Nuclear Nose Cones Mistakenly Shipped to Taiwan

Reservoir Hill writes "The Pentagon announced that the United States had mistakenly shipped to Taiwan four electrical fuses designed for use on intercontinental ballistic missiles, but has since recovered them. The mistaken shipment to Taiwan did not include nuclear materials, although the fuses are linked to the triggering mechanism in the nose cone of a Minuteman nuclear missile. Taiwanese authorities notified U.S. officials of the mistake, but it was not clear when the notification was made. An examination of the site in Taiwan where the components had been stored after delivery indicated that they had not been tampered with. The fuses had been in four shipping containers sent in March 2005 from F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., to a Defense Logisitics Agency warehouse at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. It was then in the logistics agency's control and was shipped to Taiwan "on or around" August 2006, according to a memo from Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordering Navy Adm. Kirkland H. Donald to investigate the incident."

Comments

Hmm...

[Corpuscavernosa]

What can Brown do for the US Government?

Re:Hmm...

[Farmer Tim]

What can Brown do for the US Government?

Make them look as bad as any one else who wears it?

Re:Hmm...

[contrapunctus]

Including Ubuntu?

Re:Hmm...

[chriseyre2000]

Probably less than Blair did.

Re:Hmm...

[Farmer Tim]

It'll take more than Ubuntu to make brown look good; it barely negates the Zune's effect.

Re:Hmm...

[thewiz]

Actually, classified parts are typically shipped via FedEx!

No, really!

Re:Hmm...

[msromike]

And they told them just to keep them cause it wasn't worth the call tag to pick them up...

Re:Hmm...

[FearForWings]

However I heard that the Capitol lawns were already a little brown an could use another Thacher, to pull out the dead stuff.

p.s. yes, I know her name was spelled Thatcher

Nosecones?

[Talking Goat]

The article references fuses designed for use in nose cones... Is this story's headline misrepresenting the true nature of the mistake?

Re:Nosecones?

[toleraen]

Welcome to Slashdot

Re:Nosecones?

[AioKits]

Agreed. Headline makes it sound like we shipped something radioactive. Reading a few lines into the article will show that nothing glowy was shipped, only the fuses. Wouldn't this be like saying "Grade schooler found with explosives equipment in backpack" when all they really had was a few fuse wicks in there? Don't get me wrong, we still screwed up, but at least be truthful of how we screwed up.

Re:Nosecones?

[Otter]

If I'm understanding TFA correctly, the "fuse" is what a layman would consider the nose cone, or at least the body of the cone. It's not like a fuse you change in your fusebox or under your dashboard.

Re:Nosecones?

[jonnythan]

Not really.

The electronics and detonation systems used in nuclear bombs are very advanced, and very difficult to get right. A large portion of the time spent developing a nuclear weapon is devoted to the detonation electronics.

Mistakenly handing over a crate of said electronics would give a nation a significant shortcut toward developing their own nuclear weapons.

Re:Nosecones?

[darkmeridian]

The fuzes in question are sophisticated and highly-specialized devices meant to precisely trigger the implosion of the warhead. The technology involved is very complicated and top-secret. The export of these switches (fuzes) is tightly-controlled because they are basically used only for nuclear bombs.

Re:Nosecones?

[Romancer]

Completely misleading title

The editor that put this blatant sensationalism on the front page should be exposed to radioactive material to get the point across that calling something "Nuclear Nose Cones" when refering to an electric firing pin is not journalism and has a better place in checkout stand tabloids.

Re:Nosecones?

[AioKits]

But the parts in question are from designs in the 1960s, how far behind/ahead of that mark is China with regards to being able to create a nuclear fuse of similar function?

Re:Nosecones?

[jandrese]

That said, these particular fuses were from the 60s and are pretty much obsolete by todays standards. Taiwan almost certainly has their own fuses that are more sophisticated already.

Re:Nosecones?

[Ellis D. Tripp]

I saw the story on TV news last night, and the items they showed looked like the stereotypical "nose cone", with a big wiring harness and connectors hanging out of the open end.

What I am curious about is exactly WHAT the electronics here consisted of. Are we talking about the system that senses altitude and triggers the detonation sequence (which would be serious enough), or was this the actual "X-unit" electronics package that fires all the separate detonators on the explosive lenses to compress the plutonium pit?

If the latter is actually what they shipped out (complete with the krytron switches, high energy capacitors, etc.), then some heads REALLY need to roll over this one. The media isn't being all that specific about what is actually involved here, either because the DoD isn't telling them, or because of the usual "dumbing down" of anything that might be considered too technical for Joe Sixpack to care about.

Re:Nosecones?

[Romancer]

And to pre-empt any of you who have not read the article and feel the need to show off your knowledge just to argue:

FTA:
"The fuses were manufactured for use on a Minuteman strategic nuclear missile and are linked to the triggering mechanism in the nose cone, but they contain no nuclear materials."
it was also in the summary if you even got that far.

Also in the same article:
"Four of the cone-shaped fuses were shipped to Taiwanese officials in fall 2006 instead of the helicopter batteries they had ordered."

These were not the "Nuclear Nose Cones" themselves but cone shaped fuses that are "linked" to the complex triggering system that makes up most of the nose cone volume. This is how CBS refers to them: "... four electrical fuses for nose cone assemblies for ICBMs" and if you take a second to look up the way these things work you will see that the majority of the system is not the fuses themselves but the triggering system.

Re:Nosecones?

