or he could accept a far more flexible job at the International Business Machines Corporation. It offered a faculty appointment and use of the Thomas J. Watson Laboratory at Columbia University, with wide freedom to pursue his research interests. It would also let him continue to work as a government consultant at Los Alamos and in Washington. He chose the I.B.M. deal, and it lasted for four decades, until his retirement. For I.B.M., Dr. Garwin worked on an endless stream of pure and applied research projects that yielded an astonishing array of patents, scientific papers and technological advances in computers, communications and medicine. His work was crucial in developing magnetic resonance imaging, high-speed laser printers and later touch-screen monitors. A dedicated maverick, Dr. Garwin worked hard for decades to advance the hunt for gravitational waves — ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein had predicted. In 2015, the costly detectors he backed were able to successfully observe the ripples, opening a new window on the universe. Meantime, Dr. Garwin continued to work for the government, consulting on national defense issues. As an expert on weapons of mass destruction, he helped select priority Soviet targets and led studies on land, sea and air warfare involving nuclear-armed submarines, military and civilian aircraft, and satellite reconnaissance and communication systems. Much of his work continued to be secret, and he remained largely unknown to the public. He became an adviser to such Presidents as Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. He also became known as a voice against President Ronald Reagan's proposals for a space-based missile system, popularly called Star Wars, to defend the nation against nuclear attack. It was never built. One of Dr. Garwin's celebrated battles had nothing to do with national defense. In 1970, as a member of Nixon's science advisory board, he ran afoul of the president's support for development of the supersonic transport plane. He concluded that the SST would be expensive, noisy, bad for the environment and a commercial dud. Congress dropped its funding. Britain and France subsidized the development of their own SST, the Concorde, but Dr. Garwin's predictions proved largely correct, and interest faded. Clashing With the Military A small, professorial man with thinning flyaway hair and a gentle voice more suited to college lectures than a congressional hot seat, Dr. Garwin became an almost legendary figure in the defense establishment, giving speeches, writing articles and testifying before lawmakers on what he called misguided Pentagon choices. Some of his feuds with the military were bitter and long-running. They included fights over the B-1 bomber, the Trident nuclear submarine and the MX missile system, a network of mobile, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles that were among the most lethal weapons in history. All eventually joined America's vast arsenal. While Dr. Garwin was frustrated by such setbacks, he pressed ahead. His core message was that America should maintain a strategic balance of nuclear power with the Soviet Union. He opposed any weapon or policy that threatened to upset that balance, because, he said, it kept the Russians in check. He liked to say that Moscow was more interested in live Russians than dead Americans. Dr. Garwin supported reductions of nuclear arsenals, including the 1979 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II), negotiated by President Carter and Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet premier. But Dr. Garwin insisted that mutually assured destruction was the key to keeping the peace. In 2021, he joined 700 scientists and engineers, including 21 Nobel laureates, who signed an appeal asking President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to pledge that the United States would never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. Their letter also called for an end to the American practice of giving the president sole authority to order the use of nuclear weapons; a curb on that authority, they said, would be 'an important safeguard against a possible future president who is unstable or who orders a reckless attack.' The ideas were politically delicate, and Mr. Biden made no such pledge. Dr. Garwin told Quest magazine in 1981, 'The only thing nuclear weapons are good for, and have ever been good for, is massive destruction, and by that threat deterring nuclear attack: If you slap me, I'll clobber you.' A Whiz Kid at 5 Richard Lawrence Garwin was born in Cleveland on April 19, 1928, the older of two sons of Robert and Leona (Schwartz) Garwin. His father was a teacher of electronics at a technical high school during the day and a projectionist in a movie theater at night. His mother was a legal secretary. At an early age, Richard, called Dick, showed remarkable intelligence and technical ability. By 5, he was repairing family appliances. He and his brother, Edward, attended public schools in Cleveland. Dick