41–50 of 60 posts
"The process was rigorous, thorough and fully governed by a checklist that was, to our knowledge, without defect. The room for human error was minimal." So, this would be easy to automate. I often wonder whether part of the reason both the USSR and the USA put people in this process was that the hope was that those humans would not go through with real orders. If the idea was that it (also) would help in detecting ca…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US and USSR were moments away from war several times. As Pakistan and India show, being nuclear armed does tend to end conventional wars. But as more countries become nuclear armed, the higher the chances one of them will actually use them.
Supposedly the Cuban Crisis was averted by the leadership deviating from the (supposedly rational) RAND script.
The Iraq Iran war was filled with incalculable human tragedy and horror, of which both sides were perfectly willing to accept. Both the people who chained children together and forced them to charge machine gun nests and the people who mowed down children chained together from their machine gun nests.
"The process was rigorous, thorough and fully governed by a checklist that was, to our knowledge, without defect. The room for human error was minimal." So, this would be easy to automate. I often wonder whether part of the reason both the USSR and the USA put people in this process was that the hope was that those humans would not go through with real orders. If the idea was that it (also) would help in detecting ca…
In the age of the internet, having safe-guards from hacks and redundancies in place to ensure that messages are not misread seems like standard engineering IMO. AFAIK, every nuke that was ever launched was supposed to be launched, and we haven't had a single misfire, or lack of launch, that I'm aware of.
If not, Mallory (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob#Cast_of_charac...) could send launch codes to a bunker, all persons on duty would verify it to be correct, and they would launch their IBCMs.
The only thing this helps against is the single rogue soldier; that risk goes away, too, if you remove all soldiers from the chain.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Dr. Strangelove, the absurd behavior of buffoonish humans contributes to the doomsday scenario. Idiots blindly following the orders of a madman on one side, and psychos constructing a completely automated self-destruct mechanism attached to a retaliatory weapon on the other side. Both are bad, but people playing the game at all, were the real problem.
You know that was a satirical fictional film, right?
With great reluctance, Eisenhower agreed
to let American officers use their nuclear
weapons, in an emergency, if there were no
time or no means to contact the President.
Air Force pilots were allowed to fire their
nuclear anti-aircraft rockets to shoot down
Soviet bombers heading toward the United
States. And about half a dozen high-level
American commanders were allowed to use far
more powerful nuclear weapons, without
contacting the White House first, when
their forces were under attack and “the
urgency of time and circumstances clearly
does not permit a specific decision by the
President, or other person empowered to act
in his stead.”
Unbeknownst to both Kubrick and George, a
top official at the Department of Defense
had already sent a copy of “Red Alert” to
every member of the Pentagon’s Scientific
Advisory Committee for Ballistic Missiles.
At the Pentagon, the book was taken
seriously as a cautionary tale about what
might go wrong.
A decade after the release of “Strangelove,”
the Soviet Union began work on the
Perimeter system - a network of sensors and
computers that could allow junior military
officials to launch missiles without
oversight from the Soviet leadership.
Perhaps nobody at the Kremlin had seen the
film. Completed in 1985, the system was
known as the Dead Hand. Once it was
activated, Perimeter would order the launch
of long-range missiles at the United States
if it detected nuclear detonations on
Soviet soil and Soviet leaders couldn’t be
reached.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also takes a lot of energy to make intrasystem travel a quotidian reality.
Still several zeros apart. Moving a small ship vs moving a mountain
If we get to that point, scaling up just consists of waiting a few decades of exponential growth to kick in. It might not even involve humans, but just letting automated robots continue to build more robots.
If the technology is there, moving mountains instead of ships is just a small jump.
"The process was rigorous, thorough and fully governed by a checklist that was, to our knowledge, without defect. The room for human error was minimal." So, this would be easy to automate. I often wonder whether part of the reason both the USSR and the USA put people in this process was that the hope was that those humans would not go through with real orders. If the idea was that it (also) would help in detecting ca…
Not that what runs the silos is really that easy to mess with. They still do software updates with eight inch floppy disks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the age of the internet, having safe-guards from hacks and redundancies in place to ensure that messages are not misread seems like standard engineering IMO. AFAIK, every nuke that was ever launched was supposed to be launched, and we haven't had a single misfire, or lack of launch, that I'm aware of.
I do not see how adding redundancy to such a tiny part of the command chain would help much. You would have to make all parts of the system redundant. For example, were the messages sent in duplicate via two separate channels? If not, Mallory ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob#Cast_of_charac... ) could send launch codes to a bunker, all persons on duty would verify it to be correct, and they would launch…
Humans are more apt to see that something is amiss than computers are.
"The process was rigorous, thorough and fully governed by a checklist that was, to our knowledge, without defect. The room for human error was minimal." So, this would be easy to automate. I often wonder whether part of the reason both the USSR and the USA put people in this process was that the hope was that those humans would not go through with real orders. If the idea was that it (also) would help in detecting ca…
Having humans inbetween the automated steps reduces potential errors introduced by bugs or compromised software. If the last step in Cryptolocker was "Now have the user manually enter in terminal commands to encrypt each individual file", the virus wouldn't work at all. Requiring two human beings to agree with each other that an alert is legitimate and for them to both need to confirm coded messages, target the missi…
I dunno. This seems pretty hinky to me:
"wireless Nintendo Wii controllers could cause the system to detect a false electromagnetic pulse attack and shut down."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not see how adding redundancy to such a tiny part of the command chain would help much. You would have to make all parts of the system redundant. For example, were the messages sent in duplicate via two separate channels? If not, Mallory ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob#Cast_of_charac... ) could send launch codes to a bunker, all persons on duty would verify it to be correct, and they would launch…
People do all these extra checks that computers don't do though. Like, if it's a sunny Tuesday afternoon and all is well, when suddenly launch codes arrive, the humans are probably going to say "ummm... I don't remember nuclear war being on the agenda today. Lets get the commander to call the president." That may be in complete violation of the protocol, but it could be the right thing to do. Humans are more apt to s…