[HN Gopher] Cracks in US nuclear command and control
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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...
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