The Manhattan Project
Fearing Nazi Germany would develop atomic weapons first, the US launched a secret crash program employing 130,000 people and spending $2 billion. Scientists at Los Alamos and other sites solved unprecedented physics and engineering challenges. The project succeeded in July 1945, producing weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and establishing American nuclear supremacy.
The US gained decisive military advantage and established the national laboratory system that persists today through DOE.
America's nuclear monopoly lasted only four years before the USSR tested its own bomb. The project created the template for government-led mega-science but also sparked an arms race and proliferation the world still manages.
Officials compare Genesis to Manhattan to convey urgency and justify centralized control. Key difference: the atomic bomb project was secret and faced no peer competitor during development. China is openly racing and learning from US advances in real time, making the sustained secrecy and advantage Manhattan achieved unlikely.