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> Why do we need a person to transcribe a machine message

Because it prevented World War III.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...

> he's going to send them anyway

The good judgment of Stanislav Petrov shows that this isn't guaranteed.

Automation that can harm people always requires a human fail-safe. Leaving judgment to a mechanism only implies either hubris that assumes all possible situations have been accounted for, or enough narcissism to not care about the (possibly deadly) errors.

Sounds like confirmation bias. If an algorithm had made the right call against human judgment, would you be arguing for the opposite position?

It's more that we don't have strong enough decision making computers/algorithms to rival a human's capabilities in cases where the action (in this case not having lots of weapons but apparently only one being launched) isn't exactly a binary decision. A computer could theoretically have advocated that this wasn't an actual nuclear launch, but the only way that would happen is if a programmer had been clever enough to have written an algorithm to account for the situation when writing the transcription machine.

A human can currently do a much better job when the outcome is that millions of people die , especially if its a sensor error. That's not to say that humans are infallible, just that we do not currently have the level of AI required to replace one.

In Dr. Strangelove, the absurd behavior of buffoonish humans contributes to the doomsday scenario. Idiots blindly following the orders of a madman on one side, and psychos constructing a completely automated self-destruct mechanism attached to a retaliatory weapon on the other side.

Both are bad, but people playing the game at all, were the real problem.

You know that was a satirical fictional film, right?

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/almost-everything-in...

  With great reluctance, Eisenhower agreed 
  to let American officers use their nuclear 
  weapons, in an emergency, if there were no 
  time or no means to contact the President. 
  Air Force pilots were allowed to fire their 
  nuclear anti-aircraft rockets to shoot down 
  Soviet bombers heading toward the United 
  States. And about half a dozen high-level 
  American commanders were allowed to use far 
  more powerful nuclear weapons, without 
  contacting the White House first, when 
  their forces were under attack and “the 
  urgency of time and circumstances clearly 
  does not permit a specific decision by the 
  President, or other person empowered to act 
  in his stead.”
 
  Unbeknownst to both Kubrick and George, a  
  top official at the Department of Defense  
  had already sent a copy of “Red Alert” to  
  every member of the Pentagon’s Scientific  
  Advisory Committee for Ballistic Missiles.  
  At the Pentagon, the book was taken  
  seriously as a cautionary tale about what  
  might go wrong.

  A decade after the release of “Strangelove,”
  the Soviet Union began work on the 
  Perimeter system - a network of sensors and 
  computers that could allow junior military 
  officials to launch missiles without 
  oversight from the Soviet leadership. 
  Perhaps nobody at the Kremlin had seen the 
  film. Completed in 1985, the system was 
  known as the Dead Hand. Once it was 
  activated, Perimeter would order the launch 
  of long-range missiles at the United States 
  if it detected nuclear detonations on 
  Soviet soil and Soviet leaders couldn’t be 
  reached.

I believe that's check and mate, old chap?

Also some of the quotes from US military leaders at the time sound like something from Stranglove:

"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!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Power

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_(nuclear_war)

> Accounts differ as to the degree of automation of Dead Hand... more recent sources indicate the system was semi-automatic. In a 2007 article, Ron Rosenbaum quotes Blair as saying that Dead Hand is "designed to ensure semi-automatic retaliation to a decapitating strike." Rosenbaum writes, "Of course, there's a world of difference between a 'semi-automatic' doomsday device and the totally automatic—beyond human control—doomsday device."

> How comes he writes so well?

Why does it surprise you that someone in the military can write so well? There's a great history of brilliant writers and poets coming from the military.

Many people join the military before doing something else with their lives so you get a tremendous mix of talents and passions in units. I found that a surprising number of people turn out to be excellent sketchers and painters when working in the military, for example.

Yep. Some of the best writing most of the world never sees happens in internal memos in large organizations. Leaders need to be able to communicate clearly, memorably, etc. Any decent manager typically learns to write well in order to get shit done.

Likewise, one of the most poignant commentaries on life and death I've ever read came out of the military. I wish I could find it again, it was on HN within the last year or so I believe.

Because you can't account for all eventualities. He is presumably trained in other aspects of maintaining and operating the base.

And probably more importantly: because presumably when given that order, he might know some context a machine doesn't and actually disobey.

From the bottom of the article:

"John Noonan is a policy advisor and defense writer. He served as a Captain in the United States Air Force, assigned to the 321st Missile Squadron in Cheyenne, Wyoming."

It sounds like someone wants funding to replace a bunch of "outdated, prone-to-error" tech with something new and expensive.

"he's going to send them anyway"

Maybe not, which is why they have the daily intelligence briefs.

Maybe he has a ghost writer.