Trusting the sanity of the president

[Mihalik]

Actually it is true, but feel free to argue otherwise with actually pertinent information to what you are disagreeing with.

I did and provided a source that in turn links further sources including the precious little the US government freely publishes on this.

- - - Updated - - -

heck of a post.

This is the meat of the issue really. There needs to be something new put in place, but I don't know what. I get that it takes a considerable amount of effort, money, planning and luck to become President, and with all of that comes the terrible responsibility to make sure that we don't start WW3 on a whim. If we're truly at war and most of the cabinet/officials gets wiped out and only the president is left, then he can still initiate a launch. If the plan required permissions from all sorts of people in the administration, that just delays the response, and by the time we launch our missiles, we are dead anyway. So, I see plusses and minuses for both situations, and given the situation, I'd rather have that power consolidated in one person. But I'll say it again. I'd hate to be part of that chain of command who is issuing a launch order. Knowing that order is going to end millions, possibly billions of lives isn't something I could handle.

There are relatively modest changes that can be adopted to slow down the first strike process to a degree where either other parts of the executive or special congressional committees could intervene to halt it.

Even something like requiring a 2 person confirmation for a first strike order, like the President + 1 any living member of the executive, possibly including under-secretaries would decrease the chances of "rogue" first strike order by 100%.

Furthermore mild changes can be made to the retaliatory position as well where the process becomes less automated and less likely to literally railroad a president into a nuclear strike he might not even want to initiate.

Our entire nuclear posture is fucking retarded and has always been fucking retarded and was designed to be fucking retarded.

It's the equivalent of walking around with a drawn and loaded gun with a hair trigger that goes off if you breath on it, hoping the guy carrying the gun never stumbles, never shakes, never gets mad, never loses his nerve or mind. That has been our nuclear posture for something like 60 years now. The fact that we are all still alive has more to do with blind dumb luck than anything else.

[Gaidax]

There are relatively modest changes that can be adopted to slow down the first strike process to a degree where either other parts of the executive or special congressional committees could intervene to halt it.

Furthermore mild changes can be made to the retaliatory position as well where the process becomes less automated and less likely to literally railroad a president into a nuclear strike he might not even want to initiate.

If it ever comes to actual use - you won't have time. You have ~15 minutes from launch until your typical ICBM hits, there is no time to gather any sort of "congressional committees" and nonsense like that.

All you can do is some sort of swift verification process that the event indeed happened and the magnitude of it, but the whole doctrine is holding on mutual understanding that the retaliation is swift and inevitable.

Congressional committees are good before the fact thing, but when missiles are in the air it's time to cut the crap.

[XDurionX]

When you sign up to be a soldier, you already know that you're not paid to think.

[Mihalik]

If it ever comes to actual use - you won't have time. You have ~15 minutes from launch until your typical ICBM hits, there is no time to gather any sort of "congressional committees" and nonsense like that.

All you can do is some sort of swift verification process that the event indeed happened and the magnitude of it, but the whole doctrine is holding on mutual understanding that the retaliation is swift and inevitable.

Congressional committees are good before the fact thing, but when missiles are in the air it's time to cut the crap.

As I was saying. First strike and retaliation are different things.

The military command can be issued 2 sets of protocols.

Protocol 1. We're under attack by nuclear forces. There are some extra safety protocols that can be implemented there, such as removing the constraints of scripted responses. In this case the process of retaliation would be initiated by the military and the President would authorize it.

Protocol 2. First strike. This cannot be initiated without the President + X (all Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of State, the Vice President, a special committee of Congressmen any combination thereof) ordering it. Preferably you might even require a formal declaration of war from Congress.

First strike and retaliation are different.

Both the retaliatory and the first strike positions have glaring issues and huge risks. But the first strike position stands out as especially careless and especially dangerous.

[Gaidax]

*snip*

You tell them, I bet they are all a bunch of retards who could not think for themselves all these years and needed your otherworldly intelligence to figure out what to do.

Frankly, it's just one of those cases where it's an empty and pointless discussion with a lot of assumptions. So here's my assumption, Nuclear arsenal of United States is not really in the hands of one guy and there are protocols in place that stand in way of one guy just saying "lulz letz launch dem nukezz" and mashing that "button".

[Mihalik]

You tell them, I bet they are all a bunch of retards who could not think for themselves all these years and needed your otherworldly intelligence to figure out what to do.

Frankly, it's just one of those cases where it's an empty and pointless discussion with a lot of assumptions. So here's my assumption, Nuclear arsenal of United States is not really in the hands of one guy and there are protocols in place that stand in way of one guy just saying "lulz letz launch dem nukezz" and mashing that "button".

This is not my personal opinion. It's a commonly acknowledged fact by researchers, experts and the officially published doctrine of the United States/US military.

Read the article I linked.

I know you want to imagine that somehow the military/government is smarter than all that... But it's really really not.

