Could Cyber-Terrorists Provoke Nuclear Attacks? 183
Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports that according to a study commissioned by the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND), a joint initiative of the Australian and Japanese Governments, terrorists could use information warfare techniques to make a nuclear attack more likely — triggering a catastrophic chain of events that may be an easier alternative 'than building or acquiring a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb themselves.' While the possibility of a radical group gaining access to actual launch systems is remote, the study suggests that terrorists could focus on feeding in false information further down the chain — or spreading fake information to officials in a carefully orchestrated strike. According to the study 'Hacking Nuclear Command and Control' [PDF], cyber-terrorists could 'provoke a nuclear launch by spoofing early warning and identification systems or by degrading communications networks.' Since command and control systems are placed at a higher degree of exploitation due to the need for rapid decisions under high pressure with limited intelligence, cyber-terrorists 'would not need deception that could stand up over time; they would only need to be believable in the first 15 minutes or so.'"
Discussed This Report Four Days Ago (Score:4, Informative)
Really, I'm less worried about the cyber part of one of these attacks and am more so worried about the weakest link in the chain: the human factor. Social, over-the-shoulder or 'soft' hacks would be the few ways left to gain access. Mental manipulation like keeping someone in the dark would be the best way to scare them into action. It's not like someone's magically overcoming the physical barrier that exists between the internet and these secure networks on which sensitive information and control are relegated--you need a human to exploit.
At least this time around the title's gone from
Hacking Nuclear Command and Control
to
Could Cyber-Terrorists Provoke Nuclear Attacks?
Which is a lot more accurate but a lot less newsworthy.
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and am more so worried about the weakest link in the chain: the human factor
that's why I'll never trust nuclear weapons.
With conventional weapons, we can always step back at time (or little after time), attackers are not isolated from main command when sent, and a spoofed war declaration can be reverted, even after one accidental bombing (this creating some serious diplomatic issues though...)
With nuclear weapons, no stepping back of any way (that I know), and after the first strike, the war is over, or forever.
Since I don't know much more than what movies told me I may be w
Re:Discussed This Report Four Days Ago (Score:5, Insightful)
It's no the weapons which you don't trust. It's the humans with them.
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Just look at how easily antiviruses erase innocent files.
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Something tells me that the triggering mechanisms are a bit more complex and failsafe than some shitty antivirus program.
As evidence of this assertion, never once has a nuclear weapon accidentally detonated (and there sure are lots of them...)
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How the FUCK would I know??
I don't have any *innocent* files.....
Re:Discussed This Report Four Days Ago (Score:5, Insightful)
With nuclear weapons, no stepping back of any way (that I know), and after the first strike, the war is over, or forever.
Well, that's kind of the point, isn't it? So long as everyone knows that the missiles can't be recalled, that fact becomes part of the deterrence.
Makes everyone very, very careful.
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No matter how careful you are, Murphy's Law is always around...
Sure. But, we can engineer the probability of failure down to a level where the costs of not having nukes will be higher.
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Personally I think the odds of my living to see a nuclear exchange that kills a
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... but how much do you trust some emerging power that just figured out how to go nuclear? Do you trust the rebels in a coup that siezes control of a nuclear arsenal?
I don't trust them at all. That's why we have all those nukes. It makes it crystal-fucking-clear that we can destroy them utterly. Every single person in a newly-minted nuclear power knows that. We make sure they know that. As long as they know they will never ever win a nuclear war against us, it doesn't matter who's in power.
Personally I think the odds of my living to see a nuclear exchange that kills at least a billion people are greater than 1 in 4.
Where do you get that number? And who exactly would the exchange be between?
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I look at what we did to Saddam Hussein - made up a story about him, set impossible conditions for him to meet, then used that as an excuse to capture and execute him. In this case, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, but it would not be unreasonable on a purely selfish personal basis for somebody in his position (facing extinction with no way out) to lash out with everything he's got.
Okay. I see what you're saying. Though, I don't think that kind of situation is terribly likely for a few reasons.
First, we didn't do that to a nuclear power. We knew Saddam didn't have nukes. I would think that situation would have played out much differently, and without an invasion, if he had. (Of course, the unintended consequence of this kind of thinking is what makes nuclear research so important to these kinds of countries.)
