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“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.” Marx’s aphorism feels newly prescient. Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy issued a jingoistic call on social media for a “new Manhattan Project,” this time to win the so-called race for artificial intelligence supremacy.

But the Manhattan Project is no blueprint. It is a warning—a cautionary tale of what happens when science is conscripted into the service of state power, when open inquiry gives way to nationalist rivalry, and when the cult of progress is severed from ethical responsibility. It shows how secrecy breeds fear, corrodes public trust, and undermines democratic institutions.

The Manhattan Project may have been, as President Truman claimed, “the greatest scientific gamble in history.” But it also represented a gamble with the continuity of life on Earth. It brought the world to the brink of annihilation—an abyss into which we still peer. A second such project may well push us over the edge.

The parallels between the origins of the atomic age and the rise of artificial intelligence are striking. In both, the very individuals at the forefront of technological innovation were also among the first to sound the alarm.

During World War II, atomic scientists raised concerns about the militarization of nuclear energy. Yet, their dissent was suppressed under the strictures of wartime secrecy, and their continued participation was justified by the perceived imperative to build the bomb before Nazi Germany. In reality, that threat had largely subsided by the time the Manhattan Project gathered momentum, as Germany had already abandoned its efforts to develop a nuclear weapon.

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