A New Nuclear Now: An Interview with the Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory
The historic security gate all Manhattan Project workers passed through to enter Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Photo courtesy of the Atomic Archive.
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“If I could find a way to combine physics with New Mexico, my life would be perfect.” - J. Robert Oppenheimer
When Christopher Nolan’s latest project Oppenheimer hit theaters in the summer of 2023, it brought a fresh wave of attention back to the Manhattan Project—the United States’ first atomic weapons program. Established in 1943 at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the project saw the development of the nuclear bomb and the end of World War II. Though the Manhattan Project ultimately shut down in 1946, its legacy lives on through the Laboratory, which remains at the forefront of science and technology as the United States continues to hold a prominent position in nuclear deterrence.
The first director of the Laboratory was none other than J. Robert Oppenheimer. Today, Dr. Thomas Mason, a condensed matter physicist, serves as the President and CEO of Triad National Security, LLC and as the 12th Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Born in Halifax, Canada, he earned his undergraduate degree in physics from Dalhousie University and completed his PhD at McMaster University. Prior to his current roles, Dr. Mason served as the director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 2007 to 2017 and as the Senior Vice President for Global Laboratory Operations at Battelle. Yunseo Kim sat down with Dr. Mason to gain deeper insight into how the Laboratory chooses to operate given their intricate history, current technological advancements, and geopolitical challenges. As Oppenheimer reasserts the current significance of a nuclear weapons program established over half a century ago, Dr. Mason reminds us of the Laboratory’s crucial contributions, not only in history or on-screen, but in the real world today.
How would you define the mission of Los Alamos National Laboratory, and how has it evolved since its founding?
Our mission is very similar to what it was back when the lab was founded 80 years ago. We’re a national security science and engineering lab. Our job is to bring the best possible cutting edge science and technology to bear on the most pressing national security problems and global security problems that we face. A big portion of that is our responsibility for the nuclear deterrent. We’re also active in nuclear nonproliferation. The other big existential threat we work on is climate change and clean energy. We do a lot of more fundamental breakthrough science across a range of disciplines. We believe the more you understand the world, the more you have the ability to shape it.
What key responsibilities and roles come with your position as the director, and was this position something you foresaw at the beginning of your career?
I certainly didn’t anticipate it. An improbable path brought me here. I grew up in Canada, so the idea that as an immigrant, you could come and take on a leadership role at a major national security institution never really occurred to me. My job as lab director is a management job. This is a large organization. We’ve got now over 17,000 people. A lot of facilities that we operate are challenging technically and require a great deal of rigor to operate safely and efficiently. In the end, I’m responsible for all of that, but fortunately, I’ve got a really strong team of people around me who know what they’re doing. One of my responsibilities as director is every year, I write a letter to the Secretary of Energy and the Secretary of Defense that gets forwarded to the President that assesses the safety, security, and reliability of our nuclear deterrent. I spend a lot of time in Washington and try to interface with the community around the lab. It’s important that we’re seen as engaged and trustworthy so I invest a lot of my time in that as well.
The recent film Oppenheimer has played a crucial role in heightening public awareness of Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project. Could you share your personal impressions of the movie and any specific aspects that resonated with you? How do you perceive the film’s relevance within the broader real-world context of current nuclear tensions?
In general, I thought Christopher Nolan and the cast did a really remarkable job of telling a very compelling story. It stayed pretty close to the historical record. There were some artistic liberties that Nolan took and there were some simplifications [but] I think that was necessary to kind of cram it all into three hours.
It arrived at an interesting time. Look at what’s happened geopolitically over the past couple of years: Russia’s unprovoked invasions of Ukraine, the challenges of the United States’ relationship with China, China’s significant and rapid military expansion, [and] the events that we’re witnessing in the Middle East. Right now it’s a fraught time geopolitically, so I thought the movie arrived at a time when there was already a renewed awareness about the challenges and risks associated with nuclear weapons. I think it’s great to get people thinking about that, talking about it, and debating in a constructive way.
As the Director, what does it mean to you to uphold Oppenheimer’s legacy? How do you personally interpret his legacy, and where do your perspective and approach diverge from Oppenheimer’s?
Well, of course I never knew him. I was about three years old when he passed away, so I didn’t have the opportunity to ever know him personally. I’ve read a lot of the history, though, even prior to the movie coming out. One of the things that’s important about his contribution is that the whole concept of a national laboratory didn’t really exist before the Second World War. Robert Oppenheimer, in a way, is the prototypical lab director. There weren’t previous examples of what that role was, and coming out of the Second World War, the U.S. government recognized the pivotal effect of investments in things like the Manhattan Project. He’s been influential not just at Los Alamos, but for all the other [U.S. Department of Energy] labs. He was also a highly respected, astute physicist. He had that combination of scientist administrator, which I think is still important in the way these institutions run today.
What are the current technological advancements in the realm of nuclear deterrence that the Laboratory is currently prioritizing?
We’re extraordinarily busy responding to the fact that the current deterrent we have, which is the ultimate backstop to our national security, was designed and built in the 1980s. We find ourselves 40 years later with a stockpile of weapons that are aging and need to be modernized. At the same time we’re modernizing the weapons, we have to be looking at what are the risks out there? How has the world changed? What are adversaries doing that we have to respond to?
