In July 1945, the Trinity test confirmed what theory had long posited: the energy bound in the nucleus of an atom could be released, rapidly and violently, by human design. J. Robert Oppenheimer stood at the edge of the test site and understood what had changed. Not just that the bomb worked—but that the structure of international affairs, strategy, and security had shifted, perhaps permanently.
A few weeks after the end of the most devastating war in human history, he tried to make that clear. On August 17, Oppenheimer and three of his colleagues—Enrico Fermi, Ernest Lawrence, and Arthur Compton—wrote to Secretary of War Henry Stimson. The United States, they argued, should not treat atomic weapons as standard tools of national power. “We believe,” the letter read, “that the safety of this nation—as well as the larger safety of the world—cannot lie wholly or even primarily in scientific or technical work. It can be established only through the political unity of the world.”
What they were pointing to was not just the danger of the bomb. It was the inadequacy of the frameworks then available—military doctrine, national security strategy, and zero-sum logic—to handle a technology that had erased the possibility of winning a war between nuclear powers.
That insight remains unfinished. The weapons came, and so did the treaties. But the deeper structure Oppenheimer and his colleagues anticipated—a world organized around shared responsibility for shared risk—never fully materialized. And today, the most promising part of the nuclear inheritance remains underdeveloped: its ability to provide abundant, low-carbon energy to a rapidly warming and unevenly electrified world.
Rethinking the Logic of Power
In the 1940s, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern formalized the concept of the zero-sum game—situations in which one actor’s gain is necessarily another’s loss. This framework helped shape Cold War logic. It mapped easily onto deterrence theory, arms races, and geopolitical rivalry.
But nuclear weapons destabilized the frame. In a nuclear exchange, there is no victory. The logic collapses.
That disruption still matters. Because while nuclear weapons forced a reckoning with zero-sum outcomes, the peaceful uses of nuclear technology invite the opposite. Fission can generate heat, electricity, medical isotopes, desalinated water—none of which require anyone else to lose. One nation’s nuclear energy program does not diminish another’s. In fact, the broader the adoption and the stronger the governance, the safer and more effective the system becomes for everyone.
This is a core philosophy of the Oppenheimer Project: that managing the nuclear future—both in energy and in security—requires a shift from zero-sum competition to non-zero-sum coordination. Not because it sounds better, but because the technology demands it. Coordination is not a moral ideal. It is a design requirement.
Building Institutions for a Non-Zero-Sum World
The next phase of global development will be defined by how quickly and securely we expand access to reliable, low-carbon energy. Nuclear power will either be part of that expansion, or it will be left behind. If it is left behind, the result will not be neutrality. There will be greater dependence on fossil fuels, greater vulnerability to supply shocks, and fewer tools for managing global emissions; it would also likely exacerbate challenges in energy security and economic development.
This is not a theoretical problem. It is already unfolding. The real choice is whether the international system is prepared to support peaceful, holistic nuclear growth at the pace required—and whether that support can be based on cooperation rather than competition.
Oppenheimer’s letter to Stimson reflected a basic truth: that science can reveal what is possible, but only political coordination can determine what is done. In 1945, that insight was offered as a warning. In 2025, it remains a guide.
The inheritance of the atomic age was never just the weapon. It was also the challenge of building systems capable of governing it. That work is overdue.
April 22nd is Earth Day. It is also Oppenheimer’s birthday. That shared date reminds us: the tools we once feared most are still with us. They can be used to threaten—or to sustain us. The difference is the system we build around them, and the humanity with which we do this together.