I can tell you for certain that there are dozens of safeguards. That scenario not only isn't possible, it's not plausible. Yes the President has the "codes" but those codes don't launch the missiles [1]. The scenario described is one in which there are literally nuclear warheads on a ballistic trajectory headed to the US with a verified source of origin.
I think the trope stays around because people, despite what they say publicly, like the idea of an emperor style president with supreme power.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-nuclear-wea...
Alex Wellerstein is a academic researcher on the history of nuclear weapons, and he describes the situation thus:
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2016/11/18/the-president-and-...
"""
>>Are there any checks in place to keep the US President from starting a nuclear war?
What's amazing about this question, really, is how seriously it misunderstands the logic of the US command and control system. It gets it exactly backwards.
The entire point of the US command and control system is to guarantee that the President and _only_ the President is capable of authorizing nuclear war whenever he needs to. It is about enabling the President's power, not checking or restricting him.
"""
The entire point of the US command and control system is to guarantee that the President and only the President is capable of authorizing nuclear war whenever he needs to.
Yes, legally and formally. Informally though, as I said, it won't go down like that, especially if it's not completely unambiguous that there is a nuclear attack on the US.
http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-59-the-des...
The captain and some fixed number of executive officers. Possibly with redundancy for one or two crew being dead. The auth codes would cause a safe to unlock or message to de-crypt.
Presumably the instructions would be delivered to each authenticating member so that all could receive the orders simultaneously.
In practice however I'd certainly be surprised to learn that there were absolutely zero checks on the process as suggested in the article.
Are there verified nuclear warheads on verified trajectories from verified origins?
Does the US President need to retaliated?
They interview ex-Secretary of Defense William Perry asking him what controls there are, if any, on a crazy president just willy-nilly deciding to nuke something.
He says there's absolutely none, even if the president is in a room full of people who vehemently disagree with him he alone makes the call to launch.
The President can make the call to launch and everyone in the room can ignore him, arrest him, tape his mouth shut.
Or just shoot him.
Edit: fixed a word
There's an argument to be made for checks on presidential power to wage nuclear war at a pin drop. President Trump pulling us back from the joint establishment Democrat and establishment Republican push for worldwide nuclear armageddon is not it.
but I did learn the word "Verisimilitude" the other day.
The only check currently seems to be people disobeying his orders, and even that is accounted for to some extent (see "mutiny is unlikely" in the article you cited).
It remains possible that ranking members of the executive branch and military might cooperate to make sure the president is isolated and unable to execute the protocol, and perhaps even conceivable (if unlikely) that enough of the military would refuse to participate. But that's the only real check, and it extralegal rather than any part of the system.
If you've ever been suspicious of "the deep state", think about that for a minute here, because it's really just another catchy term for the one of a half-handful of checks on the power under discussion here.
> I think the trope stays around because people, despite what they say publicly, like the idea of an emperor style president with supreme power.
I suspect that people really want to believe the system works, it can't be that messed up, someone else thought of this, some one else is paying attention, and they want things to be better, not worse, and they will take care of it for you.
But the system will fail if "the whole chain is stupid." This is why it's so dangerous to have a President obsessed with loyalty.
A recent radiolab episode (http://www.radiolab.org/story/nukes/) made a pretty convincing argument that any US president could on a whim destroy the world. It goes into the whole history of why that power was given to a civilian, and not the military.
Don't forget about this lad!
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
I.e. he must convince the Vice President et al. that ending all human life on Earth is a good idea.
Which is to say, the orders may not be followed by the persons at the switch. I make no claim that they will, or will not, be followed. I merely point out that rules aren't always followed.
They absolutely have the real authority (ability) to refuse the order, and then the real authority to prevent the nuke from being launched (by eating their key, shooting anybody else that comes into the room, shooting the key/console, etc).
The Twitter nukes one wouldn't even have to ruin trust in the platform that badly. They could say the president's account got hacked. Hell, blame the hack on China if you're already trying to start a war there.
If a corporation succeeds in building General AI with enough hooks into basic infrastructure, and a loyal enough employee base, then they will have a more powerful weapon than any nuclear bomb. They can then build their own drone army that no conventional military could stand up against.
Second, what about an AI would give them an advantage over cyborgs in building drone battalions? Aren't conventional human cyborgs doing that right now?
Yes, it's annoying to me that people who believe AI to be extremely dangerous forget that people themselves can already do all that nasty stuff.
