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Nervous about nukes again? Here’s what you need to know about the Button
- cyberferret 10y agoThe article states that the president can use the 'biscuit' and the 'football' to instigate a nuclear attack on his sole discretion, but haven't those rules been changes in recent years to require a second government official to confirm and acknowledge the order?
- iaw 10y agoWhy would you believe that?
- cyberferret 10y agoBecause I think I read something along those lines in a journal somewhere that was analysing some of the near accidental launches over the decades. I am not 100% sure I remembered this fact correctly, hence me framing it as a question on here in case more knowledgeable readers could confirm or deny and actually add value to the conversation...
- iaw 10y agoGotcha, didn't mean to come off aggressive but trying to understand if I missed something. To my knowledge, numerous failsafes have been improved over the years (human and technical) but the President is still the sole decider. They have definitely adjusted procedures to correct for historic screw-ups but, given a lack of mistakes at the executive level, there's been no precedent to change the President's nuclear capabilities.
- welanes 10y agoThat's probably the case. Attack authorization surely involves more than opening a briefcase and pressing a big red button. (Edit, yep: 'The National Command Authority comprising the president and Secretary of Defense must jointly authenticate the order to use nuclear weapons to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff'). The Washington Post detests Trump so the purpose of this piece is not to inform, but rather to plant the potential devastation of nuclear weapons and Trump's temperament in the mind of the reader.
- conistonwater 10y agoPerhaps the confusion stems from the difference between discretion and confirm/acknowledge? According to http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/34644 http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/34644, the order has to be acknowledged and verified, but cannot be overruled, and the second person (Secretary of Defense) is there to verify it, rather than check for whether it makes sense.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> The president can order this without consulting Congress, without being checked by the Supreme Court. Perhaps a single person's power to launch up to 2,000 nukes needs to be revisited?
- jon-wood 10y agoIt does seem more than a little strange that the president has to battle with congress to get a law passed providing easier access to healthcare for people, but if they want to wipe out a good chunk of humanity then that's their prerogative.
- yodsanklai 10y agoEven in airplanes, they have a "two crew cockpit rule" to prevent one guy from crashing the plane (as it happened recently in south of France). http://www.denverpost.com/2015/03/26/u-s-airlines-use-two-crew-cockpit-rule-to-stop-renegade-pilots/ http://www.denverpost.com/2015/03/26/u-s-airlines-use-two-cr...
- Gargoyle 10y agoIf you add more than a couple minutes of delay, it's no longer an effective deterrent. Not an ideal situation, but it's where things stand.
- sevenless 10y agoI always considered that if you believe nuclear deterrence is effective, it would be logical to disband the entire conventional military, and keep the nuclear weapons. The advantage would be you save an enormous amount of money, and vastly reduce the size of government. Politicians will stop being tempted to invade and interfere in other countries, and grievances against your country are reduced or eliminated. The logic of nuclear deterrence still holds, and in fact deterrence should be stronger since your opponents know you have absolutely no other choices.
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- reacweb 10y agoDo not worry, they have changed the passwords: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-us-nukes-was-00000000-for-20-years/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-u...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- nabla9 10y agoThe football, the biscuit and the verification from secretary of defense are needed to confirm the authenticity of the authority. Secretary of defense doesn’t have veto power but he can use his judgment and refuse. Might lose his job though. The authorization codes are used to demonstrate down the chain of command that the use of nuclear weapons has been authorized. Even after that the judgment is distributed to individuals. The president has only the authorization codes. Actual launch codes are in the hands of STRATCOM. There are generals who can refuse a direct order.
- pluma 10y agoAs a European, I am always nervous about nukes. American nukes specifically. And not so much about Trump, who is a buffoon but doesn't actually want to get too involved in messy foreign politics, but Clinton, who as a Secretary of State has already proven to be another warmonger. The US has had a blasé attitude to nuclear weapons ever since the start of the Cold War. The majority of situations where we have come close to global thermonuclear war involved careless US behaviour. The US is the only nation in the history of mankind to have used nuclear weapons at all. If there will ever be a nuclear war, the US is the most likely country to make it happen. Sure, some deranged dictator might fling a single nuclear missile somewhere at some point (and it will probably be intercepted before it can do any real damage) but if I had to bet on a country to end the world as we know it, all my money would be on the US.
- jacquesm 10y ago> The majority of situations where we have come close to global thermonuclear war involved careless US behaviour. That may simply be a case of not having the same level of disclosure for the different countries involved.
- oneloop 10y agoIs the US known for its transparency?
- oneloop 10y ago
- blowski 10y agoHow much of this is accurate and up to date? I'm extremely skeptical when details like this appear in newspapers.
- Noseshine 10y agoI hope the question is rhetorical, since if the information is indeed deliberately hidden and only false stories are made public, the few who know the real story are unlikely to post about it here on HN. So whoever answers the question either doesn't know anything or is trying to mislead you (further) :)
- runarb 10y agoThe security of nuclear weapons may be less tight than one may think. Hare are some classics: British nukes were protected by bike locks - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7097101.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7097101.stm Launch code for US nukes was 00000000 for 20 years - http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-us-nukes-was-00000000-for-20-years/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-u...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- marvin 10y agoNot only that -- before the creation of Permissive Action Links in the early 1960s, few nuclear weapons had launch codes at all.
- arethuza 10y agoUK Trident warheads don't have PALs in the usual sense - the crews on the boats have everything they need to launch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link
- davorb 10y agoThe military actually opposed PALs. They considered them to be an additional point of failure, and did everything in their power to prevent having them installed. Once you understand this, the decision to set all nuclear launch codes to 00000000 starts to make a little more sense.
- philjohn 10y agoPosted as a reply, but if you want to read more about the command and control structure in the US, and why it evolved as it did (tl;dr paranoia during the cold war for the most part) the excellent Command and Control is a good intro to the subject: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Command-Control-Eric-Schlosser/dp/0141037911 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Command-Control-Eric-Schlosser/dp/0...
- wtbob 10y ago> Bill Clinton allegedly misplaced the biscuit and didn’t tell anyone for months. Boggle.