Second, sure the leader may be driven to suicidal extremes. But, there's alwa
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I agree the US will probably not be involved (though it's not impossible - I believe McManara when he says the Cuban missile crisis amounted to a coin toss that could have gone either way). But there are a lot of less stable governments than ours with nukes, eventually two of them will get into a game of chicken. Who knows, maybe some effective defense will be invented before that occurs (though I can't imagine what it wou
Re:Discussed This Report Four Days Ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's look at Pakistan vs India. If we assume a radical Islamic faction gets control in Pakistan, and elects to use part or all their arsenal against particularly Hindu dominated portions of India, the direct casualties on the Indian side would be in the 1's to 10's of millions range. That's because the Pakistanis would be using relatively low yield Plutonium based devices, but their missiles are inaccurate enough and take long enough to prep that cities are about their only effective targets. An Indian retaliatory strike would involve some actual H-Bombs (which they don't admit having still in their arsenal, but they built and tested several designs), and probably more focus on pure military targets, but India has multiple Islamic neighbors, and they have made it clear in the past that they are not real concerned about fallout on those nations in a Pakistan/India exchange. A safe lowball estimate on total casualties is upwards of 200 Million. That's assuming India doesn't decide to kill the Indonesian navy and some other resources under Islamic regime control as a just in case. Could that happen? If it did, would that push total casualties over a billion? The best answer I ever heard on both those was 'not highly probable, but just maybe'. No one really wants to commit to a lower number, even if a billion seems a little high.
Then there's the claim that Israel has a secret doctrine that in the event of a nuclear attack from an Islamic power on their major cities, they will coldly and deliberately kill Mecca and as many great centers of the Muslim faith as they can hit. The idea there is that the Koran supposedly says that all believers who fail to prevent the loss of the ability to make the journey to Mecca will burn in hell forever regardless of what else they do in their faith (or some Muslim factions have interpreted various verses in a way that justifies Jehad as physical violence, but also implies this, so if they insist it's true, the idea is give them the negative side of the claim.).
It's hard to see people clinging to their religion if they are doctrinally a whole generation all condemned to hell down to the youngest born child and beyond no matter what they do. But it's also quite possible this would lead to a tremendous number of fanatics willing to die for the cause if their Mullahs assure them there's an escape clause in their somewhere, and a war that would have to be fought to the last fanatic on either side. I'd say that exchange could easily build into a Gigadeath or more.
The biggest doubt I have about this scenario is the claim for secret Israeli plans seems to come from some of the very Muslim fanatics that you'd think it would be a big de-motivator for them to seek nukes of their own if they really believed it. That seems exceptionally illogical unless they are very confident it's just a claim they made up.
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Just because they know doen't mean they care.
If you kill an infidel you go to heaven and get sixty virgins, plus there's an all you can eat buffet. Didn't you get the memo?
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If you kill an infidel you go to heaven and get sixty virgins, plus there's an all you can eat buffet.
Do you still get the buffet if your actions cause the US to destroy Mecca?
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Hmm, good guys with nuclear weapons, weapons designed to kill millions of people at a throw. Sounds like a misnomer to me, much like military intelligence. Goods guys do not have or develop mass murdering weapons, you are really going to have to settle for not quite so evil guys with weapons of mass destruction, otherwise you really are just fooling yourself much the same as they try to fool everyone else with PR=B$ (I hear there are top profits in all kinds of human killing weapons, really sick, huh ?, HU
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"basically forcing every other country to adopt nuclear weapons", Wow!! Hey, yer right! We're forcing Saudi Arabia to want nukes by forcing Iran to have nukes so they can threaten Israel which needs its nukes to defend against Iran...how sneaky of us. And Indonesia, we're encouraging India to have nukes so they can threaten Pakistan which we supported so they can have nukes, so that then Indonesia feels its needs nukes to defend against India should India target their brothers in Pakistan. And the Japanese,
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MAD assumes rationality.
Wars are not started by rational people.
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MAD assumes rationality.
Wars are not started by rational people.
There are degrees of rationality. And MAD works for pretty much all of them except people who are completely off their rockers'. Don't find many of those kinds of people running nuclear powers (Yes, I'm including Iran, NK, and Pakistan.)
Re:Discussed This Report Four Days Ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Where MAD falls apart is when the leaders don't give a rat's ass about the civilian population.
I would say that recent events in Iran make it pretty clear that the civilian population doesn't matter all that much to the leaders. North Korea is at that level or perhaps worse. If the military leadership in either country could be confident of survival I don't see MAD being a deterrent at all.
So what if 80% of the civilian population is wiped out?
Re:Discussed This Report Four Days Ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Where MAD falls apart is when the leaders don't give a rat's ass about the civilian population.