The guy who wrote the article was one of the world's and Congress's go to expert on nuclear security, a PhD professor and researcher in the field and a former ICBM launch commander in the US military.

So he probably knew what he was talking about.

[Gaidax]

The guy who wrote the article was one of the world's and Congress's go to expert on nuclear security, a PhD professor and researcher in the field and a former ICBM launch commander in the US military.

I think you put way too much faith into what one specific person wrote.

I also think it's much more important to separate feels and fears from actual reality. The checks are there as that article presents, you just immediately assume absolute worse scenario ever where President has no advisors and is communicating with braindead command pressure feeding him false positives. There are A LOT of IFs there.

The world is not one tweet away from ending.

[GreenJesus]

"I'd like to order a nuclear strike"

"Uh sir, this is a Wendys"

[Mihalik]

I think you put way too much faith into what one specific person wrote.

I also think it's much more important to separate feels and fears from actual reality. The checks are there as that article presents, you just immediately assume absolute worse scenario ever where President has no advisors and is communicating with braindead command pressure feeding him false positives. There are A LOT of IFs there.

The world is not one tweet away from ending.

Can you stop with the bullshit. The article alone links something like a dozen different other corroborating sources. Just stop with the bullshit.

If you think everyone who looked into this is wrong prove it, give me a source that states otherwise.

And fucking explicitly mother fucking said the system is built on the notion that everyone in it is an honest, sane, competent and measured actor.

There are absolutely no fail safes. There is nobody who can stop the process or even NEEEEEEDS to be included in a launch process.

The president is SUPPOSED to contact various people and ask for their advice...IF HE WANTS To. But that's just what he is supposed to do, but neither has to do or has any obligation to actually listen to anything.

You cannot assume that every president will always be a sane and honest and competent actor. You just can't.

And it is literally just him with a red button.

All the other safety protocols are designed to prevent everyone else from possibly launching, fully and totally concentrating launch authority whether as a response or a first strike with the president single handedly.

And yes, the system is designed to work like thia because it is derived from the insanity of the height of the Cold War era, and it was never fixed. There have been some measures of de-escalation, but even that has been mostly dumped in the past couple of years.

The reason why we can never actually fix this are delusional people like you.

[arandomuser]

I think much of these Hollywood stories about how president has this case with big red button are a tad overblown.

I'm pretty sure it would take a bit more than a guy waking up in the morning, saying "let's nuke them for lulz" and smashing the button to trigger WWIII.

It's a president, not some kind of god there. There are checks and balances everywhere, including that scenario.

but that is literally how it works the president could decide he wants to do a pre emptive nuclear strike any time he wants for no reason, and it would be treason for people to deny his orders, thats why its scary as hell that trump is our president

[Egomaniac]

thats why its scary as hell that trump is our president

It's not ideal...but I think, in hindsight, that it was much scarier when Reagan was President. During the height of the Cold War...there was an Americans President in, at the very least, the beginning stages of Dementia and Alzheimer's.

That's why it scares me that Americans keep on choosing septuagenarians as President.

[Powerogue]

In that position, with our president, I would not hesitate in not doing it. Jail time to avert WWIII, I'll bank on being pardoned by the next sane president.

I'm actually surprised he never tried. I guess it's about what he perceives as benefitting himself, and he didn't see a way to make a quick buck off it.

[Cloe]

Which? Bidens weird. Trumps cute

[Calfredd]

Which? Bidens weird. Trumps cute

Do you ever read the threads you comment in?

[unfilteredJW]

Do you ever read the threads you comment in?

They just called someone that had to pay 130k to sleep with a very meh porn star cute.

What do you think?

[Calfredd]

They just called someone that had to pay 130k to sleep with a very meh porn star cute.

What do you think?

It was kind of rhetorical. I wasn't really expecting her to answer. She acts like those people who spams 10 posts to try to advertise their crap but she hasn't advertised once.

[Biglog]

I do look forward to January 20th for this reason that I do doubt his lucidity right now. It's absolutely insane that he's STILL pushing the fraud allegations and even doubling down on them when there's zero evidence of fraud and every wacky theory they've tossed out (and there's been about 30) all fell apart in 30 seconds of fact checking. His lawyers have been laughed out of court and threatened with contempt for bringing such flimsy cases with no evidence, yet he's still pushing it.

But as far as nukes, yep it's true that Trump 100% has the ability to launch nukes at a moment's notice without any sort of approval or security from anyone else. There is no veto. No 2nd key from a General that has to also agree with him on the launch. It's completely on him. It's a scary thought. Even scarier when you look at Russia who has said they reserve the right to a pre-emptive launch if they fear another country may launch at them. So I have feared a scenario where another country worries so much about Trump's sanity that they launch a pre-emptive strike before he does something crazy. Hopefully we get through the next 51 days and the chances of that drastically decrease.

He's almost got the Hitler in the bunker mentality now as it is, lashing out at his supporters for failing him in the last days of Berlin.