E = mc²: Virtues and Vices — Bridge from Physics to Geopoliticonomy

E = mc² stands singularly as the most famous, and perhaps the most consequential, equation in the history of human thought and ingenuity. Written with the deceptive simplicity of just a handful of symbols, Einstein’s 1905 insight revealed the equivalence of mass and energy: even a minute quantity of matter corresponds to an almost unimaginable reservoir of energy because mass is multiplied by the square of the speed of light, approximately 186,000 miles per second. Few equations have completely altered humanity’s understanding of nature; or so profoundly expanded humanity’s capacity both to improve life and to annihilate it.
Yet E = mc² stands as a gift from physics to economics, morally indifferent to both compassion and cruelty, peace and war. Scientific discovery does not arrive bearing an ethical destiny. Its virtues and vices emerge only when knowledge passes through the human matrix of politics, economics, military strategy, ambition and restraint. The same doorway into the atomic nucleus that helped illuminate modern cities also opened onto Hiroshima. Knowledge expands what humanity can do; it does not, by itself, decide what humanity ought to do.
The equation transformed our conception of the universe by revealing that matter and energy were not separate entities, but different manifestations of the same physical reality. It also helps explain how the Sun can radiate enormous amounts of energy for billions of years: during nuclear fusion, a tiny amount of mass is converted into a tremendous amount of energy. What began as an abstract insight in physics ultimately became a key to understanding the stars and, eventually, to unlocking the power of the atomic nucleus on Earth.
Yet E = mc² is the miracle at the inner core of the atom – the nucleus, comprising protons and neutrons. Its humanitarian dividends are equally remarkable. We all know that nuclear physics today helps diagnose disease, treat cancer, sterilise medical equipment, trace biological processes, improve crops, control pests and strengthen food security. Here lies the equation’s first great paradox: the physics capable of killing can also be harnessed to heal.
Nuclear physics has yielded another virtue: the power to generate energy. A small quantity of nuclear fuel can produce enormous amounts of electricity without the carbon emissions associated with combustion during operation. For countries concerned simultaneously with energy security, industrial development and climate change, that density of energy has obvious attraction. But the benefits do not come without costs. High construction costs, radioactive waste, decommissioning and the consequences of rare but catastrophic accidents make nuclear power a technological bargain whose true price must be calculated across generations.
Energy becomes economic and geopolitical power only when nations possess the capital, technology, infrastructure, scientific capacity and institutions required to harness it. Then came its darkest inheritance.
On 6 August 1945, an atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima. Three days later, Nagasaki followed. By the end of that year, approximately 2,10,000 people died in the two cities. Human beings had crossed a threshold from which history could never retreat. For the first time in warfare, a single weapon could destroy much of a city almost instantaneously, while radiation continued inflicting suffering long after the flash disappeared.
The bombings were followed not by nuclear abolition but by an arms race. Fission weapons gave way to vastly more powerful thermonuclear weapons; delivery systems expanded from bombers to intercontinental missiles and submarines. Humanity accumulated destructive capacity on a scale that turned its own survival into an exercise in strategic pursuits.
Yet this vice contains a paradoxical virtue: deterrence. Nuclear weapons are horrifying partly because their capacity for horrific devastation may inhibit their use. When adversaries possess credible retaliatory arsenals, victory becomes difficult to imagine because an attacker cannot assure its own survival. Many strategists credit nuclear deterrence with helping prevent direct war among major nuclear powers. A weapon designed to annihilate can, while remaining unused, become an instrument for preventing war. There may be no more horrifying paradox in adversarial geopolitical rivalry.
That is why the nuclear question cannot be understood through moral lenses alone. It is a matrix of interconnected virtues and vices: scientific capability interacts with national security; security with prestige; prestige with fear; fear with alliances; alliances with proliferation; and proliferation with efforts to preserve strategic hierarchy. Nuclear-armed states urge others not to acquire what they themselves regard as essential to their own security. States outside that privileged circle naturally ask why one country’s nuclear deterrent is deemed stabilising while another’s pursuit of the same capability is treated as an existential threat.
Although E = mc² is morally neutral, its exploitation for both virtue and vice has never been neutral in practice. The capacity to harness its power has overwhelmingly favoured wealthy and technologically advanced nations, giving them disproportionate influence over nuclear energy, military power, deterrence, diplomacy and the architecture of global security.
That inconsistency is visible in the history of nuclear proliferation. Pakistan developed nuclear weapons primarily to deter India; India’s nuclear strategy was shaped by China as well as Pakistan; North Korea developed its nuclear capability amid perceived external threats, international isolation and regime vulnerability; and Israel has maintained a policy of nuclear ambiguity while being widely believed to possess a nuclear arsenal. Iran’s pursuit of advanced enrichment – even if partly motivated by the perceived value of a future deterrent – therefore cannot plausibly be treated as uniquely detached from the security logic that shaped other nuclear powers and aspirants. To portray it as such is both hypocritical and indefensible. This does not make proliferation harmless, nor does it erase profound differences among governments, doctrines and regional conflicts. It does, however, expose a persistent asymmetry in the global nuclear order.
Nor is there compelling reason to assume that an Iranian nuclear weapon, if ever acquired, would automatically be used against Israel. A first strike could invite devastating retaliation and risk mutual annihilation under the grim logic of mutually assured destruction (MAD). Iran might therefore view such a capability less as a weapon to be used than as strategic insurance against attack—the same logic of deterrence that has shaped the calculations of other nuclear powers.
Iran has brought this contradiction into sharp relief. Nuclear capability remained one of the central issues surrounding the US-Israeli offensive that began in February 2026, and the war exposed yet another facet of the technological paradox. The tragedy at the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab made that paradox unmistakable. An Associated Press reconstruction reported that as many as 168 civilians were killed there, including 123 children aged thirteen or younger, and found evidence strongly indicating that the strike was carried out by the United States.
This was not a nuclear attack, and precisely for that reason it belongs in the argument. Eighty-one years after Hiroshima, modern weapons have become vastly more precise, computerised, and technologically sophisticated, yet precision has not abolished human error, miscalculation, or the possibility of civilian death. Scientific ingenuity can refine the accuracy of a weapon; it cannot determine the wisdom of firing it.
Nuclear reactor accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima tell the story from another angle. Neither involved warfare, yet both demonstrated that technologies capable of extraordinary benefit can impose extraordinary costs when complex systems fail. Here, the interplay of multiple interconnected forces takes a different form: engineering meets regulation, regulation meets institutional competence, economics meets environmental risk, and today’s energy decisions become obligations inherited by people not yet born.
Perhaps that is the deepest lesson of the E = mc² paradigm. Scientific knowledge enhances human capability; it does not automatically deepen human wisdom. Einstein gave humanity no instructions to bomb a city, build a reactor, treat a cancer patient, or threaten an adversary with annihilation. He revealed something nature had always contained. What humanity did with that revelation became our responsibility.

The write is a former nuclear engineer at Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission and a Professor Emeritus of economics at Eastern Michigan University, USA. He can be reached at [email protected]