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Perhaps one of our readers is familiar with the feature film “War Games”, released in 1983? This is a film about a computer "game" that has the potential to start a thermonuclear war. However, it turns out that this film is not science fiction at all. It is actually based on the real events of 1979, when the programmers of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (or NORAD for short) almost launched the Third World War, mistakenly launching a computer simulation of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.
Surely among our readers there are people who have heard about this story. But there are those who could not hear about it. Therefore, we briefly describe the essence of the events that occurred at that moment in time.
Early on the morning of November 9, 1979, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security adviser to the government of President Jimmy Carter, was awakened by a terrible phone call. According to information received by NORAD, the Soviet Union launched 250 intercontinental ballistic missiles in the direction of America. After the first call, Brzezinski’s phone rang again, and NORAD officials reported that 2,200 missiles had already been fired. your people about the imminent death of the whole world.
According to the portal Gizmodo, which cites a short version of this story, Brzezinski did not even wake his sleeping wife. He understood that everyone he had ever known would die soon, and therefore did not see the point in disturbing her. The only thing he thought about before taking the next steps is about a gloomy post-apocalyptic world that all of humanity will have to face very soon.
“I knew that if this message turned out to be true, then within about half an hour I, all my relatives and friends, all of Washington and most of America would be wiped off the face of the earth. And I wanted to make sure that someone will disappear with us for the company, ”said Brzezinski to his biographer in 2011.
In other words, Brzezinski wanted to make sure that if the attack of the USSR was a reality, then its consequences would have been far more than just a small hole against the background of the Earth. If the United States really threatened to end, then America would try to take the "commies" with them.
However, before taking the next steps — before the US president was called directly and the subsequent start of a thermonuclear war — Bzazhinsky wanted to get confirmation of the missiles heading towards the US. In the past, there were already false alarms, but this one seemed more real. Fortunately, before informing President Carter, Brzezinski received a third call in which he was informed that none of the other security systems (besides NORAD) had recorded the signals of this attack.
So what happened? And why did this happen? The following happened: a computer program designed to simulate a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union was filed through the NORAD network. As a result, the main computer NORAD, like all the people who worked on this network, took this event as a real attack from the enemy.
Illustration of an air command post. Image of a 1973 US National Security Archive
Even despite the fact that the president was not informed in real time and found out about what happened only after some time, many actions taken in the future could really provoke the beginning of the Third World War. Ten American and Canadian fighters climbed into the sky, facing missions that could change life on our planet for many, many generations to come.
It should be noted that one very ironic episode is associated with this case. In the event of a nuclear war in the United States in the 1960s, a plan was developed. In the event of a threat, the president had to climb aboard a special aircraft and give instructions on further actions from the air. The irony is that this aircraft (being a mobile air command center) in the history of NORAD really took off, only without a president on board.
When the 1979 incident first came to be widely publicized in the American press, they tried to set it in such a way that, in fact, he did not represent any real threat to US security. Nevertheless, from the same newspapers, it became obvious and clear that the president was not promptly informed about the incident (which could at least somehow calm the public), not to mention the fact that the national security adviser who informed eventually stay home and contemplate on the response measures and those whom he loves and loves.
In the book Cybersecurity: Prehistory (Cybersecurity: A Pre-history) authored by Michael Warner, this incident is described by the very correct remark “Life Mimics Art much more than Art Mimics Life,” made by writer Oscar Wilde.
“In the case of“ imitation by the art of life ”, the popular thriller“ The War Games ”of 1983 very realistically adapts a similar scenario. President Ronald Reagan was so impressed with the film and Matthew Broderick, who played the young hacker who cracked the computer of the national security system, that he even mentioned the story at a meeting of members of Congress and the leadership of the American army. As for the phrase “life imitates art”, the high school students from the city of Milwaukee, inspired by the same film, organized a hacker group called “414” (using the first digits of the city’s telephone code) and proved that in the same year schoolchildren can access unprotected military protocols. "
How was it possible to protect against such possible false alarms, like the one that occurred in 1979? One solution was to build a $ 16 million test simulation center for NORAD to eliminate the use of its internal networks to model potential threats. As indicated in the reports, this was an absolutely necessary precaution to avoid the possibility of false alarms again.
However, in subsequent years, false alarms from both the USSR and the United States continued repeatedly. In 1980 alone, there were at least three such false reports.
Another occurred on the night of September 26, 1983 in the USSR. On duty at the command post of Serpukhov-15, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov effectively halted the outbreak of the Third World War. At that time, the Cold War reached its critical tensions. To the limit, the situation escalated after the South Korean passenger Boeing 747, which had twice violated the airspace of the South Korean passenger airspace, was shot down over the territory of the Soviet Union.
The command post Serpukhov-15 received information from the Oko satellite observation system launched a year earlier. When a threat of a missile strike arose, the government of the country was immediately informed, after which it would take a decision on further actions and retaliatory strike.
So, that night, Petrov’s computer reported on the launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) from a US base in the direction of the USSR. However, having quickly analyzed the situation, Petrov decided that this was a mistake and a false positive of the system. The fact is that the computer showed that the “launches” were made from only one point and consisted of only a few ICBMs. As it later became known, the cause of the false triggering of the system was the sunlight illuminating the sensors of the satellite, which was reflected from high-altitude clouds. After this incident, the space system was upgraded to avoid such false alarms.
It is also interesting that, in view of military and political secrecy, this incident became widely known only in 1993, when a brief history of these events was published by the commander of the USSR anti-missile and anti-space defense forces Yu.V. In 2006, Stanislav Petrov was invited to the UN headquarters, where he was awarded a special award by the international association “Citizens of the World” international organization with an engraved inscription: “To the man who prevented nuclear war”
In the modern world, the two stories described above become especially relevant when it comes to games with artificial intelligence. I would not want to live in a world where the car will have to answer the question of how the virtual world is different from reality. In my humble opinion, her only possible answer would be: is there really a difference?
Good advice: play better chess!
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