[Deadstick]

Umm, no, a nose cone is not a fuse in any sense of the word. It's the conical housing -- IOW, the pointy thing on the front of a missile -- which contains the warhead and protects it from the heat of reentry. TFA describes the misrouted objects as being cone-shaped, and someone along the line conflated "cone" with "nose cone", which is a totally different kind of cone.

"Fuse" can mean the kind of fuse you have under your dashboard, or a detonating device that amounts to a fancy blasting cap. In the latter context, it's often but not always spelled "fuze". TFA is completely vague as to which meaning is correct.

rj

Re:Nosecones?

[SailorSpork]

China wants Taiwan. We like Taiwan. We could give or take China (love their cheap crap, hate their social structure that allows said cheap crap, afraid of billion-man Armageddon-sized army). How do we prop up Taiwan without pissing off China? "Accidentally" help make them a nuclear power by "oops!" letting them hold on to vital nuke bomb parts to study for a year or two!

Fiendishly clever, I say.

Re:Nosecones?

[jonnythan]

The 1960s were a full 20 years after we developed the only nuclear weapons ever to be used against a real target.

That's 20 years of development.

Why do you think we still have these nose cones, anyway? The US has not come all that far since the 60s in terms of nuclear weapon design. By the 60s we were already detonating fusion bombs, and I guarantee you that the designs and electronics used in the 60s to create hydrogen bombs will still work today.

I don't think anyone would care whether the megaton hydrogen bomb just detonated in their city was based on 1960s designs or 1980s designs :)

Re:Nosecones?

[MrSteveSD]

It is sort of a case of accidental nuclear proliferation. Of course the Nuclear powers are obligated to disarm under the NPT but it's a topic the media refuses to touch. They would rather focus on countries that don't have nukes, like Iran.

Re:Nosecones?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here. /. editors are notorious for sensationalizing the headlines of their articles with what is often complete falsehoods just to get you to read the dupe.. i mean article.

Re:Nosecones?

[orclevegam]

Nothing quite so fantastic as all that. First of all, China will be a self correcting problem. We outsource to them currently because they're going through a period of rapid industrialization that allows them to produce items who's quality if quickly approaching that of ours, but because of the rapid industrialization their industry controls haven't gone into place (which make for safer work environments and products, and also add a fair bit of overhead to the final cost) which allows for cheaper products. Once they achieve parity with the rest of the modern world the next step is to introduce the proper industry controls at which point costs will also achieve parity and it will no longer be economically advantageous to offshore to them.

Secondly, we knew of the mistake almost as soon as it happened. It's just that we only recently finished processing the paperwork. The next step is to file the paperwork that gets those fuses sent back over here. ETA is somewhere in 2015.

Re:Nosecones?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear Parts Mistakenly Shipped to Taiwan
 
There, fixed that for you.

Re:Nosecones?

[isd.bz]

Furthermore, isn't the 'nuclearpower' tag incorrect since these devices are specifically useful for nuclear weaponry, and pretty much useless for power generation?

Re:Nosecones?

[beckerist]

Nuclear science has progressed, but the design of the nuclear bomb hasn't changed all that much since the 50s.

Re:Nosecones?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think anyone would care whether the megaton hydrogen bomb just detonated in their city was based on 1960s designs or 1980s designs :)

And I thought I had bad timing with smileys.

Re:Nosecones?

[sm62704]

The electronics and detonation systems used in nuclear bombs are very advanced, and very difficult to get right

When they say "fuse" are they referring to a piece of solder or lead designed to melt when subjected to an overcurrent, or (as you imply) is it something more dangerous and sinister?

Re:Nosecones?

[AioKits]

I don't feel as if you addressed my original question as to the status of China's tech in relation to these fuses. I'm asking because I honestly don't know. If this tech is already beneath their research (or something they've purchased or already stolen) it is of little use to them.

Re:Nosecones?

[mcpkaaos]

I believe the tag means a nuclear power, not nuclear energy.

Re:Nosecones?

[Bombula]

And if it's got electronics in it, then it's either "Made in Taiwan" or, increasingly, "Made in China." I'm guessing that outsourcing production of the components is the explanation for this gaff. Or maybe it's just coincidence that our nuke nosecone ended up in Taiwan and not, say, Portugal or the Maldives?

Re:Nosecones?

[confused one]

They are referring to an electronic device designed to detonate a warhead when certain criteria have been met.

Re:Nosecones?

[asuffield]

But the parts in question are from designs in the 1960s, how far behind/ahead of that mark is China with regards to being able to create a nuclear fuse of similar function?

Well, they had them in the 1970s. That's either 30 years ahead or 10 years behind, depending on how you look at it.

Also, we're talking about electrical fuses here. An electrical fuse is a bit of wire or something similar that gets hot and melts when you put too much current through it. You'll find the details in your physics textbook. They do not become magic fuses just because somebody intends to use them in an obsolete weapon.

Why are we even talking about this?

Re:Nosecones?

[megaditto]

Taiwan is not the same thing as China. They are at war with each-other, so it's unlikely they'd actually hand over any of this to the Chinese. Besides, they are among our strongest allies and already have a lot of the advanced missile tech just like Japan for example.

So yeah, they should have better controls over where our nuclear tech is shipped, but in this particular case there's no problem.

Re:Nosecones?

[Nimey]

To reduce confusion, the thing that starts a bomb exploding is called a "fuze", with a "z". Many people get it wrong, though.

