Atomic power exposes biopower’s paradox of killing to preserve life.

Evidence

We are, then, in a power that has taken control of both the body and life or that has, if you like, taken control of life in general-with the body as one pole and the population as the other. We can therefore immediately identify the paradoxes that appear at the points where the exercise of this biopower reaches its limits. The paradoxes become apparent if we look, on the one hand, at atomic power, which is not simply the power to kill, in accordance with the rights that are granted to any sovereign, millions and hundreds of millions of people (after all, that is traditional). The workings of contemporary political power are such that atomic power represents a paradox that is difficult, if not impossible, to get around. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 7235