Top Highlights

• This was 1954, before the invention of communications satellites. It was still possible to move ten thousand men and a fleet of warships and airplanes unobserved to an obscure corner of the earth to conduct a secret hydrogen bomb test.
• This idea—that rivalry fosters excellence and is imperative for supremacy—would become a hallmark of U.S. defense science in the decades ahead.
• spreading maps of the world across tabletops, taking game pieces from boxes and playing Kriegspiel, a chess variant once favored by the powerful German military.
• To his core, von Neumann believed that man was violent, belligerent, and deceptive, and that he was inexorably prone to fighting wars.
• “If you enjoy thinking, your brain develops. And that is what von Neumann did. He enjoyed the functioning of his brain.”