Keep the nuclear launch codes in an innocent volunteer's chest-cavity (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Keep the nuclear launch codes in an innocent volunteer's chest-cavity (2015)

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72 pointsnotRobot61 comments

Well, the President has men in his service who have killed people before and would not hesitate to do it again at the President's order, be the target innocent or not. So the President would never have to bloody his or her hands and the whole trick would only cost one more senseless death, among the millions to follow immediately after.

But I suppose it's an interesting reflection on the moral implications of granting one person enough power to destroy the entire world.

I'd rather wonder though - can anyone be said to hold such power legitimately, when they have only been given this power by a small minority of the entire population that is potentially affected by the decision (i.e. the US citizens, as opposed to the whole of humanity)?

> So the President would never have to bloody his or her hands

You missed the point. The whole argument is that if POTUS had to kill someone, they wouldn’t make the decision to kill many others. “The winning move is not to play,” as Joshua said in War Games (1983). They wouldn’t actually put the president in the situation, it’s just a sanity check thought experiment. Nukes are expensive posturing- the big stick to hold as you speak softly.

Excellent reference.

I guess they weren't thinking of the current president.

I understand that. But if the POTUS could order someone to do the dirty job for them, then they wouldn't actually have to think about it, so they'd remain removed from the reality of killing someone (or a few million people). So the POTUS doesn't have to play or not play- they are immune to this kind of morality experiment. It's like trying to second-guess god (a non-existent entity). What have we learned from the exercise?

The difference is that the volunteer would be someone walking around with them all the time, so if POTUS wants it or not, they would eventually get to know each other at least a bit, which makes a killing decision more personal (even if not executed by POTUS themselves).

Assuming god isn’t real is an assumption. Metaphysical assumptions aside, I’ve learned that you argue, and that you’ve not learned much from this.

> can anyone be said to hold such power legitimately, when they have only been given this power by a small minority of the entire population that is potentially affected by the decision

Can anyone be said to hold the power to murder millions if not billions legitimately, even if they were selected by a democratic vote?

Here's your writing prompt for today:

Meanwhile, in the Kremlin ...

(Satire)

Meanwhile, in the Kremlin, Putin orders that one nuclear code digit be inserted into the hearts of 20 men. There was widespread controversy when Putin forced them to remove it themselves in a practice fire drill last week. A Kremlin official responded: "Using 20 men has reduced our nuclear response time by 20 times".

wait - does this mean that each heart has a digit and you need to kill 20 men to get the complete code, in which case I would expect response time to increase or does it mean that each of the men has a redundant code so that in case one of them is on the toilet they can still kill another one and fire the nukes without any delays?

the joke is that Putin has ordered the innocents to "remove it themselves" in a fire drill.

Compare 1 individual taking out digits one by one vs 20 individuals taking out 1 digit each.

I think it is that they were forced to kill themselves. So 20 at once, rather than one at a time.

If they had a law mandating an innocent person must be killed to obtain the codes, in true soviet style, Putin would just shoot a random person and then use the codes (that are always with him). Efficient and technically lawful.

Since they are a less open society, we'll never really know, but it seems logical that they have been thinking about the exact same issue. Contrary to common wisdom in the USA, I've yet to see any substantial evidence that the USSR/Russia was/is hot on lobbing nukes on our heads, so it would make sense they have thought about the balance between self-deterrence and second-strike readiness.

Some argue that the Dead Hand/Perimetr system, esp. the doomsday device components, have as much the goal to chill the own guys as deter a Western first strike.

Presidential candidates would publicly behead puppies in order to prove their judgement cannot be distorted.

Why not just eliminate Sole Authority? We should never be one mistake away from Armageddon.

So you're saying we shouldn't entrust the future of life on earth to one idiot? I dunno about this guy.

For the past multiple decades the "launch code" was known throughout the officer corps to be, simply, 00000000000000000. I.e., the whole "nuclear football" scheme was a PR stunt. There is no reason to think its substance has changed.