graduated at 16 from Cleveland Heights High School in 1944 and earned a bachelor's degree in physics in 1947 from what is now Case Western Reserve University. In 1947, he married Lois Levy. She died in 2018. In addition to his son Thomas, he is survived by another son, Jeffrey; a daughter, Laura; five grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. Under Fermi's tutelage at the University of Chicago, Dr. Garwin earned a master's degree in 1948 and a doctorate in 1949, scoring the highest marks on doctoral exams ever recorded by the university. He then joined the faculty, but at Fermi's urging spent his summers at the Los Alamos lab, where his H-bomb work unfolded. After retiring in 1993, Dr. Garwin chaired the State Department's Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board until 2001. He served in 1998 on the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States. Dr. Garwin's home in Scarsdale is not far from his longtime base at the I.B.M. Watson Labs, which had moved in 1970 from Columbia University to Yorktown Heights, in Westchester County. He held faculty appointments at Harvard and Cornell as well as Columbia. He held 47 patents, wrote some 500 scientific research papers and wrote many books, including 'Nuclear Weapons and World Politics' (1977, with David C. Gompert and Michael Mandelbaum), and 'Megawatts and Megatons: A Turning Point in the Nuclear Age?' (2001, with Georges Charpak). He was the subject of a biography, 'True Genius: The Life and Work of Richard Garwin, the Most Influential Scientist You've Never Heard Of' (2017), by Joel N. Shurkin. His many honors included the 2002 National Medal of Science, the nation's highest award for science and engineering achievements, given by President George W. Bush, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, bestowed by President Barack Obama in 2016. 'Ever since he was a Cleveland kid tinkering with his father's movie projectors, he's never met a problem he didn't want to solve,' Mr. Obama said in a lighthearted introduction at the White House. 'Reconnaissance satellites, the M.R.I., GPS technology, the touch-screen — all bear his fingerprints. He even patented a mussel washer for shellfish — that I haven't used. The other stuff I have.'
Observer
26-03-2025
- Business
- Observer
Create a global architecture of trust, governance over AI
There is a lot of talk in Beijing this week over when President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping of China will meet face to face. Some Chinese experts say the two leaders need to wait a few months until Trump decides exactly what tariffs he is going to impose on China — and sees what China will do in response. Can I just butt in and say: 'Excuse me, Mr Presidents, but you two need to get together, like, tomorrow. But it's not to discuss the golden oldies — tariffs, trade and Taiwan. 'There is an earthshaking event coming — the birth of artificial general intelligence. The United States and China are the two superpowers closing in on AGI — systems that will be as smart or smarter than the smartest human; and able to learn and act on their own. Whatever you both may think you'll be judged on by history, I assure you that whether you collaborate to create a global architecture of trust and governance over these emerging super intelligent computers, so humanity gets the best out of them and cushions their worst, will be at the top.' I realise many will consider this wasted breath with all the turmoil unleashed by the new administration in Washington, but that will not deter me from making the point as loudly as I can. Because what Soviet-American nuclear arms control was to world stability since the 1970s, US-Chinese AI collaboration to make sure we effectively control these rapidly advancing AI systems will be for the stability of tomorrow's world. AI systems and humanoid robots offer so much potential benefit to humanity, but they could be hugely destructive and destabilising if not embedded with the right values and controls. In addition, this new age must be defined by a lot of planning about what humans will do for work and how to preserve the dignity they derive from work, when machines will be able to do so many things better than people. Millions of people possibly losing their jobs and dignity at the same time is a prescription for disorder. New York Times technology writer Kevin Roose recently observed that full-on AGI is coming faster than most anyone thought — 'very soon — probably in 2026 or 2027 but possibly as soon as this year.' AGI is the holy grail of AI — single systems that can master math, physics, biology, chemistry, material science, Shakespeare, poetry and literature as well as the smartest humans but that can also reason across all of them and see connections no human polymath ever could. As Craig Mundie, a former chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, put it to me: Probably before the end of Trump's presidency, we will have not just birthed a new computer tool; 'we will have birthed a new species — the super intelligent machine.' 