Crisis in learning

PARIS — Flying to this French capital on the non-stop Air France flight from Manila, I watched the Oscar Best Picture winner "Oppenheimer."

- ANA MARIE PAMINTUAN

Weeks earlier, I had watched on Netflix the docu movie "Einstein and the Bomb," which filled in some gaps in "Oppenheimer."

Both movies made physics accessible (well, somewhat) to non-scientific minds like me. But it was still mind-boggling for me to consider how people can come up with such theories, and then to apply them, with such devastating consequences.

I have visited the shrine in Hiroshima, dedicated to preserving the unspeakable horror of the first time that nuclear power was unleashed on the planet, plus the second time in Nagasaki.

The movie about Albert Einstein showed that he knew the potential of his theory of relativity in creating a terrible weapon of mass destruction, and he worried about it.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, on the other hand, was driven by fear that the Nazis, who were beginning their mass extermination of Jews, might develop the atomic bomb first — and use it.

Everything is easier in hindsight. But I'm writing about the movies because I am in awe of the power of science and technology, and the role of S&T in modern life, including national defense and modern warfare.

We're seeing the future of armed conflict in the Middle East, with Israel leading the way in innovation. Drones keep getting more sophisticated — and lethal.

The Israelis have used science to turn benign, ordinary items including electronic pagers and walkie-talkies into improvised explosive devices. In Iran, hackers disrupted ATM operations.

Drones are also being widely used in the current war between Russia and Ukraine — a conflict that is a cause for serious concern here in France and the other NATO allies. France, a nuclear power, has been supplying Ukraine with weapons.