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and

I'm reminded by the movie WarGames when the nuke officers (not sure the actual designation) are replaced by relays...

I'm just glad the officer-just-doing-his-job expects systems to fail & trust hsi own judgment, instead of our current ever-increasing trust in machines

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In Wargames they detected a massive preemptive attack. One of the things that tipped off the officer in this case was that it was such a small scale attack, which doesn't make sense because it leaves the enemy willing and able to respond.

From the article:

Taught that in case of a real attack the US would have gone on an all-out offensive, Petrov told his bosses the alarm must have been caused by a system malfunction.

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