'Our species is carbon-based. This new one is silicon-based,' Mundie explained. 'Therefore, we need to immediately begin to chart a path to coexist with this new super intelligent species and ultimately coevolve with it.' Before these AGI systems take hold and scale up, we need the two superpowers to get serious about devising a regulatory and technological framework that ensures an agreement for imbuing these systems with some kind of moral reasoning and embedded usage controls so they are prevented from being used by rogue actors for globally destabilising activities or going rogue themselves. We need a system of governance that ensures that AI systems always operate and police themselves in alignment with both human and machine well-being. Once AGI arrives, if we are not assured that these systems will be embedded with common trust standards, the United States and China will not be able to do anything together. Neither side will trust anything it exports or imports to the other, because AI will be in everything that is digital and connected. That is your car, your watch, your toaster, your favorite chair, your implant, your notepad. So if there is no trust between us and China; and each of us has our own AI systems, it will be the TikTok problem on steroids. A lot of trade will just grind to a halt. We'll just be able to sell each other soybeans for soy sauce. It will be a world of high-tech feudalism. I was taken with how Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, who addressed a packed audience of mostly Chinese people at the forum's session on AI, put it. 'We should build more trust between humans before we develop truly super intelligent AI agents,' Harari said. 'But we are now doing exactly the opposite. All over the world, trust between humans is collapsing. Too many countries think that to be strong is to trust no one and be completely separated from others. If we forget our shared human legacies and lose trust with everyone outside us, that will leave us easy prey for an out-of-control AI.' Together humans can control AI, he added, 'but if we fight one another, AI will control us.' In this specific endeavour of creating trusted AI, I don't hesitate to say I wish Xi and Trump much success — and fast. — The New York Times
New York Times
25-03-2025
- Business
- New York Times
What I'm Hearing in China This Week About Our Shared Future
There is a lot of talk in Beijing this week over when President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China will meet face to face. Some Chinese experts say the two leaders need to wait a few months until Trump decides exactly what tariffs he is going to impose on China — and what China will do in response. Can I just butt in and say: 'Excuse me, Mr. Presidents, but you two need to get together, like, tomorrow. But it's not to discuss the golden oldies — tariffs, trade and Taiwan. 'There is an earthshaking event coming — the birth of artificial general intelligence. The U.S. and China are the two superpowers closing in on A.G.I. — systems that will be as smart or smarter than the smartest human and able to learn and act on their own. Whatever you both may think you'll be judged on by history, I assure you that whether you collaborate to create a global architecture of trust and governance over these emerging superintelligent computers, so humanity gets the best out of them and cushions their worst, will be at the top.' I realize many will consider this wasted breath with all the turmoil unleashed by the new administration in Washington, but that will not deter me from making the point as loudly as I can. Because what Soviet-American nuclear arms control was to world stability since the 1970s, U.S.-Chinese A.I. collaboration to make sure we effectively control these rapidly advancing A.I. systems will be for the stability of tomorrow's world. A.I. systems and humanoid robots offer so much potential benefit to humanity, but they could be hugely destructive and destabilizing if not embedded with the right values and controls. In addition, this new age must be defined by a lot of planning about what humans will do for work, and how to preserve the dignity they derive from work, when machines will be able to do so many things better than people. Millions of people possibly losing their jobs and dignity at the same time is a prescription for disorder. A veteran Chinese economist made clear to me that China is very alive to these risks: 'Today, a lot of Chinese cannot find jobs. With A.I. they will not be able to find jobs forever. What happens if they cannot find appropriate jobs' because '70 percent of civil servants are robots? That will be super risky.' There is no time to lose in thinking about how we adapt, and yet we can be so nearsighted when it comes to the signs and the warnings. A decade from now, what will journalists say was the most important news story in the fall of 2024 that should have received more attention, given the long-term consequences? Will they say it