Dr. Strangelove on the Y2K Opportunity

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

At 11:45 PM -0800 11/24/98, Jim Burnes - Denver wrote:

>How many nukes are going to be checking the number
>of days since they last talked to launch control?
>What are the chances they are date sensitive?
>What happens if they should lose contact for
>greater than a certain number of days?  Do they
>assume we've been nuked? How about the russians?
>The Chinese?  What if the entire US DOD C&C network
>goes down.  Is it an EMP?  Is it infowar?  Is it
>Y2K?


(in best Dr. Strangelove German accent)

Ah, but vat vud be ze point of a system designed to automatically respond
to a decapitation of command attack, you see, if it could not independently
decide that it must implement its emergency war orders? Vy vud ve have
programmed them if not to let their processors decide?

Zat ist der beauty von dem system, mein fellow Cypherpunks!

(Dr. Strangelove can no longer restrain his excitement and rolls out of the
room in his wheelchair.)

Hundreds of missile silos, dozens of submarines...all with densepacked code
written in the 60s by persons long retired or dead.

All potentially set for Launch on Warning under the Emergency War Orders.

Worse, the Sovs had more primitive systems, more fragile systems, with at
least a couple of accidental launches that we know about (exploded in their
silos). And no money to even maintain their systems, let alone upgrade and
remediate their flawed code.

(There is much evidence that the Sovs also are using this "we may not be
able to control all of our systems" ploy as more leverage for more
bailouts, more handouts, more buyouts of their obsolete technology. "Send
us another $50 billion and we'll promise to spend some of it hiring
programmers to start looking at our Y2K problems...the rest we'll of course
deposit in the Swiss bank accounts set up for our KGB, GRU, Red Army, and
Party apparatchniks. And our Mafia...mustn't forget our Mafia.")

As I have been predicting for most of this year, the smartest thing our DOD
may do is to use the information chaos of Y2K to go for a DECCOM
(Decapitation of Command) strike as the clock hits midnight in Moscow.
Knock out their sub pens on the Kola Peninsula, hit the missile facilities
in Semipalatinsk, knock out Vladivostok, and do a lay down over Moscow.

A one-way ticket back to the 19th century. A few megadeaths may be a
reasonable price to pay, esp. Russkie megadeaths. As the potato chip ad
puts it, "they'll make more."

In any case, the nuclear accident/counterforce strike scenario is just one
of many reasons I plan to be safely at home as Y2K unfolds, with certain
friends and family, stocked up with various supplies and prepared to watch
the fun unfold.

Safely away from large cities and targets.

--Tim May

"I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, just the way the President did."
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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