I would say that recent events in Iran make it pretty clear that the civilian population doesn't matter all that much to the leaders. North Korea is at that level or perhaps worse. If the military leadership in either country could be confident of survival I don't see MAD being a deterrent at all.
So what if 80% of the civilian population is wiped out?
You realize that both of those countries are (or will be) able to field no more than a handful (at most) of nuclear weapons, right? And, that neither has the capability to disrupt our own volley of nukes.
Neither of them is able to "win" a nuclear war. Even if the leadership survives, and 80% of the population is killed, they won't really have a country left to lead, let alone maintain a military to defend against anything. It still doesn't make any sense for them to use nukes.
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Non state actors do not give a shit to the population of the host country, and they are too dispersed to be counter-nuked. There are very little to lose for them to initiate a first strike.
Sure, but as long as there are enemies who will be deterred by MAD, we still need it. But, what do we lose against these diffuse types of enemies by having MAD capability?
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I would say that recent events in Iran make it pretty clear that the civilian population doesn't matter all that much to the leaders.
You are mistaken there. Lives of individual people definitely don't matter at all to those leaders, but overall population count definitely does - it's the productivity of that population, whether in factories or on the fields of battle, that keeps them afloat.
Simply put, when you play Starcraft, you probably don't care about the life on one particular unit, but you do care to have them in sufficient numbers to defend against the enemy. Entering into a mutual nuclear strike exchange where all your units die
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Where MAD falls apart is when the leaders don't give a rat's ass about the civilian population.
That statement would cover the UK's (and probably many other countries) attitude toward public nuclear shelters. There aren't any. They didn't spend a penny on it. The feeble argument they made was that a shelter can't take a direct strike, so you really only need to protect people from fallout, which they can do by preparing their homes appropriately. This is a thoroughly specious argument though. There certainly is a zone of destruction where a shelter won't save you, but there is also a wide zone where
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Wars should be started by rational people. Then they'd have a much better chance of being properly used as one of the last tools of resolving State v. State issues and not another plank in some party's platform.
Unfortunately "police actions" tend to be started by very irrational people and police actions are much easier to start, harder to stop, and avoid all the formalities entailed in an actual declaration of war.
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Re:Discussed This Report Four Days Ago (Score:5, Insightful)
If you must have nuclear armed subs, arm each one with one low-yield nuke. Any more and you are just begging for an accident.
I think you're missing the concept of "assured destruction" in Mutually Assured Destruction.
An american missile sub can have 20 missiles, with 8x50kt warheads per missile. That's 160 nuclear warheads that can be targeted independently and can each cause substantial casualties if aimed at civilian targets. But that's what it's meant to be - a guaranteed "revenge" weapon, that is fully capable of demolishing or severely crippling a whole nation, even if ALL of the ground nukes are disabled by a first strike. The terror such a weapon commands, is precisely the reason why safety is assured.
This is why small nuclear powers are so much less stable. India and Pakistan are at a much higher risk of using nuclear weapons in the field against each other than US and Russia, simply because neither of them have the capability of destroying the other.
That being said, as has been mentioned previously, MAD relies on rational players to work.
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Re:Discussed This Report Four Days Ago (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, unless one of the "some of the crew" include the Captain, they can't actually arm the weapons. And if they have the captain, well, there are other people they have to have, any one of which can make the weapons unusable.
Plus, of course, the boats with the missiles are either underwater (and therefore the "group of people" can't reach it to take it over), or tied up alongside a subtender full of sailors and marines, in a port full of sailors and marines, all of whom have a very bad attitude about the notion of stealing a boomer.
Aside from this being impossible (there is no scenario where an "incomplete detonation" can occur - nukes have been present on aircraft that crashed without doing anything other than laying there), there aren't actually too many "populated areas" in the middle of the ocean where these boats spend their time.
Because the USSR isn't the only threat conceivable. It never was, and never will be.
This ignoring the fact that there has never been an accidental detonation of a nuclear device, in ANY of the nuclear powers. So why assume that the risk is meaningful?
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While I 100% agree with your post - nicely written, by the way - I can answer your last question. People get in hysterics about nuclear weapons not because the risk is high, but because the impact is.
In security, we use a calculation that goes something like this: Annualized loss expectancy is equal to likelihood times impact. Now, if you take that calculation for something like "getting hit by a bus", the impact is generally one person's life, so the likelihood has to be insanely high (call it 25000 percen
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True enough. There are, after all, a lot of very stupid people in the world.
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I must have dreamed about the Cuban missile crisis.
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You must have missed the keyword "only"....