was the second election of Donald Trump as president in November 2024? Or will they say it was Uber's decision in September 2024 to go beyond its pilot project in Phoenix and start offering driverless, all-electric Waymo cars on its ride-hailing app in Austin and Atlanta — replacing human Uber drivers. At this point I'd vote for Uber going driverless. Will they say it was Trump's election in November? Or will they say it was the December 2024 battle in a snowy forest near Kharkiv, Ukraine, reported by The Wall Street Journal, in which Ukrainian forces attacked a Russian bunker with four-wheeled robot drones — some mounted with machine guns or packed with explosives and backed by aerial drones from above — in a 'coordinated unmanned' land and air assault 'on a scale that hadn't previously been done, marking a new chapter of warfare where humans are largely removed from the front line of the battlefield, at least in the opening stages.' I'll go with all-robot-no-humans Ukrainian air and land assault. How about one more — something on my mind, since I am attending a conference in China: Will they say it was Trump's November 2024 election, or will they say it was the fact that China's televised Lunar New Year gala this year, watched by over a billion people, featured '16 humanoid robots' taking the stage. 'Clad in vibrant floral print jackets, they took part in a signature … dance, twirling red handkerchiefs in unison with human dancers,' M.I.T. Technology Review reported. In their day job, these robots work assembling electric vehicles. Dancing was just their hobby. I can see a case for humanoid robot dancers. All three examples reflect the now growing consensus, as the Times technology writer Kevin Roose recently observed, that full-on A.G.I. is coming faster than most anyone thought — 'very soon — probably in 2026 or 2027 but possibly as soon as this year.' A.G.I. is the holy grail of A.I. — single systems that can master math, physics, biology, chemistry, material science, Shakespeare, poetry and literature as well as the smartest humans but that can also reason across all of them and see connections no human polymath ever could. As Craig Mundie, a former chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, put it to me: Probably before the end of Trump's presidency, we will have not just birthed a new computer tool; 'we will have birthed a new species — the superintelligent machine.' 'Our species is carbon-based. This new one is silicon-based,' Mundie explained. 'Therefore, we need to immediately begin to chart a path to coexist with this new superintelligent species and ultimately coevolve with it.' We humans have lived alongside a lot of other species on this planet for a long time, 'but we were always smarter than all of them,' he added. 'Soon there is going to be a new one that will be smarter than we are and steadily getting smarter. We are expanding what is the highest level of intelligence on the planet — from what humans could imagine and program into computers to what computers can begin to learn themselves, which is virtually boundless.' The advances that China has made on A.I. in just the past year have made it absolutely clear that Beijing and Washington are now the world's two A.I. superpowers. And if you thought otherwise, China's premier, Li Qiang, opened the China Development Forum, the event that drew me to Beijing, by proudly noting how China's recently unveiled DeepSeek A.I. system 'burst onto the scene,' highlighting 'the huge power of innovation and creativity of the Chinese people.' On top of that, he added, '2025 could be the year of mass production of humanoid robots in China.' A recent report by Morgan Stanley described China's dominance over the West in the humanoid robot industry, controlling a majority of the top-listed companies. These are A.I.-infused robots that move and speak remarkably like humans. Before these A.G.I. systems take hold and scale up, we need the two superpowers to get serious about devising a regulatory and technological framework that ensures an agreement for imbuing these systems with some kind of moral reasoning and embedded usage controls so they are prevented from being used by rogue actors for globally destabilizing activities or going rogue themselves. We need a system of governance that ensures that A.I. systems always operate and police themselves in alignment with both human and machine well-being. There was a time when many people thought that such a project was something only a coalition of democracies could do — and then present it to the world. Sorry, too late. China has greatly narrowed the gap with us and surpassed the other democracies. This can't be done without Beijing. So guess who's coming to dinner. It's a table for two now. Mr. Trump, Mr. Xi please step this way. History has its eyes on you both. Alas, though, generating the conditions to allow for Beijing and Washington to collaborate on a uniform system for A.I. trust and governance will be no easy matter for the leaders of China and America. Nevertheless, listening to Chinese experts and officials at this conference, I sense that the Chinese are a lot like Americans: still trying to get their minds around what new capabilities these new A.I. systems will offer. They are torn between wanting to do everything to make sure their companies win the A.I. race against American ones — so they can dominate the market — and wanting to make sure these technologies don't destabilize their own country. I am hardly naïve about the level of mistrust in U.S.