6 ms·
Unsung Hero of the Nuclear Age
- gpcz 13y agoWhy did the military require human beings to turn the keys if they expected people (and weeded out people unwilling) to turn the key blindly? A wire would have been much more efficient...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- rbanffy 13y agoIt's not possible to know, for sure, if the orders are lawful or sane (since we are talking about MAD, chances are they aren't sane, although they may be legal). That's why humans were designed into the system - they have to judge and face the consequences of their judgement. It's evident that the original purpose of placing "moral processors" in the loop was lost after the fact.
- gus_massa 13y agoHumans are probably more difficult to hack (I hope) and more resistant to noise (I hope). A weak ago, there was a discussion about the “Letters of last resort” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7165048 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7165048 (56 points, 6 days ago, 50 comments). They are secret instructions for nuclear submarine commanders in case of something killed the whole UK government. From Wikipedia: > According to Peter Hennessy's book The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War, 1945 to 1970, the process by which a Trident submarine commander would determine if the British government continues to function includes, amongst other checks, establishing whether BBC Radio 4 continues broadcasting. This kind of safeguards is easier to implement in humans than in automatic systems. How do you distinguish from the submarine the lack of communication caused by a nuclear attack from a problem caused by a massive electricity outage and a big fire in the BBC building? Maybe you can listen to some Canada and Australia signals to hear if there is a problem.
- gaius 13y agoIt is not hard to hack a human, it happens every day - we know it by the term radicalization these days. There are people who abandoned comfortable Western lives to fight jihads and become suicide bombers. Another term for it is brainwashing. In the Cold War people became defectors. You can hack a human by speaking to them or by showing them some text to read, techniques thousands of years old.
- TempleOSV2 13y agoYou need another serving of God. ============ First, the Beacon-generated numbers cannot be predicted before they are published. Second, the public, time-bound, and authenticated nature of the Beacon allows a user application to prove to anybody that it used truly random numbers not known before a certain point in time. Third, this proof can be presented offline and at any point in the future. ================ Version:Version 1.0Frequency:60 secondsTime:02/08/2014 3:43 pm (1391902980)Seed Value:93B98B8A00CE1E23B3D223E27B23583F7B93A74275A63FBEFF07B3550B3AA39D 5B010425E789089DACE5C8E9BC15191524CA9AF93B0769BC14E7964135748A86 Previous Output:359E494F3EEF86B2746DCDEF130575E6A27C2FFA2BE16BDE48629AC3E2485340 E4709EA35B6CD3341516EF4A3FABA9A3C0FAB6F787CFE83BBEB1412F82E575B6 Signature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utput Value:6CD7DEA61EA13BDB65C89E46F00DA9202C2BF64D9928DAE488460977365FFD64 5DACCEDC2303505A943F5743BBF0A03FC9A2AF70FAD445684A734B3C600F896F Status:0: Normal ========= Line 33150 God says... 9:13 Then they hasted, and took every man his garment, and put it under him on the top of the stairs, and blew with trumpets, saying, Jehu is king. 9:14 So Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi conspired against Joram. (Now Joram had kept Ramothgilead, he and all Israel, because of Hazael king of Syria. 9:15 But king Joram was returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which the Syrians had given him, when he fought with Hazael king of Syria.) And Jehu said, If it be your minds, then let none go forth nor escape out of the city to go to tell it in Jezreel. 9:16 So Jehu rode in a chariot, and went to Jezreel; for Joram lay there. And Ahaziah king of Judah was come down to see Joram. 9:17 And there stood a watchman on the tower in Jezreel, and he spied the company of Jehu as he came, and said, I see a company. And Joram said, Take an horseman, and send to meet them, and let him say, Is it peace? 9:18 So there went one on horseback to meet him, and said, Thus saith the king, Is it peace? And Jehu said, What hast thou to do with peace? turn thee behind me. And the watchman told, saying, The messenger came to them, but he cometh not again. ========== You are not behaving humble and scared shitless.
- gojomo 13y ago"When the President does it, that means it is not crazy."
- magic_haze 13y agoDoes anyone know what TempleOSV2 is talking about? I can't reply to his comment in this thread because it's marked as dead, but it sounds very interesting.