True, but can you imagine the look on the president's face after he hacked someone's chest open to find out that was the code?

It was one of the greatest hacking ever done by a US President. Sad that it had to come to this but thats on the Democrats. I bet Biden would be to weak to do it. But you can't be weak when it comes to defending the nation. America First!

Yep... I can imagine the face...

You seem to be confusing stupidity with strength. Also confusing violence with strength. All these things are unrelated, except I guess the more stupid one is, the more one needs strength to exert violence...

Or maybe you’ve got so much strength it’s just “easier” - thought can be expensive...

I meant this as a parody but that you take this at face value is just the point I wanted to make.

This feels like a Poe’s law moment.

That's the problem with Poe's law, you can never be sure.

That's not a problem, that _is_ Poe's Law. That you can't be sure.

That was an apparently-unsuccessful reference to this: https://dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25

In any case, descriptive though it is I would argue that there can be a problem associated with Poe's law. Not in the same sense as prescriptions (e.g. Postel's maxim, "be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send"), where you could argue whether or not it's a good principle in general or in specific cases. But from my standpoint as someone using sarcasm to point out the absurdity of something, someone taking me at face value is a problem.

I didn't knew Poe's law. Yes this is a parody and I guess you all know the president I am talking about. This ideas are created with sensible persons in mind. But not all politicians are sensible people

  > True, but can you imagine the look on the
  > president's face after he hacked someone's
  > chest open to find out that was the code?

That's the combination on my luggage!

I was under the impression that that was the code to open the missile, not launch it.

If you watch a video of a silo firing procedure, there is no one code to launch it.

It was supposed to be a code needed to arm the nuclear weapons mounted to the missiles. (It would be sort-of-pointless to launch a missile with warheads that would not pop.)

But it was a scam, an attempt to reassure people that the generals couldn't start a war all by themselves, from a time when politicians were thought not to be even more insane than any general.

Nowadays we rely on the generals to be less batshit insane than a president.

Seems like a good time to drop a link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

Definitely highly sane

Edit: sentence structure

From the Wikipedia page, for ironic appreciation: "For the footballer, see Stanislav Petrov (footballer)."

(The satchel supposedly containing the "launch codes" was called by the press, and maybe the president's minders, the "nuclear football".)

But if there were ever a Hero for the ages, Petrov was it. Achilles can take a hike.

In the UK, there's a similar thing with the royalty.

The military swear loyalty to the crown, not to the government. If, perish the thought, the public elected an incompetent malingering buffoon into the office of Prime Minister [cough], who then ordered the military to do something batshit crazy, the officers could ask the Queen (or whoever is monarch if she ever gives up) for confirmation. If she declined to confirm the orders, then the military had grounds to disregard the orders of the government.

Of course, this assumes that the monarch is sane. The Queen, obviously, no problem. Charles - not so sure. His traumised children (well, the one that is still a member of the family) probably, maybe, but who knows what horrors lurk?

So there is the reverse scenario, where Mad King William orders the military to kill all journalists, and the government has to find a way to stop the military from doing that without breaking their oath to the crown.

Indications are that that particular PM is not the buffoon he plays, but an extremely cynical man who has always got tremendous mileage from pretending to be it.

That is not to indicate he is not, in fact, a different kind of buffoon. But if he is, we don't know what kind.

Let's do a thought experiment : if the above is true then it means that no thought at all has been given to launch security for the most powerful weapons in the USA's inventory. This disregard for national security has been maintained by all presidents since Kennedy and all national security officials as well. During this time any state or non state actor who gained access to the control infrastructure could have issued launch instructions, for example the USSR could have caused a launch at PRC by the USA.

Breathtaking, isn't it? But it doesn't mean that, at all.

All it really means is that we were taken in by a PR scam that had nothing to do with launch security, and everything to do with getting civilians off the backs of serious soldiers who considered themselves better qualified to make decisions than the politicians.

And all it cost to run was to have one of the president's minders carry around a satchel that the press were told had "launch codes" in it. I don't know if the presidents were in on the joke, or even the minders.

