Not really, what you're describing is profoundly difficult to do, and probably intimately related to a couple concepts in theoretical computer science: 1. Byza

Not really, what you're describing is profoundly difficult to do, and probably intimately related to a couple concepts in theoretical computer science: 1. Byzantine fault tolerance Does your system maintain functioning even in the face of arbitrary adversaries embedded in the system? 2. Homomorphic cryptography Can you execute meaningful computations on untrusted computers such that someone with total physical control could not discern the nature of the data or the computations being run? Both problems are monstrously hard, open problems. They both impose extremely large computational costs as well, albeit in different ways. It's doubtful that an agency will consider these cost effective barring some radical innovation. Edit: It looks like the two other replies address the issue of "suppose I have one or more systems that might fail, but not in an adversarial way." Intelligence agencies do not like to make that assumption, and so what is fine for NASA may not suffice to answer your quandary. NASA may produce 3, 5, 7, or more identical computers which then operate via a voting protocol to act. Unfortunately, if one of those machines is compromised, so is the data on it, and I am not sure what proofs NASA has for the reliability of their system if the machine could be compromised to produce arbitrary output.