- gpcz 13y agoThis is the best general explanation I've seen: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/templeos-an-educational-tool-for-programming-experiments/ http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/templeos-...
- pygy_ 13y agoThis account is used by the author of "The Temple Operanting System"[0], who's schizophrenic. The first and the last two sections of his post are similar to his usual writings (the fourth one comes out of a Markov chain). The second and third ones are unusual, but it's probably gibberish too. [0] http://www.templeos.org/ http://www.templeos.org/ IMO both a work of art and a technical achievement. See my sibling comment for a review.
- gus_massa 13y agoThe second part is a quote from: http://www.nist.gov/itl/csd/ct/nist_beacon.cfm http://www.nist.gov/itl/csd/ct/nist_beacon.cfm The third part is very similar to the random example in: https://beacon.nist.gov/home https://beacon.nist.gov/home It’s apparently unrelated to the current article.
- pygy_ 13y agoNot gibberish then. Thanks for pointing this out.
- downer78 13y agoSee also: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=losethos https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=losethos And http://losethos.com http://losethos.com
- ufmace 13y agoIt's a challenging issue, all right. The important part that I don't see many people discuss is the nature of international relations, most of which is based on how other national leaders and decision-makers will perceive your actions. Consider: North Korea is run by madmen who have at least some primitive nuclear capability. They regularly make wild accusations and threats against the US. Say they do manage to mount a nuclear device on a long-range rocket. What's to hold them back against launching it at a major US city? Whenever people discuss North Korean (or Iranian or...) nuclear capability, the usual line is that we don't need to worry about it that much, since it would obviously be crazy for them to use them against the US, or any other nuclear power. What is it that makes it crazy, when they've already done so many terrible things to their own people? It's crazy because, according to MAD, any such attack, or even a specific threat to make such an attack, would result in a full-scale launch against their country. Millions of casualties, the total destruction of their culture and way of life. Everyone in the world, most especially leaders in North Korea, and China, fully believes that the US will carry out this threat if attacked with nuclear weapons. Now, let's say Iran manages to detonate a primitive nuclear device in a coastal US city. The textbook MAD reply is a total destruction of every Iranian city. You can make the case that this is crazy on it's face - there is no imminent threat to stop, and those millions of people who would die didn't do anything to deserve it. Say that what Hering and the article author seem to want happens - that no weapons are launched, and a more measured, conventional reply is used. What do you think the North Korean leaders will think then? Or China and Russia? That's the more important question to ask. After that, might North Korea think that they can use a nuclear attack to try and extract some sort of diplomatic concession from us? They're a harder nut to crack with conventional weapons, and they have more firm backing from China. If they get the idea that our MAD policy is toothless, they might try something that could lead to a much greater war, even possibly a much bigger nuclear war. We've been living in a world for a long time now where the Kim Jong-uns of the world have very good reason to be terrified of using nuclear weapons against the US. Are you willing to see what happens if that is no longer true? There are terrible people in this world who are prepared to do terrible things to everything we hold dear. To keep the world safe and stable, those people must believe that we will do even more terrible things to them if the situation calls for it. Keeping that belief in place may sometimes require us to actually do some terrible things ourselves,
- pdonis 13y agoI'm a bit confused by one thing in this story: it never mentions the two man rule: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-man_rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-man_rule The President cannot order the use of nuclear weapons on his own; he can only issue the order jointly with the Secretary of Defense. The article mentions that Nixon's SecDef asked people to "check with him" before carrying out orders from Nixon, which may be a sort of garbled reference to the two man rule, but if so it's very garbled. Whether this rule actually answers Maj. Hering's question is a separate issue. But I find it disappointing (though unfortunately not surprising--journalists often get things like this wrong) that the article repeatedly talks as though a single person can issue the order, when that's not the case.
- ersii 13y agoI'm not sure where that fits in either, but the point I took away from the story is; Don't think too hard about Nixon. It was clear or at least not as unclear, that he was not in his best mental condition. One of the problems is, what about the current head of US state? How would you know if he/she isn't in his best condition? Regarding the two-man rule, my idea of the "Two Person Concept" is to prevent that a single operator would launch an attack by himself or in "error" (whatever that constitutes, I do not know). I interpret Major Hering's question as a separate issue from the "Two Person Concept".
