Klaus Fuchs

Yeah.

And then, of course, the other issue is that already by this point, the Soviets were getting information, including from British physicists like Klaus Fuchs, who'd been sent to Los Alamos.

And so the idea that you could actually keep a hat on all this technology and that it would remain an Anglo-American monopoly was unrealistic.

It was totally unrealistic.

He was able to talk to people like, um, uh, Oliphant at the level.

By the way, I think he was the first one, um, not Klaus Fuchs, in 19 ...

Sorry, in 1943, to pass on via Oliphant's information that plutonium could be used to make a bomb.

Now, the Russians were slower to pick up all this stuff because the Manhattan Project was so massive that they got ahead, the, the Brits and the Americans.

Largely stolen the information.

Klaus Fuchs, all that stuff.

The Rosenbergs.

Yeah, look into it.

So MI6 are again pushing the idea to the foreign secretary there's no evidence.

Also, it doesn't make sense because, you know, Klaus Fuchs, you know, Philby knew about the Klaus Fuchs investigation, and Fuchs got arrested.

Yeah.

You know, so he can't possibly be bad, you know?

In Australia's case, perhaps under appreciating that the research they pursue is largely enabled and funded by the Commonwealth Government, that is by the taxpayer, the apparent mindset of much of the international STEM community, STEM standing for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, is to collaborate and share information.

One such example is Klaus Fuchs, a German communist who supplied nuclear weapons information from the World War II American, British, and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and after World War II.

Fuchs justified his passing of military technology secrets on the basis of allied and academic information sharing.

Clearly, Fuchs decided his personal political view on sharing information trumped the security education and prevailing laws that govern such information sharing, which would have made clear he was not at liberty to pass such information.

So one of the things is it points to why the Soviets were able to make such progress on the atomic bomb much faster than everyone expected, because they were s- stealing secrets from the Manhattan Project, from Los Alamos.

And actually, it's gonna lead to Venona, to Klaus Fuchs.

Friend of the pod.

Friend of the pod.

He actually went through He told me on his deathbed, before he died, that Dave, his brother-in-law, had a soda jerk pharmacy thing.

Klaus Fuchs, right? Fuchs was one of the problem, right? Right.

He was the problem.

My father said that he couldn't do anything because he was like 14, 15.

In fact, we largely have the Cold War to thank for our marvelous interstate highway system, although part of the reason Congress approved it was to set up speedy evacuation routes in the event of nuclear war.

And speaking of nuclear war, it's worth noting that a big part of the reason the Soviets were able to develop nuclear weapons so quickly was thanks to espionage, like for instance by physicist and spy Klaus Fuchs.

I think I'm pronouncing that right.

Fuchs worked on the Manhattan Project and leaked information to the Soviets and then later helped the Chinese to build their first bomb.