18 United States The EconomistJune 27th 2020
2 according to the National Nuclear Security
Administration (nnsa). But a crude deto-
nation designed as a theatrical act of chest-
beating, rather than a meaningful scientif-
ic endeavour, could be slapped together in
months, well before Mr Trump’s first term
concludes in January.
A test would cost somewhere between
tens and hundreds of millions of dollars,
according to insiders. And although the
Nevada site is kept in working order, the
population of Las Vegas and its environs
has more than tripled since 1992, coming
uncomfortably close. “When they used to
do underground tests, it would at times
rock buildings in Las Vegas,” says Cheryl
Rofer, who worked at Los Alamos as a sci-
entist from 1965 to 2001 (though modern
tests would have far smaller yields). An edi-
torial in the Las Vegas Sun, one of the city’s
newspapers, offered a pithy response to the
idea of churning up the ground again: “No.
Hell no. Not now. Not ever.” The sentiment
is widespread. Polls conducted last year
show that 72% of Americans (and 59% of
Republicans) disapprove of testing.
Unsurprisingly, the Department of En-
ergy, which oversees nuclear weapons, and
its laboratories, like Los Alamos in New
Mexico, is not keen on the idea. Nor are the
Pentagon or the armed forces. On June 16th
a dozen distinguished scientists, many for-
merly associated with America’s nuclear
laboratories, wrote an open letter to Mitch
McConnell, the Senate majority leader, ar-
guing that explosive testing “would serve
no technical or military purpose”. That is
because there are now sophisticated ways
to inspect and improve nuclear weapons
without setting them off.
America spends eye-watering sums to
tend its arsenal; the nnsarequested nearly
$16bn for the coming fiscal year. That buys
some impressive kit. Modern supercom-
puters can simulate thermonuclear explo-
sions with remarkable fidelity. In 1993,
shortly after the last test, the world’s most
powerful supercomputer, at Los Alamos,could manage less than 60 gigaflops, a
measure of computing speed. Today’s
equivalent, at the Oak Ridge National Lab-
oratory in Tennessee, can exceed 148 peta-
flops, which is more than 2m times faster.
American government laboratories own
six of the world’s 20 fastest supercompu-
ters, though China has been catching up.
The debate over testing is in part a “conflict
of generations”, says one senior scientist:
many who cut their teeth on explosive tests
distrust the new, virtual ways.
America also has an enviable pile of
data from its old tests, having done more
than every other country put together (see
chart). It conducted 22 tests for every Chi-
nese one. Its rivals would therefore have
the most to gain from any resumption of
testing. American data may be superior,
too. Steven Pifer, a former American dip-
lomat now at Stanford University, recalls
visiting a Soviet test site in Kazakhstan in
1988 where the vertical test shafts were less
than half the width of America’s, leaving far
less space for instruments. India’s lone test
of a hydrogen bomb is widely thought to
have been a fizzle. Pakistan is eager to re-fine smaller nukes that could be aimed at
Indian tank columns. The rush to testing
might spell doom for the Nuclear Non-Pro-
liferation Treaty (npt), whose non-nuclear
members are fed up with the lack of tangi-
ble progress towards disarmament.
Many experts reckon that even the tru-
culent Mr Trump would shy away from a
test. The aim at present, they suggest, is
pactocide. Mr Trump’s administration is
stacked with arms-control sceptics who
never wanted America to sign the ctbtin
the first place, viewing it as an irksome fet-
ter on American power.
Having swept aside a series of other
agreements—a nuclear deal with Iran in
2018, the Intermediate-range Nuclear
Forces (inf) treaty with Russia last year and
the Open Skies treaty in May—the treaty-
phobes spy an opportunity to slough off
the ctbt, too. In his recent book, “The
Room Where It Happened”, John Bolton,
America’s national security adviser until
September, writes that “unsigning” it
“should be a priority”. Mr Bolton is persona
non grata in the White House these days,
but his diplomatic nihilism lives on. 7Toe to toe with the Ruskies
Nuclear-weaponstests,1945-2018,estimateSource:ArmsControlAssociation *India,PakistanandN.Korea30609001201501945 1810200090807060Other
11*France 210 China 45Britain 45United States 1,United StatesUSSR/RussiaUSSR/Russia 715Total 2,1962= 178B
y coveringthehighsteelfencethat
briefly surrounded the White House
this month with slogans, messages and
the portraits and names of black Ameri-
cans killed by police, protesters trans-
formed it into a tableau of anger and
grief. Before the barrier was taken down,
they carefully moved the signs onto a
nearby wall in the newly named “Black
Lives Matter Plaza”. Washington’s Smith-
sonian museums are now taking preser-
vation efforts a step further.
Curators from two institutions on the
Mall—the National Museum of African-
American History and Culture (nmaahc)
and the National Museum of American
History—along with the Anacostia Com-
munity Museum, in the city’s predomi-
nantly black south-east, are working
together to collect remnants of the big-
gest protests seen in America in half a
century. The venture reflects an in-
creasing enthusiasm among museums
for “rapid-response collecting”: gath-
ering artefacts as big moments unfold.
Though the term was coined by the
Victoria & Albert museum in London,
which has a gallery dedicated to objects
collected in this way, the nmaahchas
been in the vanguard of the movement.
Its recorded collection includes a placard
reading “Baltimore: An Uprising not aRiot!”fromtheprotestssparkedbythe
killing of Freddie Gray in 2015 (“Medium:
ink on paper with metal, cardboard”) and
a broom used to clear up afterwards
(“Medium: wood, straw, wire”).
Similar efforts to gather protest para-
phernalia are being made by museums
across America. In a digital era in which
events are recorded in great detail, it may
seem odd that often ordinary objects
have assumed such value. But digital
records are easily lost: online storage
systems become obsolete, and laws often
get in the way of archiving videos. Digital
material is more compelling viewed
alongside the physical objects which
bring most people to museums. Estab-
lishing provenance, which can be com-
plicated for an item collected only a few
years later, is straightforward if it is
picked up at the scene.
Yet collecting museum pieces in this
way can still be a delicate business.
Curators have begun the collection pro-
cess slowly, hanging out, telling demon-
strators about their work, and taking the
signs they are given. There is no plan yet
to display them, says Aaron Bryant, a
curator from the nmaahc, though he
expects they will take their place in a
wider exhibition. “Our first and most
urgent priority is to preserve,” he says.Instantmuseums
CollectingWASHINGTON, DC
Blue-chip collectors are scurrying to preserve artefacts from the recent protests