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IN FEBRUARY 1950, a few months after the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb and just after President Truman announced that the US would accelerate the production of a “super” (hydrogen) bomb, Albert Einstein went on nationwide US television to drop his own bombshell. “If these efforts should prove successful,” he told his fellow Americans, “radioactive poisoning of the atmosphere and, hence, annihilation of all life on Earth will have been brought within the range of what is technically possible.” He also warned of a malaise in the country: “Tremendous financial power is being concentrated in the hands of…