Re:Nosecones?

[sexybomber]

Think of one of those black spherical cartoon bombs that Wile E. Coyote uses. In that case, the "fuse" is the piece of string coming out the top that Wile E. has to light to make it explode.

What we sent Taiwan were electronic strings for nuclear bombs.

Re:Nosecones?

[Amouth]

personaly i bet they where shipped back there for RMA - and they for got to put the number on the outside of the box so it took them awhile to get around to them

Re:Nosecones?

[readin]

Taiwan is not the same thing as China. They are at war with each-other, so it's unlikely they'd actually hand over any of this to the Chinese.

The problem is that Chiang Kai-shek brought a couple million Chinese with him when he took over after WWII. They and their descendants have long dominated government and military affairs in Taiwan. Further, for some 40 years Chiang's party ran an authoritarian state where it was illegal to say you weren't Chinese and everyone was forced to talk about how wonderful it was to be Chinese.

This gives the US plenty of reason to be concerned that technology transferred to Taiwan may be picked up by traitors and given to China.

Re:Nosecones?

[Lumpy]

It's dumbed down.

I had a co-worker ask... "Why dont hey use circuit breakers instead of fuses?"

He's still mad that I printed out a 11X17 page with a giant DUH printed on it and taped it to his cube.

Re:Nosecones?

[gnuman99]

No, not at war. Also UN does not recognize Taiwan as a nation, but as a "Province of China". And China is too stubborn to let Taiwan go as a separate nation and *threaten* war (invasion) if they do declare independence.

And don't even start with Chinese that "Taiwan is a country" or they'll treat you as enemy of state. But then saying that Quebec is an independent nation from Canada would be similar. Though in Canada a lot of people would just ignore you ;)

Now, if you state that Tibet should be an independent nation since it almost always was, that would be true. But China doesn't listen to history. More nationalistic than US. China annexing Tibet is like Poland annexing its southern and eastern neighbors because in 1600s they were part of Poland. That just wouldn't fly. China and Tibet case is similar.

Re:Nosecones?

[Otter]

As the article explains, and a sibling post to yours elaborates, these were the mechanisms that go inside the housing on the tip of the missile, although it's not clear exactly what was in them when they were shipped. Whether missile engineers and crews use "nose cone" to refer to the housing, the innards (as is the case here) or to the combination of the two, I have no idea.

In layman's terms, as I said, these are much closer to a "nose cone" than to what the OP probably envisioned when he read "fuse". (Yes, it should be "fuze". For consistency with TFA, I used the spelling they chose.) It is absolutely nothing like the thing that goes under your dashboard.

Re:Nosecones?

[Anonymous Coward]

...the next step is to introduce the proper industry controls...

Who's next step? The ROC's? There is NO incentive for the ROC to "introduce the proper industry controls", whatever those are. Polution controls? Don't kid yourself, the U.S. of A. can't introduce those the right way. Safety? So a worker is killed. Big deal. Its not like there aren't a BILLION of them. The only control is quality control, and that's just becasue people will only buy so much junk, and then not another yen worth.

Don't kid yourself, we are all screwed. Start learning Mandarin.

Re:Nosecones?

[Talderas]

Far from it, nuclear weapons are a sign of power. If I have a nuke and you don't, and I told you to give me all your porn and if you didn't I would nuke you, would you comply or risk possibly being nuked?

See, I have power.

Nuclear power baby.

Re:Nosecones?

[noewun]

The US has not come all that far since the 60s in terms of nuclear weapon design.

Not to take away from your point, which is that any nuclear weapons-related tech can be dangerous, the U.S. has come very far since the 1960s in weapons designs, especially in miniaturization. In the 1960s it took a multi-megaton weapon to guarantee an ICBM kill. Now we're down to weapons of 450 kilotons. Additionally, the are signs that the U.S. has made some remarkable advances in the design of the actual fission and fusion devices, including things like using an oblate primary which only requires two detonation locations, rather than the 96 different detonators needed in older weapons.

Re:Nosecones?

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

Does this give China a valid pretext for invading Taiwan? Taiwan is now well on the way to possessing WMDs.

Re:Nosecones?

[MicktheMech]

Nuclear weaponry generates a whole lot of power. If only for a very short period of time.

Re:Nosecones?

[Hal_Porter]

So they shipped them some nose cones too. You know what it's like with DHL picking up the wrong boxes. And that damn intern down at shipping spends all her time texting. They made a mistake. Taiwan will get a few hundred kilos of Plutonium, some nuclear test data and some warhead schematics as a "please stop complaining" gift and they'll get over it. And the intern's leaving in six months anyway. Seriously what's the issue here?

Re:Nosecones?

[egomaniac]

Believe it or not, some words in the English language have more than one meaning. Since the "bit of wire that gets hot and melts when you put too much current through it" definition obviously doesn't apply, perhaps you should consider that it's talking about the "ignition system for an explosive device" definition.

