The “national security state” is the government body that tasked itself with protecting the American people from threats to their well-being and safety during the Cold War. Their objective, while it sounds positive, encouraged such a sense of fear and tension that secrecy was a natural consequence among government agents and civilians. Fox gets to the core of the culture of secrecy in writing “fears of international and domestic communism ran high,” and “dissent had been cast as the equivalent of disloyalty” (Fox). Everyone was ready to turn on anyone, and each person was expected to promise a dangerous form of blind loyalty to the government and refrain from asking too many questions. The national security state functioned in Utah/Nevada like a bully who finds those without an official title and a shiny badge to match it as “stupid,” “dumb,” or “ignorant” (Fox). The culture of secrecy that had dug its claws into the AEC resulted in the AEC’s unwillingness to give the downwinders a comprehensive explanation of their testing site and potential consequences. Can you imagine watching a mushroom cloud light up the sky from your kitchen window in rural Nevada (Fox)? I would immediately walk to the nearest emergency room. Again, maybe the AEC agents didn’t fully understand the extent of their actions, but they sure did take measures to cover their own…selves with protective gear. Perhaps you’ve seen Oppenheimer, the movie about the father of the atomic bombs J. Robert Oppenheimer. Do you think he was just hanging around outside watching the bombs? No. Watch the movie clip. I’ll even link it. Look how he goes into his little bunker and throws on those super high-tech goggles. The Bulloch brothers and other ranchers were left so far out of the loop that they didn’t even know they were running sheep within a hot spot. Funny, the AEC expected the humans to behave just as their livestock did, blindly.

My personal take on the national security state is that these national security state agents were doing too much of everything. Too much lying, too many bombs, too powerful of bombs. Fox writes, “the bombs detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 were 12.5 kilotons and 22 kilotons; Upshot-Knothole tests Simon, Harry, and Climax would detonate with a force of 43 kilotons, 32 kilotons, and 61 kilotons, respectively.” Yet, the official line was that bombs needed to be made to protect the American people. I’ll grant that premise, but the conclusion—we must set off bombs 2x-4x stronger than the two used on Japan and let fallout debris scatter outside the testing site—doesn’t make sense. The true official line should have been rewritten to read “bombs need to be made to protect the American people, but in the process of ‘protecting’ Americans we are going to hurt some Americans. But it’s for the greater good, we promise! Who cares if a few ranchers and, like, only 5,000 sheep die—sacrifices must be made. And why are you even asking so many questions? You must be a communist.” As for whether or not I think this national security state exists, I believe it existed post-9/11 considering what has occurred at Guantanamo Bay. In the podcast Serial, journalist Sarah Koenig looks into a very similar culture of secrecy at Guantanamo. Military personnel stationed at Guantanamo Bay give this near-identical line each time they’re asked what the objective of the prison is (to provide a comfortable life for the prisoners or something like that), and it’s basically a lie. There, off U.S. soil, the government was and still is free to bend rules and torture prisoners they thought had a hand in carrying out 9/11. I recommend listening to the podcast, because the same is true there that was true in Nevada/Utah—the government commits injustice and gets away with it, for the most part, and it’s all done very secretly. Maybe they provide compensation here or there, but they never admit fault, and that is the key point. As for the present day, the current administration seems to make everything quite public. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn more is happening behind the scenes, but we may have to wait years to know. These cultures of secrecy seem to unravel after a decade or two.