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It's highly unlikely to trigger a nuclear warhead as a result of a crash or fire. However there is such a thing as partial detonation. Implosion type devices are very timing sensitive - it's one of the most tricky parts of the design; get that wrong and you get a "fizzle".
There are also variable yield weapons tha
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Ah, but you do remember the accidental deployment, for which that top officer was fired over? When they flew nuclear weapons across the country without "knowing" about it?
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That doesn't stop the US and a lot of other nuclear armed countries fitting nuclear weapons on just about everything that flies or sails.
Nor should it.
Really, having a few nuclear ICBMs is simply sane with other hostile countries. However, loading submarines with multiple warheads is not. If you must have nuclear armed subs, arm each one with one low-yield nuke. Any more and you are just begging for an accident.
What you describe is not a credible nuclear deterrent. To be effective, a deterrent needs to make launching a first-strike so unthinkably catastrophic for the aggressor, that there would be no way to "win". If we implemented the kind of deterrent you advocate, a nuclear war would be "winnable", and much more likely.
Remember, an accidental launch of a nuclear weapon is not the worst-case scenario.
The problem with the Human Factor (Score:2, Funny)
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There is no point to this. The whole reason for these two "articles" good old fearmongering, to push trough an agenda, that is most likely about money and power.
The "reporter" profits from it. The "politican" profits from it. And we are the cattle that they need to do it.
Every discussion about it, is by definition pointless.
That should be clear from the wording of the "headline" alone.
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wtf? Fox News is Fear-mongering on /. what is this world comming to? "Tonights News: Terrorist Hacker Zombies Threaten Nuclear Apocalypse, Cancer Knows Where You Live, and Someday You Will Die! But First: Ten easy ways to loose weight while sucking down Double McWhopper Valu-Meals!
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Spelling flames always contain misspellings.
"Elicit".
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It wasn't a spelling flame, I simply doubted the validity of the word accurate. But kudos and my sincere apologeese.
Hmm? (Score:2)
Perhaps we could set up a security protocal called Tic-Tac-Toe?
Oh wait . . .
"I'm afraid I can't do that Dave."
OH SNAP!
Hard To Say (Score:3, Interesting)
Without knowing how precisely nuclear arsenals, launch codes and the like are stored, I think it's really hard to say how likely or unlikely it is. I'd like to think that the systems and people involved are heavily secured, but if we look at some of the stuff that's gone walking out of a secured US facilities, sometimes you gotta wonder.
In other news, Social Engineering is dangerous (Score:2, Insightful)
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And yet you fall for the social engineering that this "article" is?
I guess the shoemaker has the worst shoes. ^^
Those terrorists... (Score:2, Funny)
Bastards !
yeah, that's my way of showing why I disagree with nuclear strikes, without repeating the same message that Kubrick's movie told us long time ago
I assume my point here is pretty obvious (if you have seen the movie, of course.)
Interesting Defense (Score:4, Insightful)
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Or in other words: Think before you act.
Who would have thought of that?? Me not. I'm to busy doing things. :P
See Sum of All Fears (Score:2, Insightful)
Nuke alert when Ron Artest visits WH w/Lakers (Score:2)
Terrorists just wait for the day the LA Lakers visit the White House to celebrate NBA Title with new teammate Ron Artest tagging along. Terrorists set off false alarm at White House. Artest freaks out, attacks Air Force officer carrying football, strips to his underwear, then runs around West Wing in his drawers. While entire Secret Service detail distracted chasing Artest, terrorists sneak into White House and takes football off arm of unconscious Air Force officer.
And *specifically*, you need to read (Score:5, Interesting)
the part of Sum of All Fears where we almost *do it to ourselves*: a major plot point hinges on one Good Guy mis-hearing "fifteen kt" as "one fifty kt" from another Good Guy -- the first being a potential terrorist nuke, while the second "would have to be" the Russians.
There's followup as to how hard it is to push the *clean* data down the pipe afterwards as well.
If that's not a sufficiently cautionary tale as to just how loose and messy things would actually be in a first-strike-response situation for you... then you're not imaginative enough, and probably much happier.
It's amazing how hard it is to think when you think someone's about to nuke your country.
It's somewhat analogous to the traditional election supervisor's prayer: "Please, dear Ghod, let it be a landslide".
Only, um, in reverse.
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If I recall the book correctly, it was a weapon that was supposed to be thermonuclear, but it was broken due to the bad guy's killing off the scientist a few seconds too soon (resulting in impure tritium being used). However, the reflection of the blast off the snow made the actual yield appear larger to the satellites.