I don't know the details of this particular weapon, but nuclear ignition fuses can be very sophisticated. In an implosion-style weapon, you've got a bunch of detonators arranged in a pattern on the outside of a sphere of high explosive. It's of utmost importance that the explosive shock wave hit the center of the sphere from all sides at pretty much exactly the same time, to maximize compression on the nuclear material. There are two things that have to happen for this to be the case:

1) Explosive lenses. As each detonator fires, it creates an expanding sphere of detonation throughout the high explosive. All of these spheres will meet in the middle as the entire explosive detonates, but it's a messy and irregular shock front. You instead want a perfectly spherical shock front to all hit the nuclear material (itself a sphere) simultaneously. The most straightforward way to do this is to have two different explosives which detonate at different velocities. Basically directly underneath each detonator (the point that the expanding spherical shock wave would naturally hit first), you've got to slow the explosion down by using a lower-velocity explosive, and in between the detonators (the point that the expanding spherical shock waves would naturally hit last), you've got to speed it up by using a higher-velocity explosive. By precisely calculating and machining the interface between the two types of explosives, you can control how long it takes the shock wave to reach the nuclear material at each point -- ideally, exactly simultaneously.

2) Precise detonation. If one of the detonators fires a couple of milliseconds late, you've got a lopsided shock wave which leads to much poorer compression of the nuclear material. Poor compression leads to low yield or even no nuclear ignition at all. But you've got perhaps dozens of detonators, and making them all go off within microseconds of each other is highly non-trivial. It takes quite a bit of sophistication to time dozens of explosions to all happen at more-or-less precisely the same time, and not only is it hard, nuclear bombs are pretty much the only case in which you ever have to time things this precisely. And that means that short of specialized research into this exact problem, you're not going to have the technology to do it.

The devices which were inappropriately shipped are a solution to problem #2. Problem #1 is actually quite a bit easier -- the underlying math and science is quite straightforward (as these things go). Solve #1 and #2, and you've got the ability to create a perfectly spherical shock wave. Put a an appropriate sphere of plutonium in the middle of a sufficiently powerful spherical shock wave, and you've got a nuclear bomb.

Re:Nosecones?

[Orig_Club_Soda]

I agree - who ever posted this is expressing some kind of anti-American feelings be exaggerating the gaff.

Re:Nosecones?

[mpoulton]

Also, we're talking about electrical fuses here. An electrical fuse is a bit of wire or something similar that gets hot and melts when you put too much current through it.

Wrong definition of "fuse". These are the kind commonly spelled "fuze" - an initiating device for an explosive. In the case of a nuclear weapon, the fuze assembly is actually a very complex electronic timing and initiation module that has to synchronize the detonation of dozens or hundreds of individual explosive lenses to within nanoseconds. It's one of the major challenges of building a nuclear bomb - and having one to examine would be very helpful in copying the design.

Re:Nosecones?

[ChrisA90278]

Not really.

The electronics and detonation systems used in nuclear bombs are very advanced, and very difficult to get right. A large portion of the time spent developing a nuclear weapon is devoted to the detonation electronics.

Mistakenly handing over a crate of said electronics would give a nation a significant shortcut toward developing their own nuclear weapons. This is not the eletronics that detonates the nuclear explosion. This is hard to design. This is the sensor that determine when the bomb needs to go off. Conventional bombs have fuses too, fuses tell the detonator when it is time to "go". THe fuses can be set to go off so that the bomb explode only after falling through a roof or whatever. On an ICBM the fuse might "look" at maybe deceleration due to air friction to know how high it is. The secret, I'm sure is where I said "maybe"

Re:Nosecones?

[murdocj]

Interesting article in latest (I think) Scientific American that says that for plutonium bombs, you still need a fancy implosion triggering mechanism, but for highly enriched uranium, you actually don't need much of anything nowadays. The article said that enrichment is so much better these days that, according to calculations (guess no one has tried it) you could generate a crude nuclear explosion simply by dropping one piece of HEU on top of another.

Article was on the need to contain / get rid of HEU at the source. The point was that it's easy to smuggle and easy to make into a bomb, so we need to get rid of the source before we lose a chunk of a city.

Re:Nosecones?

[Perf]

It's not news, it's gossip.

News Headline: "U.S. Accidentally ships fuses from a nuclear nosecone to Taiwan."

Slashdot1: "Nuclear Nose Cones Mistakenly shipped to Taiwan."

"Hey! It says here the U.S. sent nuclear warheads to Taiwan!"

"Psssst. The U.S. sent some nuclear missiles to the Republic of China."

"What! The U.S. launched nuclear missiles at China?!"

Colonel Yin: "General Yang - Our sources indicate the U.S. has initiated a nuclear strike."

General Yang: "Prepare for retalitory strike."

(BTW, despite all the talk about nuclear fuses, the original article wasn't clear about what kind of fuses they were. Were they for nuclear detonation, simple electrical fuses, or fuses for firing explosive bolts to disengage the warhead from the missile?)

Re:Nosecones?

[rbanffy]

"Mistakenly handing over a crate of said electronics would give a nation a significant shortcut toward developing their own nuclear weapons."

Even considering that it's damn hard to make an implosion bomb implode properly, it's probably the part most countries that have no nuclear weapons already are very proficient with - it's _the_ part that can be fully developed and tested without calling much attention (unlike Uranium enriching facilities or missile testing). And keeping in mind MMII did never carry implosion warheads, and these must be for fusion devices, even a modest supply of relatively low-yield implosion nukes command a lot of respect.

Nuclear weapons are a nice insurance against invasions.

Re:Nosecones?

[calcapt]

I think you're talking about the PRoC instituting proper industry controls, not the ROC. The difference? The former is China proper (mainland China, communist China) and the latter is Taiwan. While it's obvious China has some issues, made evident by the diethylene glycol laden toothpaste scandal, I'm pretty sure Taiwan has had systems in place for a while now to ensure something doesn't happen to their exported products. http://taiwanreview.nat.gov.tw/site/Tr/fp.asp?xItem=311&CtNode=128

The article I just linked shows evidence that Taiwan became aware of consumer confidence in goods in the late 80's, right around the time when it began a move toward formal democracy, and began addressing the issue with the emplacement of quality control measures.

