[HN Gopher] Cracks in US nuclear command and control ___________________________________________________________________ Cracks in US nuclear command and control Author : throwaway888abc Score : 30 points Date : 2021-01-09 21:51 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.axios.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com) | posnet wrote: | Not the first time, in the last few weeks of Nixon's presidency | the secretary of defense orders any presidential order about | nuclear arms to be cleared via him or Henry Kissinger. | | And people need to keep in mind, the nuclear launch system while | very efficient is not completely digital or automated. He can | give the order, but it still requires military leadership to make | a judgement call as whether to follow it. | | https://time.com/5388648/watergate-nixon-anonymous-op-ed/ | k__ wrote: | Good to know. | | Even if they're legally bound it's good to know that there's | still someone in between who can simply say no. | credit_guy wrote: | > Even if they're legally bound | | They are not legally bound. They are legally bound to follow | a lawful order. It's a personal judgment call what | constitutes a lawful order, and in 99.9% of the cases people | just follow orders. But when it comes to ending the world, I | think all officers, without exception, will realize the order | to nuke a random target is not lawful, and will refuse to | obey. | wortelefant wrote: | but didn't Trump just replace the Secretary of Defense? In the | linked story, it was the secretary who implemented the legal | safeguards | aphextron wrote: | I wonder who could possibly benefit from this. We're seeing | Russia's ultimate geopolitical goals playing out like clockwork | here; the destabilization of the US and disarming of their major | nuclear threat. It's terrifying how brazen and obvious Putin's | strategy is here while going off without a hitch. | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: | > House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a letter to members on | Friday that she's spoken to the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman | Mark Milley about preventing President Trump from accessing the | nuclear codes. | | If Miley does it, wouldn't it be a military coup, and isn't Nancy | Pelosi encouraging it? All the existing US law both statute and | Constitutional is that the president is Commander in Chief of the | US military and has sole authority to launch nukes. | | Congress can impeach, but I am not sure I am happy with a | precedent of political leaders going to the military and telling | them to abrogate the constitutional authority that their | political opponent has. | | There are already other Constituional remedies such as | impeachment or the 25th Amendment to deal with a rogue President. | Telling the military to unilaterally assume authority in a matter | is not one of them. | | The military should _Never_ be brought into any political | dispute. That path only escalates and leads to ruin. | jaycroft wrote: | Where, in the constitution, is the President authorized to wage | war without the consent of Congress? | gwright wrote: | To my mind, this effort by Pelosi (if true) is more dangerous | than anything Trump said this week. | atemerev wrote: | Here I can actually put my two cents in the discussion, as | somebody who studied nuclear C&C for years. | | Technically, everything there is correct: the unilateral | authority for nuclear weapons use is in the hands of the | president. In particular, the military are absolutely not allowed | to do anything with nuclear weapons without the confirmation of | the president. This system was put in place by Truman, and this | decision probably saved the planed from nuclear war many times. | | Now, in practice, the president, Trump or anybody else, cannot | unilaterally start the nuclear war. He has to communicate with | the military to activate the nuclear football and call NMCC. The | order will be handled by EAC (emergency actions controller), who | has to input their own codes, which needs to be confirmed by the | superior officer. Choosing the nuclear option beyond what is | already in nuclear football (where only retaliatory options are | placed, not applicable in the first-use context) will require | active input from STRATCOM, which will take hours. At all these | points, there are many opportunities to intervene and/or seek | additional confirmations from multiple authorities. | | Tl;dr the nuclear _retaliation_ can indeed be launched by the | president in minutes, if it is already proposed by the military | and the only thing the president needs to to is to reply with | nuclear launch codes from the biscuit and the football. | Initiating a first use attack is a whole another story, will take | hours, and most probably will not succeed at all. | | P.S. Mark Milley is not in the nuclear launch command chain, so | he has no authority to do anything about the procedure. Neither | is Nancy Pelosi. | bra-ket wrote: | The libs are sh*ting their pants for real now. | saboot wrote: | Who is a "lib"? Anyone concerned one person