Some social impacts of modern technology--such as threats to personal privacy--can be scary. Others are terrifying. Take the ongoing, vexing interplay between computer security and nuclear weapons.
Over the last three weeks, a new group of computer hackers that calls itself Masters of Downloading has released information to back up its claim to have penetrated sensitive Pentagon computer systems.
The group claims to have stolen software of the Defense Information Systems Network Equipment Manager, which controls military communications systems, including global-positioning satellites. The group of 15 hackers, which includes two from Russia, released a statement and a sample of the software, complete with interface screens.
The "masters" also announced that they had cracked communications links to U.S. submarines.
The Defense Department says it is treating the group's intrusion "very seriously," but it downplayed the significance of the break-ins.
Pentagon spokesmen reportedly say the military uses computers only to support weapons and people, and that computers are not essential to U.S. security.
Unfortunately, the picture is not quite that simple. Both people and firepower engaged in national security depend on information, and much of the required information is now managed by computers and networks. If this information is not reliable or is confusing, and this unreliability and confusion are combined with stressful time constraints, the results could be catastrophic, especially when the firepower is nuclear.
"The threat of accidental nuclear war is more dangerous now than ever," despite the end of the Cold War, said Bruce Blair, a senior researcher at the Brookings Institution in Washington and a former nuclear launch control officer. "The current alert postures are inherently dangerous and getting more dangerous."
An article published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, by Blair and coauthors associated with Physicians for Social Responsibility, calls for steps to "de-alert" U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons systems. They suggest an end to the current status of "launch on warning"--the policy of launching nuclear-armed missiles when warning of an attack is received by defense authorities.
