9 ms·

Stuxnet changed history. Any "game of chicken" style equilibria is broken if the probability a nuclear actor's command and control drops below 100%. If there is

by indescions_2018 8y ago

Stuxnet changed history. Any "game of chicken" style equilibria is broken if the probability a nuclear actor's command and control drops below 100%. If there is even a 1% chance that when a Big Red Button is pushed the missiles fail to launch the game becomes unwinnable. Simulations of imperfect information in dynamic brinkmanship where both players are known to have advanced cyber capabilities results in a single dreaded endgame: general nuclear exchange. Thermonuclear Cyberwar https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2836208 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2836208 We have moved into uncharted domains. And herein lie demons. Past Rules of Engagement universally agreed upon regarding the use of kinetic weapons no longer apply. For wiser heads to prevail in the current global climate, the voice for peace must become the loudest one. Rules of engagement for cyberspace operations: a view from the USA https://academic.oup.com/cybersecurity/article/doi/10.1093/cybsec/tyx003/3058505 https://academic.oup.com/cybersecurity/article/doi/10.1093/c...

organicmultiloc 8y ago
The problem is not everyone on the world stage is a rational game theory nerd that links to papers like we want them to be. Also 60 years of treating every other country as a box in a threat model to be manipulated against other boxes has been a completely unmitigated disaster, so maybe we should stop that.
- ams6110 8y ago
  > 60 years of treating every other country as a box in a threat model to be manipulated against other boxes has been a completely unmitigated disaster Has it? The last 60 years have been relatively peaceful, by historical standards.
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    The world also became a lot more connected, so we're exposed a lot more to wars and such abroad, and we've matured morally speaking and can see that all wars are unnecessary.
    - erkkie 8y ago
      Only in a western welfare bubble. Morality over war is what you can afford having other security needs taken care of.
      - ardent_uno 8y ago
        The western world has developed institutions that give it security. Once those parts of the world ravaged by war do the same, they too will enjoy peace and stability.
        throwaway77384 8y ago
        Well, we're undoing these institutions with an ever-growing fervor, as we appease the insecurities of a few rich and powerful people by handing them yet another election and yet another few units of currency on top of their almost unimaginably huge mountain of existing wealth.
        YaxelPerez 8y ago
        Right, but it's difficult to establish those institutions when your country is ravaged by war and corruption...
      - forapurpose 8y ago
        > Only in a western welfare bubble. Morality over war is what you can afford having other security needs taken care of. That's actually a false hypothesis of people in the 'western bubble' who haven't experienced war. Research I've seen shows that people in places that have experienced it, such as in Syria, are much more opposed to it. And that bears out in Western experiences: Who created the UN, with the stated purpose to prevent another war? Who created (the ancestor institutions that became) the EU to prevent another European war? Who enforced the Geneva conventions and prosecuted war criminals after WWII? The answer is, the people who had lived WWI and WWII. They knew far more of war than anyone today in the West, and they thought it was the worst scourge of humanity which must be prevented from happening again at almost any cost. Who are we to disagree?
  - masswerk 8y ago
    You want to ask all those who lost their lives in any of the numerous conflicts. Only, because the big clash didn't happen (it nearly happened three times in 1983), this doesn't mean that there weren't any conflicts. E.g., the biggest air war in history, in Laos, even was conducted in secrecy, African politics is just a single mess, etc.
    - asah 8y ago
      Please consider orders of magnitude - we really do live in peaceful times. Example: there's far fewer cold war deaths than from traffic accidents, let alone real wars. WW2 killed 3% of all humanity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties The end of the Han dynasty killed a large percentage of all chinese people. For perspective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safety-facts/road-crash-statistics http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safet...