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You are right in that. In the book the 15 kT yield was due to He-3 contamination of the tritrium due to too long time 'on the shelf' in the scientist's basement (He was former east german nuclear scientist).
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to mars one day with a hammer.
only an idiot would resort to this sort of attack. (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't need a nuclear weapon to fight against cyber-terrorism. All I need is my pocket knife.
Knife cuts fiber-optic cable. I win.
Seriously, the simple answer is to disable their ability to connect to our computers. That doesn't take bombs, though bombs work just fine.
Only a warmongering technophobe would resort to nuclear weapons.
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Indeed. We have plenty of modern weapons with the destructive capacity of a small nuclear device without the radioactive fallout that warmongering technophiles can use instead, such as Fuel Air bombs, which have the added advantage of being incendiary and causing fires which will burn long after the initial explosion. As for mass casualties, our warmongers will just have to be a little bit more patient civilians take time to die of their woun
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Rock blunts knife. I win!
This is bullshit... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Cyberspace is real, and so is the risk that comes with it,"
Did someone stopped to think this is the kind of alarming news that can elevate simple computer hackers to dangerous international terrorists.
15 minutes of Fame (Score:2)
they would only need to be believable in the first 15 minutes or so
Because the government moves that fast. Really.
how about (Score:2)
Insufficient Knowledge = Inaccurate Results (Score:5, Informative)
This paper shows a significant misunderstanding of the command and control structure and procedures at STRATCOM (formerly SAC), National Command Authority (NCA) and other key elements of the process. I am waiting for the author to explain how the attacker will obtain the encryption codes to MILSTAR, SLFCS or any of the other communication channels into a Minuteman Launch Control Facility or the equivalent communication channels going to bomber squadrons, submarines and other force components with nuclear capability. Then there are enable codes, launch codes and various other keys that would be needed. The article also fails to address safeguards in place. One needs to only examine the "incidents" that have occurred in real life, such as a exercise tape accidentally being loaded at SAC, prompting incoming ICBM warnings, to see that these procedures worked even 20 or 30 years ago, and they hve only been improved since then.
Having worked on the unauthorized launch studies for Peacekeeper (the decommissioned ICBM system often referred as MX), I can tell you the author did not have the data needed to be able to conduct this study, much less draw any valid conclusions
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I would bet the author thought the machines were running on Windows XP/Vista hooked up to the Intarwebs.
People are constantly underestimating how hard it is to even send a packet on military or secure government fiber, satellite, etc in the first place. It's not as easy as the movies make it out be, and Matthew Broderick could have never dialed up a modem connected to W.O.P.R
News articles are misleading too. People think that when they hear the Pentagon was hacked, it means that the *really* important stu
You misunderstand the purpose (Score:2)
The purpose is to conflate hacker with terrorist.
so hackers == terrorists in the minds of the people and politicians.
Could you justify draconian laws against teenage nuisances? It's much easier to create the laws you need against indefensible groups; paedophiles, terrorists etc. So you just need to make more people into terrorists and paedophiles.
Your standard propaganda.
death wears bunny slippers (Score:2)
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/12/most-awesomel-2/ [wired.com]
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/tag/mabmp/ [wired.com]
maybe if they hack into WOPR (Score:2)
maybe if they hack into WOPR.
Ummm... Red Storm Rising? (Score:2)
Why *ISN'T* Tom Clancy one of Obama-lhama's defense Czars?
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doesn't have by be cyber or nuclear (Score:2)
There was a story some time ago saying that the US military suspected Ahmed Chalabi of being an Iranian double agent who deliberately fed the USA government bad intel on Iraq to start a war that would destabilize the region and benefit Iran and the Shiites. I saw that story in the print news (I don't watch TV, so I can't speak to that) for about 2 days, and then it vanished.
Anyway, the war in Iraq certainly helped anti-US elements (Al Quaeda etc) with finances and recruitment. It removed Saddam Hussein
File under: "look what you made us do" (Score:2)
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Plus, they are not the only thing subject to social engineering. How about air strikes? Regular missiles? Those can do some serious damage, and could lead to WWIII. Especially if nobody has Mutually Assured Destruction to worry about.
biologicals (Score:3, Interesting)
I am more concerned over biological attacks. There's a possibility now, what with the fast advances in this tech, that some group/state even a deranged individual could unleash something quite bad. And if they can construct such a virus or bacteria in advance, perhaps they could also construct any vaccine or treatment needed so they wouldn't worry about getting infected themselves. Or even worse, some nutjob who just hated everyone just might not care, a suicide attack.
