On: Richard Clarke: China's Cyberassault On America

[Jach]

And sometimes they might refuse to launch on targets in the enemy's country. http://lesswrong.com/lw/jq/926_is_petrov_day/

The scenario is from the Terminator series.. I always thought it was simpler to just press "LAUNCH" than to reconfigure all the targets. From the perspective of Skynet, the Russian response would be faster than relocating all the missiles in the US, then launching, so that's the course of action.

[nradov → Jach]

Supposedly (no way to verify) with US and Russian missiles there is now always a targeting step required before launch. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_%E2%80%93_Russia_...

[arethuza → nradov]

I suspect that they only agreed to that once it became possible to retarget missiles very quickly.