Not much that suggests it's impossible either.
"go on..."
> What if Musk's first ship to Mars had a hidden Railgun on it?
"oh god... don't stop!"
> ... the secret passcode of another person ...
brilliant.
yeah... we (in the US) gave AI/meta-cognative-entities/"corporations" a type of inalienable right with the Citizens United ruling. and now the gov't is going to find out what happens when those entities start testing the boundaries of their container. (plot twist: the container walls are permeable)
Except that's not true. Corporations have always had personhood. See 1 U.S.C. §1[0]:
> In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise—
> ...
> the words "person" and "whoever" include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals;
Corporations being people is what allows them to own property, use the judicial system (to sue), etc. Basically anything corporations are able to do is because they are people. The speech of a corporation is protected under the First Amendment. Donating your money to a non-profit is a form of speech, no? If I donate $25 to the EFF, I'm agreeing with what the EFF does. That's a form of expression that is protected under the First Amendment. All Citizens United v. FEC did was affirm that money can be a form of speech.
Citizens United didn't establish any president of corporate personhood anymore than Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 US 394 (1886)[1] did back in 1886.
[0]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/1/1
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern....
Always? You cite the U.S. Code, which was first published when? 1926.
>Donating your money to a non-profit is a form of speech, no?
It's a hell of a lot different when it comes to influencing people during elections. Bad analogy, and an insincere play to the audience here with the EFF. If we allow money to be speech, we allow outsized influence on governance by a few. Corporations have much more money to spend on campaigns which works against the public interest.
> Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company
The precedent of corporate personhood didn't even come from arguments in the case, it came from an oral remark by the Chief Justice Morrison Waite, who earlier worked as a lawyer for railroads. It was recorded by the court recorder J.C. Bancroft Davis, who earlier was a president of a railroad. The precedent and its house of cards should be thrown out.
You're right.
And now there's precedent.
Holy shit I hadn't even considered this, this is awesome. New story idea.
I'll contribute that this is a good way to explain to someone why corporations inherently care about their employees only to the extent of their usefulness.
Can you recommend some novels ? (I'm also a cyberpunk nerd) Thanks in advance
For me there's a lot of crossover between Cyberpunk/scifi, the only difference being time period, so I'd throw in the Culture series and the Revelation Space series.
The Stars my Destination (grunge as fuck)
Neuromancer, though I'm sure you've already read it.
Just wanted to chime in and say that this is one of the great SF books. Alfred Bester at the height of his powers. Gritty, fantastic, political, emotional, psychedelic, and epic. A truly astounding work, especially when you consider it was written in the early 1950s.
If you like science fiction: READ THIS BOOK.
Because the US Government has terrifying amounts of power and can be very spiteful.
Their ability to easily intimidate corporations has been demonstrated time and time again. See: NSA v tech, Qwest, broad anti-trust powers (which have nothing to do with monopoly and everything to do with subjective definitions), SEC, FTC, FCC, national security powers, executive orders, and the list goes for days.
It wasn't about one specific, small example but the big picture. Since these companies care about profit and the people running the companies likely care about their lives I'd imagine much of this wouldn't ever happen but it's all technically possible which, compared to where we were say 20 years ago, is just absolutely amazing in every sense of the word.
I understand and that's a fantasy at best, which was my point. The US Government is radically more powerful than any corporation inside of its domain. It's not even remotely close. They're more powerful than every corporation in the US combined.
The moment they send federal agents to shut down Google HQ (even if it's just for a day) and begin arresting people on terrorism charges (doesn't matter if any of it sticks, they never have to stop coming), specifically targeting management, and then walking them through & out of the buildings in handcuffs - Google instantly capitulates as their stock collapses by 20% in one day. And that's the easiest of moves the Feds can make, that's a trivial demonstration of their power to intimidate.
Then the IRS begins pursuing any exec they want to. They can do horrific things to anyone at any time, even if it doesn't stick long-term it still makes your life hell - and they never have to stop coming.
Then x y z, forever, paying their bills with your tax dollars and the infinite fiat machine.
Their initial efforts don't work? They change the laws tomorrow to give themselves a new sharp stick. They only really need one really nasty stick, and they have dozens already.
Google has the kind of power that staves off that from even happening in the first place. The US government isn't a singular entity, it is comprised of several hundred individually powerful people. Three branches, plus several military branches, each with their own branches of authority and people of power. Then you have states with their own 3 branches and national guards, police. You have a national police equivalent (NSA, CIA, FBI, ATF, Border Control).
