There was a time we thought of physics as just a discipline physicists do, detached from the use of the science.

Then two cities got wiped off the map in intentional runaway nuclear reactions.

A whole generation of physicists learned the hard way that if you don't make hard sciences at least a little like those types of things, you may lack the framework to realize when you're being co-opted into a machine that kills... That "pure" science takes huge moral risks if it believes itself to be detachable from the world it is trying to explore.

Credit where credit is due, they responded to the new challenge (https://pugwash.org/).