So the US nuclear arsenal is commanded by the generals?

We just don't know.

No, the situation is that the security is something you are rather than something you have.

To initiate a launch against PRC, Russia would have had to fake being the President and the entourage including various military brass who would have been able to confirm the identity of the elected official.

Thus the nuclear launch codes served the same purpose as red mercury.

This isn't how the launch orders are issued.

Submarines do not have a voice channel to the president, or to the military command. They receive coded signals that instruct them to take particular actions. Creating the appropriate coded signal is a fundamental part of the launch control chain.

Also if the president is killed, and the vice president and the head of the senate... eventually the question is "who has the codes" - if it was "something you are" then the first thing that an adversary would do is kill the are and then follow up as they pleased while the c&c system flailed.

The codes used to signal submarines are demonstrably not the “nuclear launch codes”. The military hierarchy is established and chain of command is already established for contingencies like “who gives orders when the top brass are assassinated.”

No - they are not the launch codes, but the submarines need a launch authority. Apart from the ones that listen out for The Archers on BBC Radio 4 and then open a letter in a safe.

This is essentially false. There are several redundant safety and security mechanisms protecting nuclear weapons, one of which is the Permissive Action Link (essentially a combination lock on the warhead). This is the component in question which once had the alleged code of 00000000: https://web.archive.org/web/20120511191600/http://www.cdi.or...

The "nuclear football" is a completely separate authentication mechanism for verifying a presidential order, and as far as we know uses codes that rotate on a daily basis.

The key words there are "as far as we know". Fool me once...

As far as we know, the earth is a globe. What point are you trying to make?

That if the government is caught lying about how secure one part of the lock to the Armageddon button is, you have no reason to believe they aren't lying about the other part too. Particularly, if there's a strong incentive for the system to not be secure - which there is, namely, response time.

"As the Last I May Know" [1], winner of this year's Hugo Award for Best Short Story, is based on this proposal. It's certainly a thought-provoking one.

[1]: https://www.tor.com/2019/10/23/as-the-last-i-may-know-s-l-hu...

Sam Harris has a great podcast about nuclear launch codes (among many other things) and how the current setup is really not that great: https://samharris.org/podcasts/210-logic-doomsday/

"My God, that's terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the President's judgment. He might never push the button."

This punchline is what makes this story really, really scary.

Here's a better proposal: Send this professor to orchestrate the invasion of WW2 Japan. He obviously has better ways to deal with a radicalized, ultra nationalist, psycho nation that likes outdo the Nazi in atrocities. Put on a grafana dashboard where he can track how many millions soldiers that would cost as well.

Ignoring the fact that the value of the use of atomic bombs against Japan is heavily debated to this day...

Can you think of anything that might have changed from 1945 to 1981 in terms of geopolitics, such that the use of nuclear weapons by the United States might have led to some sort of global thermonuclear war? In other words- and, excuse me, I'm not very familiar with the history here- was there some other nuclear "superpower" that was around during the 1980s which could, quite easily, destroy all major American population centers, and by all indications would if the U.S. used nuclear weapons against it? And did this other superpower develop its nuclear capability before 1945, or after 1945?

And might there have been some difference in the power of nuclear weapons between Fat Man/Little Boy and those deployed in the early 1980s? That could also make a difference, here.

Any insight here would be greatly appreciated- otherwise it sounds like a really dumb idea to discourage using nuclear weapons against Russia in the 1980s, and I don't know why anybody might want to make that harder.

I guess you and the professor live in the same idealistic, perfect, and flawless suburb, where the sun shines even at night. But the world spans beyond your happy gated hippy community and it's a cruel place.

First and foremost consider who you're up against. All those lovely people in Russia, China, NK, ..., are kept at bay precisely because they know why US ICMBs are named "Minuteman." If you put a speed bump in the way of retaliation, you'll only embolden them. Fighting against an impotent, incapable, and snared opposition is anyone's dream. Why do you think China so casually runs concentration camps today, right now? And Russia so casually annexed territory of a foreign country - which, btw, handed over their nukes to Russia in exchange for protection.