The only problem I see in Taiwan, and this is going to be true in China and other Asian countries as well, is quality control of street vendor goods. In these situations, the vendor could be a small farmer who slaughters his own farm animals and sells them directly to consumers, bypassing whatever quality control measures the government would have in place. Of course, these things wouldn't be exported, and aren't as much of a concern to the rest of the world.

Re:Nosecones?

[bkr1_2k]

It's actually irrelevant what tech China uses, when the crates were shipped to Taiwan. China's tech may be just as good as our (the USA) current stuff, but it's very unlikely Taiwan's is, since there are significantly smaller than their mainland cousin and spend far less on military funding. Having a "big step up" in technology through "accidentally" released fuse designs could play a significant role in their status against China in the future.

Re:Nosecones?

[DreadPiratePizz]

There will never be proper industry controls in China. Do you honestly think the Party will allow workers to unionize?

Re:Nosecones?

[XHIIHIIHX]

No, misrepresenting would have been "Nuclear detonation devices shipped Taiwan according to Bill Gates" which I'm surprised didn't happen since the guys name is Robert Gates.

Re:Nosecones?

[asuffield]

Since the "bit of wire that gets hot and melts when you put too much current through it" definition obviously doesn't apply, perhaps you should consider that it's talking about the "ignition system for an explosive device" definition.

RTFA. They explicitly specified the electrical variety, not the explosive one.

Re:Nosecones?

[bkr1_2k]

You need to get your asian references correct for anyone to take you seriously. The GP was speaking of the PRC (People's Republic of China-aka China) not the ROC (Republic of China-aka Taiwan). The Yen is Japanese, and you're insight of how business works is lacking. Proper industry controls indicates the things you mentioned as well as many other factors, all of which will get more expensive, just as the GP indicated. The difference is it will happen faster than it did here in the US because the world wasn't pushing us to make those implementations and it is pushing China.

You're right that everyone should start learning Mandarin, but not because we're all screwed. China is the next dominant superpower and as such will cause a shift in the way business is done in the next 50 years. Just like England did in the 19th century and the US did in the 20th century. That's just how it works...

Re:Nosecones?

[ookabooka]

Ironically enough, I think the most inappropriate smiley ever was on another Slashdot post that also was concerning atomic bombs. It's hard not to laugh but I don't think even Stephen Colbert would go there.

:)

Re:Nosecones?

[moosesocks]

I imagine that targeting has gotten considerably more accurate.

I would certainly care if the megaton hydrogen bomb detonated above my city was originally intended for a different country!

Re:Nosecones?

[tftp]

Nuclear weapons are only usable for MAD. See Iran. Bush threatens Iran with nuclear bombing, and Iran says "you won't dare." And Iran is probably right. Bombing Iran will be more devastating to the USA than bombing a major US city. How, for example, about the world-wide trade and travel ban against the USA? And that is the mildest possible response against such an attack. David Gerrold depicted a similar scenario in "The War Against The Chtorr" series. There the USA started the war, lost it, and was placed under a number of humiliating restrictions by the rest of the world. (Then, of course, The Chtorr came, but that's a different subject.)

Re:Nosecones?

[icebrain]

When they say electrical, I'm pretty sure they mean it operates electrically, rather than, say, mechanically.

I highly doubt a simple circuit protection fuse would need to be housed in a container "measuring nearly 33 inches high and almost 19 inches in diameter".

Re:Nosecones?

[PachmanP]

personaly i bet they where shipped back there for RMA - and they for got to put the number on the outside of the box so it took them awhile to get around to them
Funny? This should be +5, informative

Re:Nosecones?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mistakenly handing over a crate of said electronics would give a nation a significant shortcut toward developing their own nuclear weapons. Dude, this is Taiwan. The electronics were probably built there in the first place.

Re:Nosecones?

[fm6]

The depressing thing is that the editor who posted this story is not Zonk or kdawson or one of the other nitwits with zero reading skills. It's Rob Malda himself, the boss of this noble web site. I guess he's too busy playing Killer Lesbian Sims to actually pay attention any more.

Re:Nosecones?

[Anonymous Coward]

Disclaimer: I used to work with such devices for the DoD. Posted Anon for obvious reasons.
 
 

The media isn't being all that specific about what is actually involved here, either because the DoD isn't telling them, or because of the usual "dumbing down" of anything that might be considered too technical for Joe Sixpack to care about.

I suspect the DoD is being deliberately coy - because if the components shipped are what I suspect they are, they're classified as hell not only because they are part of nuclear weapons - but because the technology could give someone either a leg up on developing their own or possibly reveal potential vulnerabilities. (This is one of those places where security through obscurity actually is important - as those potential vulnerabilities are sensitive to the precise design of the hardware, not general vulnerabilities that all items of that class are subject to.)
 
It is being dumbed down a bit, because you can't describe what it really is without potentially giving away key information about it's functionality and the performance characteristics of the weapon.
 
And no, it's not (as some people have claimed) 'sixties tech'. The components and the design have been upgraded multiple times. Even if they hadn't been - the components that make up the system aren't available on the open market. Not at more than a fraction of the performance specs the DoD/DoE uses anyhow.