      - masswerk 8y ago
        Hm – Consider this piece (you may or may not appreciate the political perspective): https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-million-people-in-37-victim-nations-since-world-war-ii/5492051 https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-mil... In brief, it concludes that the US alone (there have been lots of conflicts without any manifest involvement of the US) has been involved since WWII in conflicts causing "the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people". [Edit] You may also consider the ongoing war in Syria, which is not only exceeding WII in duration already, but also overshadows the total death count of the US in the WWII Pacific "theatre" (161,000 dead, including 111,914 in battle and 49,000 non-battle) by 500,000+ dead (last consensual figure was 470,000, issued by the Syrian Center for Policy Research in 2016).
    - nyolfen 8y ago
      we ought to ask people whose family members have died of cancer lately how they feel about our so-called advanced medical science as well
- vertexFarm 8y ago
  For all the evidence we have, MAD has worked. Still here. Still no WWIII. At the beginning of the twentieth century it was looking like we'd have another world war every twenty years or so for the rest of time. As best we can tell, nukes actually did end large-scale war. I would call that at least a partially mitigated disaster.
  - projectileboy 8y ago
    You're not wrong, but there were multiple incidents during the cold war where the US and Soviet Union came very, very, very close to a nuclear exchange, and it was only dumb luck (and sometimes the heroic actions of individuals who were in the right place at the right time) that saved us. We were lucky, and luck is not a plan.
    - vertexFarm 8y ago
      The unwillingness of people to start a nuclear exchange is exactly the plan. In the examples you speak of, common soldiers and technicians refused to launch the missiles. It's noteworthy that the idea of a full-scale thermonuclear exchange is so horrifying that even soldiers who assume they are already dead and have orders to launch still refuse. I think that speaks a lot about the inherent goodness of humanity, but that's a different story. I know it came very close, but the assumption was that it would come to the brink yet nobody would want to go through with it and begin open aggression. Seems dubious and risky, but once again it worked. And let's not discount the negative risk--a conventional world war with the Soviet Union, China, the US and Britain would have been so terrible. With such a small data set we should still be dubious, but I don't know if we can consign it merely to luck. I think it was a good plan. Terrible publicity, though. Nightmarish. But so is war.
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    While my humble opinion is that MAD was effective, let's be careful not to infer causation from a sequence of events (the rooster crows and then the sun rises). And the events of 'MAD' and 'peace' are not in sequence: WWII ended in 1945. MAD wasn't an idea until the 1960s and not implemented in a treaty until the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, AFAICT.[0] It makes more sense if you remember that nuclear weapons and delivery technology didn't reach the 'assured destruction' stage for awhile. Remember that in the Korean War, in the 1950s, General MacArthur was pushing to use nuclear weapons (IIRC); it wasn't as taboo then. Finally, remember that MAD applied only to the Soviet Union and U.S. (or the Warsaw Pact and NATO), while major international wars ended worldwide, for the most part. Remember that WWI and WWII were fought between future NATO members; the later peace between them wasn't due to MAD. > At the beginning of the twentieth century it was looking like we'd have another world war every twenty years or so for the rest of time. The victors of WWII were very concerned about that, and began planning to prevent it before the war ended. That resulted in the UN, the institutions that became the EU, a rejection of nationalism (as a significant cause of war), the spread of democracy and universal human rights as a peace-making policy (democracies generally don't start wars with each other), and U.S. leadership in the international order to