- pdonis 13y agowhat about the current head of US state? How would you know if he/she isn't in his best condition? But that is, in fact, one of the reasons for the two man rule: so that just one person being insane isn't enough. Two people would have to be insane: the President and the Secretary of Defense. That at least provides some reduction of risk. I interpret Major Hering's question as a separate issue from the "Two Person Concept". At levels below the National Command Authority (NCA, i.e., the President and the SecDef), I agree; the two man rule is just to ensure that, at each level through which the launch order passes, two people have to agree that it's a "valid" launch order, where "valid" means it really does come from NCA and it really was issued intentionally by NCA. The two man rule at all those subordinate levels doesn't tell the two people to ask whether NCA was sane when the order was issued; that's a separate issue. But at the NCA level, as I noted above, the two man rule does add at least some measure of safeguarding against the President himself being insane, because the SecDef has to agree to issue the order in the first place. That is, he's not just agreeing that yes, the President really does want to launch nuclear weapons; he's agreeing that he, himself, as a separate decision maker, wants to launch nuclear weapons. So if the SecDef is sane, and there isn't a sane reason to launch nuclear weapons, he won't agree to the launch order, even if an insane President wants him to. It's also worth noting that at the next level down (the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has to receive the launch order from the President and SecDef), they are, as I understand it, supposed to exercise some judgment about whether the order is valid based on circumstances. For example, suppose an insane President fires his (sane) SecDef when the latter refuses to assent to a launch order. There is an ordered list of people who are "next in line" if someone up the chain is killed or is unavailable; so the President calls the next person on the list and asks them to assent to the launch order. However, even if that person agrees (let's suppose they're insane too), when the two of them transmit the order to the Chairman of the JCS, his first question should be, where's the SecDef? I fired him, says the President. Assuming the Chairman is sane, that in itself would be enough to invalidate the launch order; the President can't just fire the SecDef--he's confirmed by the Senate, and there's a formal process that has to be gone through. (The same goes for all the people on the list, btw--they all have to be confirmed by the Senate, and they can't be summarily fired by the President without due process.) Of course these sorts of scenarios are the stuff of which thrillers are made (for example, Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears); but the point is that officers are supposed to exercise judgment. Which does mean that Major Hering was entirely justified in asking the question he asked.
- peterpathname 13y agoin my opinion, no order to deploy nuclear weapons can ever possible come from a sane commander. any such order should be refused.
- Houshalter 13y agoWell nuclear missiles can be used on military targets, or targeted on infrastructure or to strategically poison areas with radiation. I think what you object to is MAD. As terrible as it is, it does likely prevent wars from happening in the first place. Even if the world is stable now, it may not always be so and it wasn't in the past.
- throwwit 13y agoAnother unsung... Stanislav Petrov: The man who may have saved the world http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24280831 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24280831
- Nux 13y agoWe've been "singing" about this guy several times around here and there on the Internet and he even made it on BBC. Not to say we shouldn't keep doing it, but just that the term "unsung" may not apply so well any more. :)
- DanielBMarkham 13y agoNuclear weapons are extremely dangerous, not just for the people being targeted but for all mankind. If I had my way they'd never be used. And I want to respect this author's opinion -- after all, they wrote a book about it, and they've been kind enough to write an article. Having said that, this article reminds me of somebody trying hard to work a problem, giving up, then saying the problem is stupid. That is, trying to work out moral agency in a world where one person can kill hundreds of millions of others, the author (and those like him), give up and pronounce the question wrong -- that is, we should not live in such a world. Well, that's fine and dandy, but that's the world we live in. So I think we can take "no person should be able to order a nuclear counterstrike" off the table right away. The author doesn't have much to say except running out of gas from waving their arms around so much. This is unfortunate, because we live in a world where more and more individuals have the capability to kill huge numbers of people. Trying to limit the discussion to nuclear weapons does the entire topic a severe injustice. (Though it might sell some more books. Hard to say.) And then effectively giving up and saying that the world we live in shouldn't be like it is does the entire topic disservice.