-China relations today — having spent the last week in both capitals — I can attest it is off the charts. So I am fully aware of how absurd it can sound calling on the two of them to trust each other to collaborate on a system of moral reasoning to ensure we get the best and cushion the worst of A.I. But our leaders should take a lesson from how software technology companies used 'coopetition' (cooperation between competitors). Apple, Microsoft, Google and Meta all wanted to destroy one another in business, but they eventually realized that if they cooperated on some basic standards, rather then each going its own way, they could massively expand the markets for their otherwise independent products and services. Once A.G.I. arrives, if we are not assured that these systems will be embedded with common trust standards, the United States and China will not be able to do anything together. Neither side will trust anything it exports or imports to the other, because A.I. will be in everything that is digital and connected. That is your car, your watch, your toaster, your favorite chair, your implant, your notepad. So if there is no trust between us and China and each of us has our own A.I. systems, it will be the TikTok problem on steroids. A lot of trade will just grind to a halt. We'll just be able to sell each other soybeans for soy sauce. It will be a world of high-tech feudalism. I was taken with how the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, who addressed a packed audience of mostly Chinese people at the forum's session on A.I., put it. 'We should build more trust between humans before we develop truly superintelligent A.I. agents,' Harari said. 'But we are now doing exactly the opposite. All over the world, trust between humans is collapsing. Too many countries think that to be strong is to trust no one and be completely separated from others. If we forget our shared human legacies and lose trust with everyone outside us, that will leave us easy prey for an out-of-control A.I.' Together humans can control A.I., he added, 'but if we fight one another, A.I. will control us.' In this specific endeavor of creating trusted A.I., I don't hesitate to say I wish President Xi and President Trump much success — and fast.
CBS News
15-02-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Book excerpt: "A Different Russia" by Marvin Kalb
We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article. In "A Different Russia: Khrushchev and Kennedy on a Collision Course" (BookBaby), veteran journalist Marvin Kalb writes about the 1963 Cold War summit between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev (which he covered for CBS News), and the idea of a potential thaw in relations between the two superpowers – inconceivable then, even with regard to "a different Russia." "A Different Russia" by Marvin Kalb $29 at Amazon Kennedy proved to be Khrushchev's last chance for a meaningful boost in Soviet-American relations. They met for one summit in Vienna in June 1961. After two days in the Austrian capital, gloom replaced their earlier hopes for a radically improved relationship. Suspicions deepened, as both leaders stumbled into dangerous miscalculations about Berlin and Cuba. Soon an ugly wall would be running through the divided German capital and, not too many months later, Khrushchev would foolishly decide to try to slip nuclear-tipped missiles and troops into Cuba. Kennedy had once appealed to Khrushchev as a genuine partner for peace. He saw in the young president an adversary with whom he thought he could do business. For a brief time, one month on the 1963 calendar, shortly after signing the historic atmospheric nuclear test ban agreement with the U.S., he allowed himself to live inside a beautiful bubble of hope. Every now and then, with closest advisers or family members, he would imagine six more years of other major U.S.-Soviet agreements that would, among other things, control the spread of nuclear weapons, settle the Berlin crisis and lead to a period of genuine peace. Why six years? he was asked. Well, he'd reply, Kennedy has two more years in his current term, and then another four in his next term, which Khrushchev was certain he would win. What Khrushchev did not know—could not know—was that within a month Kennedy would be dead and within a year he'd be ousted from power. When Khrushchev heard Kennedy had been shot, he cried. His dreams for a new and glorious era in Soviet-American relations had just come to a tragic end. $29 at Amazon $29 at Barnes & Noble