can end the Earth? | ChrisClark wrote: | The pure and utter mind control Trump has over people like | the OP there is outright scary. How did it get so far that it | is so obvious to everyone but themselves? | bra-ket wrote: | Trump had nothing to do with it, it was you, dear liberals, | who radicalized the entire country. | bra-ket wrote: | no, it's about mass hysteria in liberal circles, lmao. | [deleted] | a3n wrote: | Worldwide verification of the elimination of nuclear weapons is | the minimal necessary metric to predict that our civilization | will survive. Besides eliminating their immediate danger, it's a | proxy for our ability to cooperate as a world and think past our | differences. | travisjungroth wrote: | One of the things scary to me about nukes for human survival is | I think it gains limited resiliency from being interplanetary, | at least at first. The same countries on Earth will set up | nukes on Mars and point them at each other. Other threats | (asteroid impact, virus) get more of a boost. Put more | generally, I don't think the nuclear threat is something we'll | tech our way out of. | whatshisface wrote: | One country teching its way out of nukes before everyone else | would be the most dangerous thing ever. | sanxiyn wrote: | It is about time US pledges no first use of nuclear weapons. | China already did. | travisjungroth wrote: | How seriously can we take this pledge? It seems like nuking | someone first is already an all-out move and pledges will be | ignored. | brighton36 wrote: | That pledge is as good as toilet paper. Don't be so naive. (And | that's not because they're chinese. All governments would | immediately disregard such pledges at the time it was deemed | necessary to strike first) | ayyyolo wrote: | >China already did. | | lmao | | This is sooooo naive. | whynotminot wrote: | In my mind, a nuclear first strike without Congress is | _definitely_ illegal because President 's cannot declare war-- | only Congress can. | | Presidents for a long time have engaged in limited quasi-wars | without Congress by hand-waving over "what is war, anyway," | conducting missile strikes and engaging in targeted special | operations. Congress looking the other way is a clear abdication | of responsibility here, but there has been enough plausible grey | area to get away with this over many recent decades of American | foreign policy. | | But I don't know any serious person who would look at a nuclear | first strike and think there's any debate about whether or not | that constituted an outright declaration of war. | | We definitely need to make this more explicit though, and not | rely on out of control President to test it. | adaisadais wrote: | Herein lies the issue: the quasi-war. The US must make actions | in the future to more accurately describe what a war is. In my | mind virtually every "quasi-war" that the United States has | waged since WWII has been waged unconstitutionally. | | We've gone about for too long meddling in the affairs of | others. Putting boots on their grounds and haven't the | slightest bit of gall to make it official and firmly support | it. These acts of ill will (however good intentioned they may | have been- and most have not *see War in Vietnam) have been | nothing but racketeering and have violated our own | Constitution. | | I agree. We must clarify and make it more explicit. We must | also create a nuclear armistice. We can't continue to go on | kicking the little countries and idealogies of the world and | not expect the Big Ones to at some point decide to kick back. | | " Don't you understand, what I'm trying to say? Can't you see | the fears that I'm feeling today? If the button is pushed, | there's no running away There'll be no one to save with the | world in a grave" | | From Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" | whatshisface wrote: | Let's say that country P's intelligence agency is implicated in | helping a terrorist group based in country Q obtain a weapon | from the leaky security of country R, which is then detonated | in country S but with a smaller yield than expected due to | deterioration in R's stockpile maintenance, so that most of the | damage is the cost of the radioactive cleanup. Act of war? | baybal2 wrote: | Do you guys understand that retaliatory use of nuclear weapons is | very likely assured even if president says no? | | People in underground command bunkers likely have families too, | and will act like most normal people. | misiti3780 wrote: | If anyone is interesting in more details, I really recommend the | recent book "The Button" about how precarious the situation | really is: | | https://www.amazon.com/Button-Book-Sally-Nicholls/dp/0735267... | TigeriusKirk wrote: | Another similar book is Command And Control by Eric Schlosser. | | It goes into a lot of detail about how nuclear weapons and | their control systems evolved. Covers a number of accidents and | near apocalypses along the way. One of my favorite books of the | last decade, informative and very readable at the same time. | | https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-09 23:00 UTC)