(Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) – Thirty years ago, as director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, I wrote an essay on the 50th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In that piece (which can be found here), I had questions about the decision to use the atomic bomb that I couldn’t answer: Was it necessary? Was it right? It just wasn’t possible, three decades later, to put myself in President Truman’s shoes as he made those fateful decisions.

Instead, I answered two other questions: Did we learn from the bombings, and where do we go from here? (Read More)