Now it can be told

Deployed in vastly exaggerated numbers, nuclear weapons were maintained in place not just by secrecy, but by banalities and lies. The atomic bomb has been, from the very beginning, both extraordinarily public and secret. Everyone knew about what was regarded as a momentous development in human history. It kept many clichés in circulation for decades — humanity as scientific giants and ethical infants; the desire for international control; the idea of moral scientists who did, or should, reject the sweet blandishments of the bomb.