The linked report is worth a scan: http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/677454.pdf http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/677454.pdf Pages 15 to 19 are what the CNBC article

The linked report is worth a scan: http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/677454.pdf http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/677454.pdf Pages 15 to 19 are what the CNBC article picked up on: This system coordinates the operational functions of the nation’s nuclear forces. This system is running on an IBM Series/1 Computer—a 1970s computing system—and uses 8-inch floppy disks - from page 19 The IBM Series/1 isn't that ancient (well for me anyway) and was comparable to 16 bit Data General (I trained on Data General Nova 3's, 4's and Eclipse S/130's back in the mid-80's) and DEC mini's of the day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Series/1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Series/1 As long as you keep up with the usual preventative maintenance (filter changing etc), these old boxes just keep on working. Sometime in the early 2000's a buddy of mine still had a preventative maintenance contract on a DG Nova 3 [0] attached some astronomy kit. John asked if I fancied a day out to see this machine and go along with him on his PM visit. I hadn't seen an old Nova or Eclipse machine since the early 90's, so why the hell not? When I asked why such an old machine (probably manufactured in '75 or '76) hadn't been replaced with a faster smaller box (e.g. top end PC server type of thing), the reason was at the time nothing could come close to the data channel speeds this old box could sustain when collecting data from their astronomy thing. If anyone from St Andrews astronomy department knows about this old machine I'd love to know what happened to it. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_Nova https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_Nova