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Analog is the future. Steampunk nuke ops.
by aswanson 6y ago
Analog is the future. Steampunk nuke ops.
- HenryKissinger 6y agoThere is truth in this comment. Parts of the Russian government have reverted to using mechanical typewriters in lieu of computers, which are too susceptible to malicious hacking. Also, the US Navy started instructing enlisted seamen how to navigate at sea by the stars, in case GPS stops working.
- formerly_proven 6y agoBut then again the Russians themselves famously placed very difficult to detect bugs in the mechanical typewriters of the American embassy.
- philwelch 6y agoAnd the Americans put one in the Soviet embassy’s Xerox machine. I think a potential lesson of the story is to use technology that you understand at least as well as your enemy does. The communist bloc maintained registries of typewriter fingerprints so they could identify which typewriters were used to reproduce samizdat; I think it’s fair to assume that the Russians understand typewriters very well.
- philwelch 6y ago> Also, the US Navy started instructing enlisted seamen how to navigate at sea by the stars, in case GPS stops working. Is the threat model there that someone hacks the GPS signal, or that someone shoots down the GPS satellites? Lots of countries have ASATs these days.