Re:Nosecones?

[PachmanP]

...Bombing Iran will be more devastating to the USA than bombing a major US city. How, for example, about the world-wide trade and travel ban against the USA? And that is the mildest possible response against such an attack...
...and saddle the country with an unpayable debt which would lead to massive depression and unrest in the populace. Along would come a young charasmatic leader with a nationalistic and socialistic government. The people will be united by hating a small group of people. Lets say the ones with the funny star...

Re:Nosecones?

[ElderKorean]

I would certainly care if the megaton hydrogen bomb detonated above my city was originally intended for a different country!

You wouldn't care for very long though.

Re:Nosecones?

[Lincolnshire Poacher]

> But the parts in question are from designs in the 1960s

These parts are not simple percussion fuses; these are Permissive
Action Linked hardware.

PALs have been under constant development since the 1950s and ordnance
packages are regularly updated with refined PALs.

A PAL will, for example, generate a detonation signal only when barometric, aerodynamic and cryptographic parameters are fulfilled.

Fortunately, PALs are designed to be tamper-proof. Well, the first generation
wasn't overly robust ( along the lines of the old ``cut the red wire'' film
plot ) but contemporary ones ( Level 5? ) are very sophisticated pieces of kit.

Re:Nosecones?

[vaporland]

I'm not sure, but I think that your post violates some kind of national security statute :D

Re:Nosecones?

[orclevegam]

What's a union got to do with it? Governments institute industrial controls in order to improve their image and make theirs goods more desirable. Doesn't matter if you can get things out of China dirt cheap if no one will by them because they have a rep for being highly toxic. We're already starting to see it with the massive recalls for products with paint from China. Prior to that it was food from China. If they don't start to get their act together real soon there isn't going to be much they'll actually be able to export.

disparity...

[m2bord]

we send them really nifty stuff like nuclear nose cones and they ship us some crappy sneakers...

what gives? this is worse than the xmas gifts i get at work....

Re:disparity...

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the "Made In..." on all of your electronics for "Taiwan". Let me know when you run out of hands to count on.

Re:disparity...

[Otter]

we send them really nifty stuff like nuclear nose cones and they ship us some crappy sneakers...

This is Taiwan, not the PRC. They make the computers around which your nerdly life revolves.

Re:disparity...

[AioKits]

This is Taiwan, not the PRC. They make the computers around which your nerdly life revolves.

Would it be okay if I sent them a fruit basket as well then? You know, a lil icing on the cake...

Re:disparity...

[m2bord]

uhmm...sorry but the timberland's that i'm wearing right now say taiwan on them. not all cheap shoes are made in china and don't forget...china would argue that taiwan is technically part of china. taiwan begs to differ. i would love to see that in a celebrity death match...get the two heads of taiwan and china to go at it in a MMA match inside a steel cage with rowdy roddy piper officiating.

Re:disparity...

[siufish]

This is Taiwan, not the PRC. They make the computers around which your nerdly life revolves.

But PRC make the t-shirts and pants inside which your nerdly body stinks.

Re:disparity...

[bberens]

Just think. This is the stuff we KNOW about. Imagine how bad the truth must really be.

Re:disparity...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who says my stinky nerdly body is inside anything to begin with?

Re:disparity...

[JonathanR]

I say it's probably in the basement.

Well...

[MrCawfee]

I guess they should have used FedEx.

Misleading Title: "fuses" not "nose cones"

[Swave An deBwoner]

Hmmm.. fuses not nose cones. Still not good, but different.

This is terrible

[sakdoctor]

With those electrical fuses plus "a bunch of other stuff" they could build a nucklar bomba!

Re:This is terrible

[j00r0m4nc3r]

They're going to be pissed when they realize we sent them a shoddy bomb casing filled with used pinball machine parts.

Why is this reported?

[amplt1337]

You know, I read a couple articles about this yesterday afternoon.

I can't seem to figure out why it was being reported at all. The story as it's published is "nothing much happened, somebody filled out the shipping form wrong, we returned it all to sender." So in whose interest is this story being reported?

It would be a reasonable story to spread as cover if the shipment had been intentional and China found out about it (or if there had been, say, six fuses shipped and four returned); or it could be a useful story to ratchet up tensions with China before the Olympics (to whoever's benefit). Thing is, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, so I don't really buy that without it being more obvious whose interest it serves; but if it's just a "gotcha" story talking about how the US military screwed up, then the shots fired in the Suez might be a more interesting one (especially since as of yesterday afternoon the USAF was denying that anybody got hurt).

So, in short, this nuke-fuse story is weird, and I can't figure out why it's getting reported.

(Full disclosure: I wish Taiwan had nukes, to make sure China stays polite and on its side of the Strait.)

Re:Why is this reported?

[Anonymous Coward]

To wish anyone had nuclear weapons is a horrible thing to say. I'd sooner wish that no one had nuclear weapons, but unfortunately, that's probably just me.

Re:Why is this reported?

[blair1q]

Those are items controlled under roughly the same rules as the rest of the device.

The fact that any part of such a thing was mishandled is a big deal, because it validates the probability that the dangerous parts can be mishandled.

You think it was a couple of irrelevant parts. To the process involved in controlling them, this was an "escape" from the process, and the process has to be re-engineered to ensure such things can not happen at all, because next time it may not be the mundane stuff that gets lost in the mail.

Re:Why is this reported?

