In Depth

Cyber Security, the Nuclear Threat and You: Cassandra's Guide to the 21st Century

Richard Power interviews Martin Hellman and mulls nuclear risk

By Richard Power

Page 2

As stood there, a factoid over a decade old bubbled up in my psyche.

In 1997, I had came across an item in Peter Neumann's invaluable Risks Digests, quoting a San Francisco Examiner story about Caging the Nuclear Genie, a new book from Admiral Stansfield Turner. In the book, Admiral Turner described an incident that happened in the pre-dawn darkness on June 3, 1980, while he was serving as President Jimmy Carter's CIA Director. "Colonel William Odom alerted Zbigniew Brzezinski at 2:26 a.m. that the warning system was predicting a 220-missile nuclear attack on the U.S. It was revised shortly thereafter to be an all-out attack of 2200 missiles. Just before Brzezinski was about to wake up the President, it was learned that the 'attack' was an illusion—which Turner says was caused by 'a computer error in the system.'" (Risks Digest, Vol. 19, Issue 43, 10-29-97)

Turner went on to say that this incident was not the only one. "We have had thousands of false alarms of impending missile attacks on the United States," he wrote, "and a few could have spun out of control." (ibid.)

Turner's anecdote (the term doesn't really seem appropriate for something of such significance) and his admonition that this particular false alarm was not a once in a lifetime event have stayed with me over the years. It offers one of those extraordinary teaching moments for your audience. I reference the story when trying to raise the consciousness of those who pooh-pooh the threat of cyber-terrorism. If such a computer malfunction could happen accidentally, I argue, even if such incidents are rare, then it could be also generated intentionally. Either way, the consequences are unthinkable.

We are, in a way, the victims of our own good fortune. We have been lulled into distraction by a dangerously disarming miracle. The "Cold War" came and went, and because the threat of nuclear annihilation had become inextricably bound up with it, when the "Cod War" ended, the unconscious assumption is that the worst of the nuclear threat ended with it. Nothing could be more untrue. Indeed, the polarized geopolitical structure of the "Cold War" allowed for clarity and insanity; clarity about the consequences, and what needed to be done (or not done) to help avoid those consequences, and insanity in regard to even considering the use of nuclear weapons as an option. Having missed the opportunity that presented itself around the Millennium, the post "Cold War" world offers even more insanity (i.e., at least three new nuclear-warheaded nations, Pakistan, India and North Korea) but none of the clarity.