IN THE WAKE OF THE Second World War, John von Neumann, one of the scientists who had helped build the atom bomb, was convinced that war with the Soviet Union was coming. He advocated a pre-emptive strike by the US. “If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today?” he said. “If you say today at five o’clock, I say why not one o’clock?”
His argument, which made him one of the inspirations for Stanley Kubrick’s , was that of the cold-eyed rationalist. Having seen the destruction wrought on his native Hungary by the war that had just ended, he wished to protect his new home, America, from