We also can’t do things the way we did before because of the changes since the ‘80s in terms of safety requirements and our concerns about environmental violations. There’s emerging new tools, like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, 3D printing, and all kinds of things that weren’t even thought of decades ago. It’s an exciting time to look at this great toolkit we have and think about how we can apply that.
How do you navigate the necessity to recognize the destructive nature of nuclear weapons while simultaneously considering the need for deterrence? In the face of opposition, what is your response?
Well, nuclear weapons are terrible things. That’s actually why deterrence works. It’s effective because it would be a total, global catastrophe if we were ever to be in a situation where we had to use them. The goal of deterrence is to prevent us from ever getting to that point. But that also means that there are many people who wish that we could unmake them and that they didn’t exist. I certainly respect their opinions, although, unfortunately, I don’t see [how], in the world today, the U.S. unilaterally disarm[ing] would make it a safer place.
How do ongoing shifts in the United States’ relationship with other nuclear nations like China and Russia impact the idea of deterrence and influence the role of the Laboratory?
The buzzwords that you often see is the return of great power competition. The reality is that for a time, the principal national security focus of the U.S. was more on terrorism and non-state actors following 9/11. We were less concerned about geopolitical confrontation with nation states. Russia was fairly cooperative in the early stages of the war on terrorism. At that time, China’s policy was peaceful and non-confrontational. But in recent years, both have shifted to confrontational policies, obviously overtly confrontational in the case of Russia with military action and the tragic loss of life and destruction. With China, there’s an element of military competition, but it’s equally about economic and technological competition, which has been an area where the national labs are certainly highly relevant.
We’re part of the response. An element of deterrence is actually demonstrating to other countries that we have the scientific and technological competency to counter any threat that might be out there. In terms of a big picture, it is fair to say that we have to think more about what deterrence means, not [only] when you’re in a mutually assured destruction standoff with the Soviet Union. You had treaties that defined the terms and as long as people stayed within those bounds, there was sort of an equilibrium. Now, we’re looking more at three parties, and there’s not much remaining of the framework of arms control. Most of the arms control treaties have been abandoned. Russia recently announced that they were suspending their participation in the New START Treaty, for example. We’re having to rethink and relearn some things that we learned in the earlier phases of the Cold War, but in a very different environment.
How has the Laboratory navigated the challenges presented by the global COVID-19 pandemic?
We’ve had research activities around infectious diseases and computational modeling going back to the 70s. When COVID hit, [we] had to shift gears to focus on this new risk and develop modeling tools to aid policymakers. We also tried to project how things were going to evolve over the next four, six, eight weeks so that hospitals could plan for the volume of sick people they would be confronting and how many respirators they would need, things like that. That’s now shifting more to what we call “bioassurance.” We’re trying to take what we learned from COVID and use it to be better prepared because something like that could happen again.
Certainly the most controversial thing was that we mandated vaccines. We have a lot of people who had no choice but to come to work: it was not workable to have them teleworking from home, and there were important jobs that we had to get done so we decided to make the vaccine mandatory. For most people, they were already vaccinated [and] first in line. But there were some people who really didn’t like that. It wasn’t an easy decision, but we really had to have people physically at work and we know that the vaccines are both safe and effective and really the best protection. I felt it was really important to take advantage of it as part of our response to allow us to get our job done safely.
Looking ahead in the next 10 to 50 years, where do you envision the Laboratory and what impact do you anticipate in terms of research and innovation?
For the next several years, we’ve really got our plate full with modernizing the lab. A lot of the lab was built up in the Cold War era, and it needs updating.
We’ve got a lot of really outstanding staff that we’ve recruited over the years, so we want to give them an environment to really do their best work. There’s been lots of breakthroughs that are really impacting the fields of science that are important to us and we’re trying to make focused investments in the areas that we think are going to have the most impact downstream. Some of those take years to play out. A lot of these areas where we’re working probably aren’t going to impact next year or the year after, but I think 10, 15, 20 years from now, we’ll be able to do amazing things.
If you could give one piece of advice to college students, whether they are interested in the field of science or pursuing education in general, what would that message be?
I have to say I never really had a plan. I think the thing that’s served me well is actually not having a plan, but just responding to opportunities as they emerge. Don’t fixate on one outcome and only go after that because you may be frustrated. Instead, focus on broadening your experience base and just responding when opportunities arise.
Dr. Mason’s insights provide a profound understanding of the intricate link between the future of national security and ongoing deterrence efforts. Oppenheimer’s legacy continues to endure, yet the present management is adopting a distinct approach. Dr. Mason is exercising greater care in a period marked by heightened global tensions and ethical concerns while simultaneously focusing on building a community around the Laboratory. The conversation also sheds light on the influence of media at the crossroads of domestic and foreign policy issues, as exemplified by the Oppenheimer movie, highlighting its ability to reshape the way we approach political discourse on polarized subjects such as nuclear weapons. Looking forward, Dr. Mason envisions the Laboratory evolving further as a larger hub of research and innovation, emphasizing the importance of modernization and targeted investments. Dr. Mason’s and Los Alamos’s groundbreaking work affirm that the Laboratory is not merely a relic of the past; instead, it stands as a vital powerhouse for the future.
Yunseo Kim (CC ‘27) is a Staff Writer at CPR studying political science and human rights. She is passionate about international relations and immigration law. Yunseo can be reached at yk3058@columbia.edu.