“I’m a robot, I’m here to help you…”

President Harry Truman viewed the destruction of Berlin and the homeless German civilians struggling to stay alive,

as he waited for word of the first successful test of the atomic bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Before he knew about the test result, Truman wrote in his diary:

“I hope for some sort of peace—but I fear that machines are ahead of morals by some centuries

and when morals catch up there’ll be no reason for any of it.”

July 16, 1945, at the Potsdam Conference in Germany

from Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the Atomic Bomb and the 116 Days That Changed the World by Chris Wallace with Mitch Weiss

New York: Avid Reader Press, 2020

p. 123

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“machines are ahead of morals”…Truman said it