The Manhattan Project transformed academic science by mobilizing thousands of university researchers for nuclear weapons development while creating lasting tensions between scholarly openness & national security secrecy. Academic institutions including Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, & Princeton became integral to weapons programs that established precedents for ongoing academic-military collaboration. Lawrence Livermore & Sandia National Laboratories continue these partnerships with $15 billion in annual defense research funding. Nuclear intelligence operations exploit academic networks while foreign espionage threatens university research, creating ongoing challenges for balancing academic freedom with security requirements.