[Chris Mattern]

Two main reasons:

1) This involves NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

2) The *next* time we send nuclear weapon components to the wrong address, the recipient might not be nice enough to send them back. And they might wind up somewhere we wouldn't like.

Re:Why is this reported?

[the_raptor]

Why? You think China and others wouldn't be starting massive conventional wars if the West didn't have nukes? A few nuked cities now and then is much preferable to another non-nuclear world war.

Re:Why is this reported?

[someone1234]

Rest assured, they'll send it back in one form or another.

Re:Why is this reported?

[z0idberg]

2) The *next* time we send nuclear weapon components to the wrong address, the recipient might not be nice enough to send them back. And they might wind up somewhere we wouldn't like.

Or even worse, if you sent nuclear weapons components to the wrong address and they put them all together and THEN sent them back.....express.

Re:Why is this reported?

[amplt1337]

Your 1) is pretty much the only valid part. Absolutely no one (aside from a couple bureaucrats) would care if we'd mis-shipped a couple boxes of Imperial-unit wrenches.

I understand the significance of accidental nuclear proliferation, but that doesn't mean that every time the system screws up it needs to be front-page news. Time to implement some new process controls, and in the mean time, the actual event was a push.

Re:Why is this reported?

[amplt1337]

You think it was a couple of irrelevant parts. To the process involved in controlling them, this was an "escape" from the process

No, I think it was a couple of extremely important parts, that were shipped to a friendly country who, as far as I can tell, promptly returned them unmolested, meaning that the only people who should really care are the ones who'll be reworking the process to prevent future escapes.

Re:Why is this reported?

[cyfer2000]

Or you mean "last" time?

Re:Why is this reported?

[amplt1337]

NB: I like MAD. I even said so in my OP.

I don't know that a few nuked cities is better than a non-nuclear war fought correctly, but to paraphrase the old slogan:

God made nations. Oppenheimer made nations equal.

Re:Why is this reported?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, so maybe I should have said that I wish there were no war? It's sad that everyone assumes wars have to happen regardless of technology. Will there ever be a time when war is obsolete?

Re:Why is this reported?

[Anonymous Coward]

The story about the Suez is also being reported, but not as much. Also, it wasn't the U.S. military's "screw-up" (if it was a screw-up at all; if the small boats really did fail to stay clear, USS Cole-style, the response was justified, though none the less tragic), but civilian security contracted to work for the military's sea-lift command. That's hardly the same as some trigger-happy Navy sailors gunning down hapless merchants in the canal.

Re:Why is this reported?

[OpenSourced]

I think you are right. It _sounds_ like a PR job. Something happened, probably the Chinese got wind of it, and so a fitting story is cooked and released. Not that the Chinese will believe that, but it may throw them out of the real scent. And also, now the USA has its back sort of covered if the Chinese decide to raise a stink about it. It's also probably non-coincidental that this happens just days after a new government is elected in Taiwan.

However, I don't think there is a chance that we ever know what really happened, so it's better to think about other things.

Re:Why is this reported?

[malsdavis]

"So, in short, this nuke-fuse story is weird, and I can't figure out why it's getting reported."

It could be something to do with the utter incompetence displayed by people handling weapons capable of killing millions and what are meant to be amongst our country's most closely guarded technology. So I think it's pretty obvious why the mainstream news outlets reported it.

Not sure why it's on Slashdot though, hardly "news for nerds". Then again, a lot of non-"news for nerds" stories are on Slashdot these days and with an election approaching I fear this is only going to get worse.

Re:Why is this reported?

[CmdrGravy]

Really ? So given the lengths the US goes to around the world to ensure other countries cannot develop this sort of technology themselves you think shipping ready made components randomly around the world is a total non event !

Look at the huge amount of pressure the US exerts on the likes of Iran and North Korea to stop them developing this sort of thing to judge how important this really is.

Re:Why is this reported?

[vertinox]

I can't seem to figure out why it was being reported at all. The story as it's published is "nothing much happened, somebody filled out the shipping form wrong, we returned it all to sender." So in whose interest is this story being reported?

The fact that it happened at all is newsworthy. Of course no nuclear material was sent, but the parties that would be interested in it already have the ability to make nuclear material and would be more interested in the detonation technologies.

Its not farfected to think if a helicopter engineer realized what they had in that crate to call a friend on the mainland and offer to deliver them via FedEx for a few smooth million dollars. Heck... Russia would be interested too.

Re:Why is this reported?

[Hal_Porter]

I'm in Taiwan at the moment.

Taiwan has just had an election and Chen Shui Bian who was basically in favour of formal independence (which would cause China to attack) has been replaced with Ma Ying Jeou who's policy is "no independence, no unification and no war" and trying to increase economic ties with China and possibly sign some sort of peace treaty. The US strongly supports this since they don't want a war between large but totalitarian China and small but democratic Taiwan which they might get dragged into. Taiwan elects its own leaders, has its own army and so on anyway, and is a rich free country, quite unlike China. Formal independence wouldn't actually do any good, but it might do a lot of bad by triggering a full on war.

No I've no idea what the story behind all this, but I guess the US and/or Taiwan have decided to disclose this rather than risk China finding out about it later. Taiwan having nuclear weapons is one of the things that would cause the China to attack. Since China is in scheming mode rather than bullying mode because of the Taiwanese election result, maybe now is as good a time to make the announcement as any.

