Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Highlight

Before he went back to the transistor, Shockley wrote one more memo, the ominous “On the Economics of Atomic Bombing,” for a Vannevar Bush working group on nuclear weapons that became the Atomic Energy Commission.19 He opens by talking about the restriction of proportional war, in which any side must spend man-months roughly equivalent to the months destroyed on the other side. “This type of limitation,” he writes, “has been largely overcome by strategic bombing,” which, properly applied, does five months’ worth of damage for every month spent. He figured that atomic bombs were 10 to 100 times as efficient. “This cheapness is a new factor and indicates that an unparalleled loss of human resources will accompany future wars.” Following the idea to its logical conclusion, he writes, “leads to the picture of one man being able to unleash forces which would destroy the world.” Still, he concludes with that big number: Given 100x efficiency, 500, maybe 600 man-months are destroyed for every one spent. At that ratio, you could rule the world with a button.