70 years ago today, President Harry Truman ordered the Atomic Energy Commission to develop the hydrogen bomb even though the Joint Chiefs of Staff had concluded in January 1948 that, "the majority of targets do not require a more powerful bomb because of area limitations.” 
Truman’s decision also defied the Atomic Energy Commission’s six-member General Advisory Committee, led by J. Robert Oppenheimer, which in October 1949 issued a unanimous recommendation against pursuing crash development of the so-called Super bomb, presciently arguing:
A majority of the AEC agreed with the GAC, but Teller, Lawrence, and Alvarez strongly dissented. AEC chair David Lilienthal told Truman on Nov. 9, 1949, that building H-bombs would "intensify in a new way" the arms race and lead to a "costly cycle of misconception and illusion."