That's a lot of people google can go to and say "Interesting that you are into midget porn, I wonder what would happen if the whole world knew that?"
That's a lot of people google can go to and say "Did you know that your neighboring state's governor is having an affair with a man? Give us this land grant for server space and we'll give you the proof."
"Give us guaranteed protection from the Fed and we'll give you the entire query history from all whitehouse IP addresses."
"Do not fuck with us or we will DDOS every single DNS server in the world with our absurdly massive server infrastructure."
"Do not fuck with us or we will turn the public against you by messaging the 63,000 people using our site per second"
"Do not fuck with us or we will make your very existence invisible to 80% of the people on the internet."
That's how wars happen, and why it's a bad idea to make ultimatums to the US government.
Like the King's head Surgeon - he could never take on the King in hand to hand combat, but he can certainly poison him slowly, over time and invisibly, in return for more consolidated power or money or some other such thing from the King's son.
1. Order ISPS to switch off access to Google's servers and CDNs. Most internet traffic stops working as any website using a google CDN breaks, all analytics stops working, internet advertising breaks almost entirely, the internet is suddenly a less profitable and very scary, mostly unusable place. Google releases as its death-throes the fact that the ISPs are entirely to blame for this, gives coordinates of ISP offices and pitchfork emporiums. Customers revolt, UN issues a missive reminding the world that access to the internet is a human right.
2. Order power regulators to cut off their power - Pretty similar to above. Internet stops working very well, except Google continues to work in other countries, and suddenly it doesn't really make sense to do business in the USA. Google employees flee abroad where they can. Opportunistic countries take advantage of this and grant asylum.
3. Freeze their bank accounts - best idea yet, I think, except for I'm not sure how it would be implemented. Government order comes through declaring "Alphabet, Inc" to be entirely comprised of terrorists? Not sure. Either way, Google goes the way of Pablo Escobar and talks directly to bank VPs - "give us some of the money / give us a warning you get a freeze order / whatever, or we tell the world about your midget porn / location of all your private estates / your tax fraud." Alternatively, google uses its near total access to civilian populations to cast the US government as a totalitarian dictatorship issuing a coup against the American people's access to free information and fosters a revolution.
The scenario is insurrection. Communications going down while people are arrested is perfectly acceptable.
> Google goes the way of Pablo Escobar and talks directly to bank VPs
Bank VPs have no control over dollar clearing and settlement. In any case, violating an OFAC freeze is automatic jail time for lots of people. Nobody messes around with this.
For sure, that was never in dispute. No one pretended there wouldn't be consequences, either. That was never the point of my post or parent's. Take a look at the examples for what was being referred to.
Let's not kid ourselves - well before that happens there would be "Guys with guns" to see them which would stop all possible posturing.
Are you serious? That would cause actual people to die. And Twitter will end up with a huge lawsuit.
This theoretically gives a company power to shut the government if they really wanted to.
Why doesn't Twitter flex its muscle and cause a national crisis by tweeting "watch out China, nukes are coming" from Donald Trump's Twitter? That ruins trust in the platform, but what if they just banned the US president's account for TOS or something? Enormous amount of power.
What if Musk's first ship to Mars had a hidden Railgun on it? "Anybody else that wants to come to Mars must pay equivalent US 100,000 million per vehicle." Alternatively, "I now own mars, who can come as well is up to my whim."
What if Microsoft issued a malicious patch that gave it access to the NSA's servers? What if Comcast slurped up FBI traffic?
In the internet and space age, corporations are getting enough real power that government power can be outright stepped over. Sure, say Comcast slurps data somehow from CIA and FBI, goes to prez, and says "give us x or we sell this to Russia," the US gov can turn around and threaten to arrest the CEO, or fine them, or kick down doors and start tearing apart infrastructure with the US military, but Comcast could easily say "do any of the above and the data is given to Russia, for free."
Musk has weaponised Mars, a state actor says "unweaponise it or be hanged," Musk can say "well, the cannon is automated, has 300 rounds of ammunition, and will not deactivate unless my secret passcode and the secret passcode of another person who I will not name, are provided. Per detected vehicle."
Etc.
Exciting, fun, terrifying. It can go fantastic for us (Google and Netflix telling telecoms to suck it), or absolutely horrifying (Comcast holding the US government hostage).