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Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died

rt.com

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Re: Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died

#21

Post by _coldfire »

flukus wrote: post #6
unexistance wrote: post #3

and I'm reminded by the movie WarGames when the nuke officers (not sure the actual designation) are replaced by relays... I'm just glad the officer-just-doing-his-job expects systems to fail & trust hsi own judgment, instead of our current ever-increasing trust in machines

In Wargames they detected a massive preemptive attack. One of the things that tipped off the officer in this case was that it was such a small scale attack, which doesn't make sense because it leaves the enemy willing and able to respond.

From the article:

Taught that in case of a real attack the US would have gone on an all-out offensive, Petrov told his bosses the alarm must have been caused by a system malfunction.

Re: Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died

#22

Post by tscs37 »

I first heard of his death in a very niche subreddit and only by chance. He died in May and only now we know it. I was wondering how long it'd take for mainstream media to pick up.

He was truly a hero, without his reaction a good chunk of this planet would be nuclear wasteland.

Re: Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died

#24

Post by stordoff »

canoebuilder wrote: post #17
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #2

When "just doing my job" saves the world. “My cozy armchair felt like a red-hot frying pan and my legs went limp. I felt like I couldn't even stand up. That's how nervous I was when I was taking this decision,” he told RT. How well would any of us have done in that situation? It's tempting to think that we'd have said no, don't launch. But picture yourself as a military commander, raised in that lifestyle. Then add t…

> I wish it were possible to make a service that lets you upload encrypted notes that will be made public after your death. But those two requirements conflict. That's a very interesting idea. What do you mean by the "requirements conflict"? Couldn't it be implemented with a dead man's switch where one would check in every year or so. Of course there would need to be some verification methods baked in to thwart prank…

> What do you mean by the "requirements conflict"?

Possibly that such a dead man's switch would require the keys to be outside of your control to some extent - after all, if you die the day after resetting the switch, any infrastructure owned, maintained, or paid for by you might not exist for the switch to fire. If you give the keys to a third-party, you have to trust they aren't reading the contents and that their security measures are sufficient.

It could be done on an ad-hoc basis if you have a trusted third-party (close friend, for instance), but it's difficult to see how it could be scaled into a service. Perhaps it could be split into two parties - you upload the encrypted notes to the service, but they don't get the keys. You pass the keys to a trusted third-party (i.e. the close friend), who can make the notes public by giving the keys to the notes holder, who (ideally) would verify the death via public records. This avoids giving the secrets directly to the friend (in case of disagreements etc.), and you can reverse the decision whilst you are still alive (by deleting the notes).

Also, depending on the nature of the secrets, it does provide an incentive for death.

Re: Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died

#25

Post by 4WIW »

It may be that our biggest collective luck was that the alarm happened at the time subcolonel Petrov was on duty. He was an analyst, maybe even chief analyst of the unit, he authored the playbook for the officers on duty; being on duty wasn't his main job (source: https://cont.ws/@adviser095/717098 ), he would go on duty from time to time.

Due to his knowledge of the early warning system he was more likely to cast doubt than a regular officer on duty. Several factors looked suspicious: 1) The reported starts (5 in total) happened from a single base in the US which didn't make sense from the military point of view: the US would have put themselves at a grave disadvantage by sending just a few missiles; 2) They had visible light and infra-red visuals on the US territory and none of them checked out and 3) It would have been highly unlikely for the war to start suddenly, without any prior escalation.

Like other officers on duty, he had college education as an electronics engineer and additional 2 years of special training. All this probably helped him make the right decision.

This is not to take away from the importance of Mr.Petrov's heroic personal contribution: he definitely deserves recognition (which he didn't get from the Soviet Army and his own country BTW). Still I would also like to hope that we are all collectively not as stupid as to go caboom just because of the single fluke in the satellite system.

Re: Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died

#27

Post by sillysaurus3 »

canoebuilder wrote: post #17
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #2

When "just doing my job" saves the world. “My cozy armchair felt like a red-hot frying pan and my legs went limp. I felt like I couldn't even stand up. That's how nervous I was when I was taking this decision,” he told RT. How well would any of us have done in that situation? It's tempting to think that we'd have said no, don't launch. But picture yourself as a military commander, raised in that lifestyle. Then add t…

> I wish it were possible to make a service that lets you upload encrypted notes that will be made public after your death. But those two requirements conflict. That's a very interesting idea. What do you mean by the "requirements conflict"? Couldn't it be implemented with a dead man's switch where one would check in every year or so. Of course there would need to be some verification methods baked in to thwart prank…

If the notes are encrypted, you hold the keys. If the service held the keys, no one would use it. But that means the notes can't be decrypted upon your death, since the keys would need to be uploaded at that point.

Re: Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died

#29

Post by wutbrodo »

forapurpose wrote: post #28

When AIs are making life and death decisions (because there are only microseconds to act), will they hold their fire in the name of humanitarianism? Would an AI have launched the missiles?

You've misunderstood the story. Petrov didn't defy high-level Soviet goals in the name of humanitarianism: the goal was to fire back if fired upon and _not_ to fire back if not fired upon. Petrov's achievement was making the right judgment call that the US had not actually fired on Russia (i.e. that it was a detection anomaly or something). Given that he wasn't deviating from the high-level goals handed down, I don't see why an AI would be different in that regard.
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