People
When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.
— J. Robert Oppenheimer
Behind the line May contain spoilers.
Our reading
An editorial interpretation.
The speaker describes being drawn to a technical challenge and solving it before debating what it should be used for. In this account, the urge to build comes first. The atomic bomb supplies a stark example of why that order matters.
Context reviewed