Hacker News Reader

Comment by strangattractor | Hacker News Reader

Begs the question - why does it take 2 people to launch an ICBM but only one to make a $444 billion trade?

Perhaps the USAF nuclear launch system designers were relatively decent humans, who actually cared about the effects of their actions upon the world?

This begs the more important question... Why does it take only one more person to end the world than to change some numbers in excel?

Capitalism. Seriously. Each owner decides how to allocate resources. Citigroup decided to let one person make wide-ranging decisions.

Wonder how much the loss was. Surely more than $78 million. Citigroup doesn't say the policy has changed (substantively) so I guess the advantages of this… uh… nimbleness must be in nine digits too.

My point was that 2 is really not enough to end the world. Damn their money, it's their problem. Launching nukes should require 200, not 2.

Suppose it actually required twenty, or 200. In that case, would the relevant organisation publish the truth or rather lie and say "two"? I think lying makes a lot of sense. Telling the truth would be like saying "go ahead and kill the most accessible of these 20/200 people".

So I don't think the "2" is very likely to be true.

It could be 200 out of 20k, or something like that. Though yes, you're right, lying makes sense.

It takes more than two. Two is enough to launch, but other silos have override authority. So if two people went renegade they could still be shut down.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com