"Ignoring the fact that the value of the use of atomic bombs against Japan is heavily debated to this day..."

The dimensions of the planet is also heavily debated, but that doesn't change the facts of it. The two nukes ended the war then and there, Japan capitulated without a single soldier setting foot on the mainland. Only someone to whom empathy is an alien concept and completely out of his mind can argue that invasion would have been better. If you have the imagination, picture yourself in a boat en route to certain death, you and millions like you, having to fight for every strand of grass against an enemy that considers their (unseen) emperor a god for which they will gladly die for, because it's honorable.

  >Put on a grafana dashboard where he can track how
  > many millions soldiers that would cost as well.

Kill civilians in a nuclear fireball order to protect soldiers from going to conventional battle?

Being a civilian doesn't grant you special plot shield. Civilians move the country's industry, which is directed towards the war effort. War is not about a front, somewhere away, in the distance, where soldiers throw lead at each other at high speeds. Everyone is involved in it one way or another. These were industrial cities related to that war effort, not summer seaside camps.

Besides... the drawn out and bloody WW, taken all the exhaustion, considering who they were up against, the cost of it...

  > Being a civilian doesn't grant you special plot shield.

In my army it does. We take all precautions to shield civilians where practical. I'm an infantryman and I've seen soldiers continue to take fire to protect Arab civilians from getting caught in the middle. I cannot tell you if by policy that is a result of every time the Israeli army so much as scratches an Arab civilian that it becomes international news, but it is ingrained in most soldiers personal moral beliefs as well.

There is no lack of counterexamples that you could google, but as policy and as most soldiers' morals, protecting civilians - from both sides - is as paramount to us as the Prime Directive is to Picard.

What nation do you represent that "being a civilian doesn't grant you special plot shield"? I thought that was standard military procedure to avoid civilian casualties since at least the second world war.

> In my army it does. We take all precautions to shield civilians where practical.

In Afghtanistan, the Taliban represented well under 1% of the population(1). In WWII 31% of the German population, and 9% of the American population, were in military service. Those are just two very different wars, fought at very different scales.

A good example of this is in WWII it seems that it was fairly common for planes to strafe farmers and their equipment when they got an opportunity(3). In Afghanistan this would be incredibly counter productive, as so few Afghans were actually fighting. But in WWII? When a full 1/3rd of the population is in the military - and much of the rest is working in the industries necessary to keep the military running - ethics aside, it's easy to see how anything that reduced food supplies would have a direct effect on the effectiveness of the military.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban - reports 60k Taliban / 37 million Afghtanistan population = 0.16%

2) http://historynet.com/what-percentage-of-the-population-serv...

3) https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/3nla50/allie...

Nobody is talking about indiscriminate murder of randomly picked civilians out of spite. But when those civilians are the machine that drives the war, they become part of that war. That is why in a total war between nations you send hundreds of planes to carpet bomb relevant cities (incl. their population) to cripple enemy nation's ability to keep waging the war against you. They are not sent to bomb ski resorts or villages where nothing happens.

Do you consider someone that puts together IEDs for someone else to deploy an untouchable person that your need to leave alone? This person is unarmed, he's not a combatant, he's no threat to you, he just googled how to put a bunch of stuff together.

I know for myself, that if i find myself in the middle of a war i don't believe in, i'd pick my shit up and leave immediately, go anywhere else. I wouldn't just stay where i am, coding my web apps next to a goddamn bomb factory or HQ of some kind in complete denial of my surroundings, the current situation, and reality itself, while bombs are being air mailed to said factory/HQ next to me. But if chose to stay either because i want to be part of that war or am simply clueless, i can't blame anyone but me for the situation i find myself in.

Maybe if your occupation is coding web apps online, then you can pick up and go.

Many of the Arab families in the area have a dozen children per wife, and live off agriculture, herding, or have workshops, bakeries, and the like. None of these people could even move their families, much less their livelihoods.

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