maintain those things and to provide stability. My understanding is that those are the reasons for the relative but extraordinary peace. Here's a Churchill speech about it in Zurich in 1946 (the speech focuses on the future EU; remember he also was one of the architects of the United Nations): http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/astonish.html http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/astonish.html (I'll also note that they seemed to have worked so well that now people take the peace for granted and are tossing aside the things that make it happen.) [0] The best credible source I can find quickly. If you hit a paywall, access it via a search engine: https://www.britannica.com/topic/nuclear-strategy#ref1224926 https://www.britannica.com/topic/nuclear-strategy#ref1224926 EDIT: Added a detail
ckocagil 8y ago
Yes, it has the potential to break the MAD equilibrium. It's very ironic to me that offensive technologies do not threaten world peace as much as defensive technologies.
- kbutler 8y ago
  MAD is a local maximum of peace, but only if we define "peace" to include "tense standoff". It appears to be the best we can do in the presence of overwhelmingly powerful offensive capabilities. Imagine the different "peace" if instead we had overwhelmingly powerful defensive capabilities.
  - Sangermaine 8y ago
    But everyone would have to have those, or else the first country to develop them would have an insurmountable advantage. A country that has both nuclear weapons and the ability to block all attacks including nuclear would rule the world, or at least dominate it without opposition.
    - azernik 8y ago
      Hence the local maximum.
    - komali2 8y ago
      Or, everyone would have to have a strong sense that nuclear launches weren't possible. I'm thinking along the lines of grey-hat anarchists constantly attacking everyone's nuclear capabilities. "If nobody is super, everybody is super."
- drb91 8y ago
  ...as if “world peace” is a thing.
- samirm 8y ago
  >It's very ironic to me that offensive technologies do not threaten world peace as much as defensive technologies. ummm... what?
superflyguy 8y ago
That's all very well but theory and maths aren't too relevant when the man behind the button is an illiterate cretin.
- bdamm 8y ago
  Removal from position due to medical incapacity is not only a real transfer of power mechanism but also fairly easy for the Vice President to do, assuming that the Secret Service agrees. Remember, the Secret Service works for the US Treasury.
- chx 8y ago
  The launch is a two person process and while in theory the second person is only there to verify the identity of the President this has never been put to the test and there truly is no way to tell what would Mattis do in a situation like this.
ekianjo 8y ago
> the probability a nuclear actor's command and control drops below 100%. It's never been at 100% anyway. Read the book "Command and Control" if you are not convinced.
_bxg1 8y ago
After the first couple of sentences I came to the opposite conclusion: perhaps the greatest nuclear powers have all had their launch systems compromised already, and if people started pushing buttons nothing would happen. Comforting thought.
- vanderZwan 8y ago
  While a nice thought, that is only true if: a) at least two of these secret security teams exist, funded by different political superpowers b) the one team behind this worm was funded by a group insisting on global denuclearization. Imagine if what you say is true for every nuclear power, except one (likely the one that is behind this worm). Have we heard of any other enrichment facilities that have been targeted? There are still a ton out there[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium#Global_enrichment_facilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium#Global_enrich...
FeepingCreature 8y ago
Since the probability is below 100% IRL, this is trivially seen to be false. Evidence: Here is a hand. It is not irradiated...
anonu 8y ago
Very interesting comments especially conclusion that voice for peace must be loudest. Generally, personally agree. However, what you think of current USA stance of beefing up defense and probably nuclear arsenal while others are not allowed such weapons? Won't it make them want these weapons even more?
Bromskloss 8y ago
> If there is even a 1% chance that when a Big Red Button is pushed the missiles fail to launch the game becomes unwinnable. Why does that 1% make such a big difference?

