The Culture of Secrecy

What I understand what a national security state is, is that the state is a place where nuclear weapons or even normal bombs are tested. Which this also started the secrecy in the United States. Many of the military leaders kept the nuclear bombs a secret from the people so people would fear nuclear weapons until they started doing domestic testing. They also had many things in secret because of the Red Scare for which people were thinking there were spies in the U.S. and the U.S. would become a communist country (Dean). I see Nevada and rural Utah being the National Security States because most of the land in those two states are wasteland and there is nothing around. So it is easy to test there without real domestic problems are the risk of killing thousands of people. Also being a wasteland would be easier to gauge how big the atomic bomb really is. I think national security states still somewhat exist because if we do end up going into nuclear warfare and we are making more nukes they need to be tested some how and I don’t think the United States would test nukes on other countries so they still use those states as just in case testing sites.

One thought on “The Culture of Secrecy

  1. First of all, I would say that the real definition of the National Security State is the act of prioritizing a country’s security against internal or external threats through advancements in security tools, expansion of the army, and even through imposing exceptional laws. It is not solely about nuclear weapons and bomb testing.

    I agree that national secrecy is part of national security because, without it, many operations would not take place—such as selecting Nevada and rural Utah as national testing sites while keeping people unaware of the dangerous risks of radiation exposure.

    You mentioned Nevada and rural Utah as a wasteland, which I do not entirely agree with. Those terms were simply used by authorities to justify using the area as a bomb testing site. In reality, some of these lands belonged to Indigenous nations and were not just “a good place to throw used razor blades” (AEC).

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