An attack could pass as
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Nuclear weapons are even more traceable than that. In fact, each breeder reactor has a certain "fingerprint" in terms of the material it generates, and I'm sure these fingerprints are widely known. By analyzing the aftermath it would be possible to tell from the isotopes which reactor(s) produced the fissile material. This would tell you where the device was built, even if it were a stolen warhead somehow detonated manually.
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But how to tell where a biological really came from if all of a sudden it just "appears" someplace and starts to spread, or who was responsible for any retaliation strikes, or even if it is a "natural mutation" or man made?
Or just go for widespread infection, if you pumped out a massive amount of germs in downtown of a major city you would overload everything and all attempts at containment, particularly once people start dying and panicing. Sure it'd be an obvious attack but really nowhere to point the finger and with >1 million that is or will be infected everything would go to hell.
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For reference, see Frank Herbert's "The White Plague".
Damn book has about three times as many words as it needs, but was a great chilling read.
Re:Can we go ahead with the Nuclear Disarmament al (Score:4, Insightful)
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The interesting thing is that The Great War, The War to End All Wars was World War I, which preceded World War II and introduced the horrors of chemical weapons and machine guns, and WWI pulled America out of one of its most isolationist periods.
Depending on which countries you pick there was less than 20 years between "The Last War" and, well, the next war.
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and the only reason that Soviet Russia did was that the people were brainwashed
Why do you believe that Soviet Russia "wanted to fight" any more than e.g. the United States did?
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Conflict has been and always will be
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BS. I'm sorry, but as a veteran I have to say BS.
Young men wanted war? Are you nuts? Read accounts of the civil war. Read about the effect Napoleon had on france during his little escapade. Read about the mexican-american war. And don't just read the winners' stories.
War is, and always has been, hell. I don't know if you simply played too much Civ 4 or what, but no one but leaders ever want war (at least, they don't want it bad enough to actually die for it in great numbers). Those guys who talk about war c
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All of them? No. But it wouldn't surprise me if a significant number saw it as an opportunity - for glory, loot or just to kick ass.
But that's your loophole - perception. "Brave $US! The $THEM hate us and if we don't get them first they'll kill us all! Remember $PAST_EVENT". You make them want to. It's left as an exercise for the reader to fill in the variables. Bonus point
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This persists today, there is a certain romanticism with being first up onto the beach and punching a Nazi in the face. I wont say this is a US only phenomena but a lot of US romanticism tends to forget that the vast majority of the wermacht that we western Allies engaged were avera
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Actually...
According to 2004 report to Congress (linked by Wiki) the new Jericho III missile can reach most of North America.
They also have subs. German made, no less.
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"Israel, a nation the size of a small US state"
While (probably) technically correct, I think this comparison gives the wrong impression of Israels geographical size. I believe most people think of something rather big when the word US state is used, even if you qualify it with the word small.
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Wow. I really cannot understand why this is a troll. Simple maybe but not a troll. Must be attracting trigger happy nerds with this headline.
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Funny spot, which amazingly, I hadn't already seen.
But, y'know: if you're a young Mafioso on your first date, it's probably actually pretty cool if someone tries to kill you.
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As opposed, say, to the "tactical nuclear weapons" that we've had since the 60's? Or don't you remember Atomic Annie?
And the Pershing missile?
And....
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The whole point behind the nuclear weapon is that it is a weapon so terrifying that no one dares risk a fight with one. I find it absolutely hilarious that the administration that is saying we need to pursue Iraq/Iran/Korea for their desire to build and use nuclear weapons was also trying to develop nuclear weapons that were easier to use...
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It's not as simple as you're trying to portray it. What the Bush administration wanted was nuclear ground-penetrating weapons. Whether or not such weapons are more likely to be used is a matter of some debate. You're assuming they would make it easier to "go nuclear" on someone because the damage wouldn't be widespread. But I don't think that's the case - it's hard to imagine a bomb that's big enough to do the job but doesn't kick up a whole hell of a lot of fallout. And the first use any kind of nucle
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What the Bush administration advocated was for tactical nuclear weapons that could serve in battlefield conditions. They requested these for use in Iraq and Afghanistan, and had diddly to do with PRNK.
They would not have been ready in time for Afghanistan and were never thought to be needed in Iraq. The target was the Norks. And they were never "requested for use" by anyone. It was a capability the administration wanted to develop.
This was all part of their "Who has the biggest dick" approach to fo
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