

Ex-Minuteman missile officer: I could have faked a global missile launch order - philipn
http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/3066/biscuits-cookies-and-nuclear-bombs#comment-10086

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chaosmachine
_"For the Minuteman ICBM force, the US Air Force's Strategic Air Command
worried that in times of need the codes would not be available, so they
quietly decided to set them to 00000000; checking this combination was even
present on the launch checklists. This was not changed until 1977."_

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link#Developm...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link#Development_and_Dissemination)

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steve19
Security is always a comprise between protection and accessibility. The USAF,
rightly or wrongly, thought that the requirement the codes prevented them from
doing their job (responding to a nuke attack).

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ihsw
Protection? What does 'protection' even mean (in this context)?
Confidentiality, integrity, and availability are the most basic tenets of
security. In the parent's case accessibility is held above integrity.

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runjake
Yeah and many hackers types that have worked around WMDs knew how they could
do such and such, but that's why there's the PRP (Personnel Reliability
Program) program, psychological interviews, polygraphs (yeah yeah, not
scientific), and security clearances and background checks.

Not to be dismissive, it's a hole certainly.

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arethuza
Speaking of potential psychological issues, what about General Powers, head of
SAC at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, who was fond of statements like:

 _Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea
is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and
one Russian left alive, we win!_

He's seems to be one of the few people who was actually enthusiastic about the
prospects of starting a (very one sided) nuclear war.

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lionhearted
Being crazy gets you leverage on the negotiation table. Seeming measured and
rational and restrained oftentimes gets you into trouble. See Jimmy Carter and
the Iran hostage crisis, for instance. There's no way that'd happen under a
more aggressive President, like FDR or Nixon or GW.

As the Romans said - "Si vis pacem, para bellum." - "If you wish peace,
prepare for war." Pacifistic, restrained military and civilian leadership
paradoxically can invite violence against you.

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b-man
_Being crazy gets you leverage on the negotiation table. Seeming measured and
rational and restrained oftentimes gets you into trouble. See Jimmy Carter and
the Iran hostage crisis, for instance. There's no way that'd happen under a
more aggressive President, like FDR or Nixon or GW._ [citation needed]

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jon_hendry
See: Kim Jong-Il

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b-man
I was thinking more in these terms:

 _... the entire "madman theory" of coercion was flawed in its essence,
depending as it did on twisted logic that assumed an adversary would respond
to a calculated show of irrationality with something other than irrationality
of its own._ [1]

[1] <http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0614-20.htm>

In that article you can see what kind of danger unchecked assumptions and
arrogance can lead people into, specially when these traits are carried by
people with access to WMD.

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alanh
Well, I don’t think my eyes have ever bugged out so much over an HN submission
title!

⁂

> _The Presidential identification (ID) codes … could delay implementation
> long enough to prevent a rapid response_

To me, a naïve human who doesn’t want to see a nuclear winter, it seems that
we should be optimizing for _human life_ instead of _immediate revenge._ I
would even dare to hope the response to a nuclear launch would be to _roll
over and surrender_ for the greater good. And while I’m no expert in game
theory, I suppose the official line is that guaranteeing _mutually assured
destruction_ was the only way to prevent _all_ nuclear attacks.

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tomjen3
Thats the error nobody ever see in the MAD scenario - until the missiles are
launched, it is absolutely in the interest of both sides to threaten to launch
in the event the other side does so.

The moment the missiles are launched however, the side that didn't launch no
longer has any advantage to launching a counter strike (assuming an all out
strike was launched, not just one with a few missiles) and the leaders have
every advantage to broker a deal for refuge in the other country, as theirs
will soon be uninhabitable.

~~~
arethuza
There have been hints that a number of politicians who might have had to issue
a retaliation order might have refused to do so from purely _moral_ reasons.

In Richard Rhodes _Arsenals of Folly_ a close adviser to Ronald Reagan is
quoted as saying:

"I think deep down he doubted that he could bring himself to strike another
country with [nuclear weapons]"

Somewhat to my surprise, I'm from the UK and was in my teens in the 1980s
where Reagan wasn't exactly portrayed in a positive light, I've found myself
believing that Reagan probably would have had the moral courage to do such a
thing.

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lmz
About issuing orders to fire, some might find this clip from "Yes, Prime
Minister" funny: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUzRJfAc-HU>

edit: actually this one is even more appropriate:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjaAqY_KFdw>

~~~
arethuza
There are also the handwritten "letter of last resort" - which add a
frightfully British aspect to the command and control of nuclear weapons:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort>

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TeMPOraL
After reading this I start to _really_ feel why we don't like 'security by
obscurity'...

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dfox
I think that this is actually pretty good use of security by obscurity. You
cannot prevent well motivated and capable attacker from launching unauthorized
nuclear strike by purely technical means.

Well probably anything related to "tamper proof" security (defending against
attacker who has full uncontrolled access to "secure" device) of anything is
security by obscurity at best (security of such commercial products is often
based on that each device uses unique configuration of countermeasures) and
pure snake oil more often.

In this case whole security of this system really relies on people (and their
belief that there are some technical security measures that they cannot
trivially circumvent) and focusing on technical means too much would actually
divert resources to something that is actually not possible to do perfectly.
USAF probably correctly assumed that relying on people is better approach. I
remember that some (probably DoD-sponsored, in relation to WMD security) study
asserted that only meaningful way to protect system from well funded and
motivated attackers is to not let such attackers near the system (presumably
by means of guarding it).

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philipn
This blog -- Arms Control Wonk -- is absolutely fantastic. The parent post
itself is definitely worth reading, as is almost every post in the blog.