organicmultiloc 8y ago

The problem is not everyone on the world stage is a rational game theory nerd that links to papers like we want them to be. Also 60 years of treating every other country as a box in a threat model to be manipulated against other boxes has been a completely unmitigated disaster, so maybe we should stop that.

ams6110 8y ago
> 60 years of treating every other country as a box in a threat model to be manipulated against other boxes has been a completely unmitigated disaster Has it? The last 60 years have been relatively peaceful, by historical standards.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  The world also became a lot more connected, so we're exposed a lot more to wars and such abroad, and we've matured morally speaking and can see that all wars are unnecessary.
  - erkkie 8y ago
    Only in a western welfare bubble. Morality over war is what you can afford having other security needs taken care of.
    - ardent_uno 8y ago
      The western world has developed institutions that give it security. Once those parts of the world ravaged by war do the same, they too will enjoy peace and stability.
      - throwaway77384 8y ago
        Well, we're undoing these institutions with an ever-growing fervor, as we appease the insecurities of a few rich and powerful people by handing them yet another election and yet another few units of currency on top of their almost unimaginably huge mountain of existing wealth.
      - YaxelPerez 8y ago
        Right, but it's difficult to establish those institutions when your country is ravaged by war and corruption...
    - forapurpose 8y ago
      > Only in a western welfare bubble. Morality over war is what you can afford having other security needs taken care of. That's actually a false hypothesis of people in the 'western bubble' who haven't experienced war. Research I've seen shows that people in places that have experienced it, such as in Syria, are much more opposed to it. And that bears out in Western experiences: Who created the UN, with the stated purpose to prevent another war? Who created (the ancestor institutions that became) the EU to prevent another European war? Who enforced the Geneva conventions and prosecuted war criminals after WWII? The answer is, the people who had lived WWI and WWII. They knew far more of war than anyone today in the West, and they thought it was the worst scourge of humanity which must be prevented from happening again at almost any cost. Who are we to disagree?
- masswerk 8y ago
  You want to ask all those who lost their lives in any of the numerous conflicts. Only, because the big clash didn't happen (it nearly happened three times in 1983), this doesn't mean that there weren't any conflicts. E.g., the biggest air war in history, in Laos, even was conducted in secrecy, African politics is just a single mess, etc.
  - asah 8y ago
    Please consider orders of magnitude - we really do live in peaceful times. Example: there's far fewer cold war deaths than from traffic accidents, let alone real wars. WW2 killed 3% of all humanity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties The end of the Han dynasty killed a large percentage of all chinese people. For perspective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safety-facts/road-crash-statistics http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safet...
    - masswerk 8y ago
      Hm – Consider this piece (you may or may not appreciate the political perspective): https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-million-people-in-37-victim-nations-since-world-war-ii/5492051 https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-mil... In brief, it concludes that the US alone (there have been lots of conflicts without any manifest involvement of the US) has been involved since WWII in conflicts causing "the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people". [Edit] You may also consider the ongoing war in Syria, which is not only exceeding WII in duration already, but also overshadows the total death count of the US in the WWII Pacific "theatre" (161,000 dead, including 111,914 in battle and 49,000 non-battle) by 500,000+ dead (last consensual figure was 470,000, issued by the Syrian Center for Policy Research in 2016).
  - nyolfen 8y ago
    we ought to ask people whose family members have died of cancer lately how they feel about our so-called advanced medical science as well
vertexFarm 8y ago
For all the evidence we have, MAD has worked. Still here. Still no WWIII. At the beginning of the twentieth century it was looking like we'd have another world war every twenty years or so for the rest of time. As best we can tell, nukes actually did end large-scale war. I would call that at least a partially mitigated disaster.
- projectileboy 8y ago
  You're not wrong, but there were multiple incidents during the cold war where the US and Soviet Union came very, very, very close to a nuclear exchange, and it was only dumb luck (and sometimes the heroic actions of individuals who were in the right place at the right time) that saved us. We were lucky, and luck is not a plan.
  - vertexFarm 8y ago
    The unwillingness of people to start a nuclear exchange is exactly the plan. In the examples you speak of, common soldiers and technicians refused to launch the missiles. It's noteworthy that the idea of a full-scale thermonuclear exchange is so horrifying that even soldiers who assume they are already dead and have orders to launch still refuse. I think that speaks a lot about the inherent goodness of humanity, but that's a different story. I know it came very close, but the assumption was that it would come to the brink yet nobody would want to go through with it and begin open aggression. Seems dubious and risky, but once again it worked. And let's not discount the negative risk--a conventional world war with the Soviet Union, China, the US and Britain would have been so terrible. With such a small data set we should still be dubious, but I don't know if we can consign it merely to luck. I think it was a good plan. Terrible publicity, though. Nightmarish. But so is war.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  While my humble opinion is that MAD was effective, let's be careful not to infer causation from a sequence of events (the rooster crows and then the sun rises). And the events of 'MAD' and 'peace' are not in sequence: WWII ended in 1945. MAD wasn't an idea until the 1960s and not implemented in a treaty until the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, AFAICT.[0] It makes more sense if you remember that nuclear weapons and delivery technology didn't reach the 'assured destruction' stage for awhile. Remember that in the Korean War, in the 1950s, General MacArthur was pushing to use nuclear weapons (IIRC); it wasn't as taboo then. Finally, remember that MAD applied only to the Soviet Union and U.S. (or the Warsaw Pact and NATO), while major international wars ended worldwide, for the most part. Remember that WWI and WWII were fought between future NATO members; the later peace between them wasn't due to MAD. > At the beginning of the twentieth century it was looking like we'd have another world war every twenty years or so for the rest of time. The victors of WWII were very concerned about that, and began planning to prevent it before the war ended. That resulted in the UN, the institutions that became the EU, a rejection of nationalism (as a significant cause of war), the spread of democracy and universal human rights as a peace-making policy (democracies generally don't start wars with each other), and U.S. leadership in the international order to maintain those things and to provide stability. My understanding is that those are the reasons for the relative but extraordinary peace. Here's a Churchill speech about it in Zurich in 1946 (the speech focuses on the future EU; remember he also was one of the architects of the United Nations): http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/astonish.html http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/astonish.html (I'll also note that they seemed to have worked so well that now people take the peace for granted and are tossing aside the things that make it happen.) [0] The best credible source I can find quickly. If you hit a paywall, access it via a search engine: https://www.britannica.com/topic/nuclear-strategy#ref1224926 https://www.britannica.com/topic/nuclear-strategy#ref1224926 EDIT: Added a detail

