Description
The process of nuclear acquisition comes with a set of new practices designed to accommodate the exceptional features of nuclear technology. Chief among those is the emergence of information control practices aimed at governing nuclear knowledge – nuclear secrecy. This chapter focuses on this specific category of state secrecy, which occupies a paradoxical position in the literature: though never ignored, nuclear secrecy rarely is the object of a study on its own, resulting in a poor theorization. Nuclear secrecy is generally characterized by a differentiation from other regimes of state secrecy – nuclear armed states often use nuclear-specific forms of classification, as well as practices unique to the nuclear realm. Such differentiation is a historical product more than a technological imperative.
Using the tools of historical sociology, this chapter shows how such category emerged in a specific context – the wartime US state – before becoming normal peacetime practice. Such practice stemmed from a historically contingent interpretation of the unique constraints posed by nuclear technology, which stemmed from their exceptional destructive capacity. International, transnational and purely domestic dynamics combined to solidify such interpretation. The rise of nuclear secrecy transformed the practice of secrecy in nuclear-armed states, ultimately affecting their domestic political economy.
