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Comment by jafo | Hacker News Reader

Whatever the details are, I am interested if it set a precedent or not.

You mean in terms of the leaders of the military asserting their right to be involved in decisions like when to activate the football?

No precedents were set here, what the general did is just leadership. he explained what the rules were explicitly to his followers, to ensure that trump didn't collar one of his followers and somehow ram a nuclear strike through without proper approval.

See "Operation of the Nuclear Football": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_football#Operation involves informing the SoD and JCS.

naturally, it's far more complicated than that, https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2021-06/features/nuclear-lau... and no precedents were set in this situation.

I might have the timeline wrong but I was under the impression that HS. Pelosi was the one whom initially pressured Milley (or other DoD official?) to remove's Trump's access to the nuclear football as it was being casually carried around in the chamber, during the final hours of the electoral college vote.

It wasn't just that Milley spoke to his staff or even to the Speaker, but he also called his counterpart in China to warn them[1]. This is at minimum coup-like, but arguably more treason-like.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/15/milley-held-secret-calls-wit...

> and no precedents were set in this situation.

Time will tell.

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