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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.
by alttab 10y ago
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.
- Someone 10y agoI 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_characters 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.
- TaylorAlexander 10y agoPeople 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 see that something is amiss than computers are.
- gumby 10y agoYup. This is why these guys get classified intelligence briefings before going on duty (in this article the ones that had been five minutes long and are now hour-long powerpointfests).