ckocagil 8y ago

Yes, it has the potential to break the MAD equilibrium. It's very ironic to me that offensive technologies do not threaten world peace as much as defensive technologies.

kbutler 8y ago
MAD is a local maximum of peace, but only if we define "peace" to include "tense standoff". It appears to be the best we can do in the presence of overwhelmingly powerful offensive capabilities. Imagine the different "peace" if instead we had overwhelmingly powerful defensive capabilities.
- Sangermaine 8y ago
  But everyone would have to have those, or else the first country to develop them would have an insurmountable advantage. A country that has both nuclear weapons and the ability to block all attacks including nuclear would rule the world, or at least dominate it without opposition.
  - azernik 8y ago
    Hence the local maximum.
  - komali2 8y ago
    Or, everyone would have to have a strong sense that nuclear launches weren't possible. I'm thinking along the lines of grey-hat anarchists constantly attacking everyone's nuclear capabilities. "If nobody is super, everybody is super."
drb91 8y ago
...as if “world peace” is a thing.
samirm 8y ago
>It's very ironic to me that offensive technologies do not threaten world peace as much as defensive technologies. ummm... what?

superflyguy 8y ago

That's all very well but theory and maths aren't too relevant when the man behind the button is an illiterate cretin.

bdamm 8y ago
Removal from position due to medical incapacity is not only a real transfer of power mechanism but also fairly easy for the Vice President to do, assuming that the Secret Service agrees. Remember, the Secret Service works for the US Treasury.
chx 8y ago
The launch is a two person process and while in theory the second person is only there to verify the identity of the President this has never been put to the test and there truly is no way to tell what would Mattis do in a situation like this.

ekianjo 8y ago

> the probability a nuclear actor's command and control drops below 100%. It's never been at 100% anyway. Read the book "Command and Control" if you are not convinced.

_bxg1 8y ago

After the first couple of sentences I came to the opposite conclusion: perhaps the greatest nuclear powers have all had their launch systems compromised already, and if people started pushing buttons nothing would happen. Comforting thought.

vanderZwan 8y ago
While a nice thought, that is only true if: a) at least two of these secret security teams exist, funded by different political superpowers b) the one team behind this worm was funded by a group insisting on global denuclearization. Imagine if what you say is true for every nuclear power, except one (likely the one that is behind this worm). Have we heard of any other enrichment facilities that have been targeted? There are still a ton out there[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium#Global_enrichment_facilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium#Global_enrich...

FeepingCreature 8y ago

Since the probability is below 100% IRL, this is trivially seen to be false. Evidence: Here is a hand. It is not irradiated...

anonu 8y ago

Very interesting comments especially conclusion that voice for peace must be loudest. Generally, personally agree. However, what you think of current USA stance of beefing up defense and probably nuclear arsenal while others are not allowed such weapons? Won't it make them want these weapons even more?

Bromskloss 8y ago

> If there is even a 1% chance that when a Big Red Button is pushed the missiles fail to launch the game becomes unwinnable. Why does that 1% make such a big difference?