Even when the US still had diplomatic relations with Taiwan instead of China, they forced Taiwan to dismantle some nuclear facilities to reduce the risk that they provoke a war with China. Despite the change in diplomatic recognition, which was forced on them by a vote in the UN General Assembly, the US still views Taiwan as a protege and would defend them if China attacked, unless they provoked that attack by declaring formal independence.

Re:Why is this reported?

[Waffle Iron]

A few nuked cities now and then is much preferable to another non-nuclear world war.

Maybe so, but it's rather doubtful that a nuclear war could somehow be stopped after just a "few" cities.

Re:Why is this reported?

[amplt1337]

It's not random at all. We have tons of military shipments to Taiwan.

We go to great lengths to ensure that (current) ideological enemies don't get the Bomb. Neutral parties, we are concerned but don't intervene (we disapproved of India, but didn't go to any great lengths to stop it, and then basically had to accept Pakistan in too or we'd have a war). Friends, we couldn't care less (Israel ferinstance).

Re:Why is this reported?

[sorak]

You know, I read a couple articles about this yesterday afternoon.

I can't seem to figure out why it was being reported at all.

Any time the words "nuclear" and "mistake" appear in the same headline, it's news.

Re:Why is this reported?

[darkmeridian]

Wrongo! The United States wanted Chen Shui Bian to win the election so Taiwan would continue to be a thorn at the side of China. The United States does not want China to make peace with Taiwan because there's the real prospect of them getting together and expelling the Seventh Fleet. Then America would lose a foothold in the region. As long as there is China/Taiwan problems, the US can sell weapons to Taiwan and keep a presence there.

Re:Why is this reported?

[amplt1337]

Russia would be interested too.
Russia's already got more nukes than it knows what to do with. (Or than it knows where they are. Oops.)

call a friend on the mainland
There are approximately six people in Taiwan who would sell nuke tech to China (which is, after all, the country that keeps shooting missile "warning shots" at them). Besides, China also already has the Bomb, and doesn't need 1960s-era fuse technology (look for the phrase "quite dated"). Much more likely that the stuff would get sold to Japan (though they're understandably touchy about the whole nuclear thing still) or S. Korea, in which case the US probably wouldn't mind too much; but the biggest use of all would be for Taiwan to start building a couple missiles of its own, which is why you'll see that now China is (predictably) kicking up a fuss about the whole thing. After all, they want ALL US arms sales to Taiwan to stop, because they want Taiwan defenseless.

It looks like the story was preemptively spread mainly to convince China that nothing actually had happened (per a cursory reading of this), especially in light of recent developments in Taiwanese mid-range missile technology (which I did not know about). Think that's about the best I can do to explain...

Re:Why is this reported?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, USA wants peace but not reunification just like Taiwan itself wants. That way Tawain remains a thorn in china's side but no war.

Re:Why is this reported?

[Choad Namath]

Chen wasn't even running this time, and we definitely do not want a thorn in the side of China. He already pissed off the US by trying to join the UN, among other things. We also don't want a war between two hugely important trading partners, even if it meant we could sell them weapons. And our military foothold in East Asia is in Japan and South Korea. Neither China nor Taiwan have any say over that.

Re:Why is this reported?

[jayveekay]

"Taiwan having nuclear weapons is one of the things that would cause the China to attack [wikipedia.org]. "

Waiting until your opponent to obtain nuclear weapons, and then launching your attack because he now possesses the means to annihilate you would be highly irrational. Even if your opponent only possesses enough nukes to hit your dozen largest cities that's a pretty big downside to attacking them.

Most rational Americans would refrain from launching an invasion of North Korea even if they knew that North Korea had just 1 nuke, and that nuke could only be used against South Korea. Ousting a dictator may be a nice thing to do but not over the bodies of a million dead South Koreans.

Does the PRC leadership seriously believe that their population would be willing to suffer tens of millions of dead and ruining their economy for the purpose of conquering Taiwan? I doubt it. They may talk the talk, but they are not so insane as to risk their positions of privilege on such a stupid undertaking.

Re:Why is this reported?

[hassanchop]

It could be something to do with the utter incompetence displayed by people handling weapons capable of killing millions and what are meant to be amongst our country's most closely guarded technology. So I think it's pretty obvious why the mainstream news outlets reported it.

You and I must have read a different story, because the one we are all discussing is about electrical fuses, not "weapons capable of killing millions".

Re:Why is this reported?

[xtrafe]

Eh? Not sure I get your comment. Chen Shui Bian was not running in the most recent election. He reached the limit of his term. The outcome wasn't really in question, either. Everyone's been expecting Ma Ying Jeou to be the next president for quite some time.

regardless...

What's at stake here is America's strategy in East Asia. Taiwan is key, but the main issue is Japan, not Taiwan. Japan's key territories are Korea and Taiwan... these were Japan's holdings prior to WWII (plus a good chunk of China, and some Islands in the North that Russia claims). You'll note that America has gone through a good deal of trouble to ensure the 'amicability' of Korea and Taiwan to Japan.

America ensures Taiwan and Korea are friendly, and in return Japan lets America have Okinawa and doesn't militarize. That's the implicit contract.

Taiwan's geographic position basically makes it Cuba to either China or Japan. IMHO, everybody would be better off if Taiwan was independent, and basically a Switzerland. Obviously, the political climate in China makes this position untenable anytime in the near future.

Re:Why is this reported?

[moosesocks]

(Full disclosure: I wish Taiwan had nukes, to make sure China stays polite and on its side of the Strait.) No you don't.

Even with nukes there is no remotely plausible way for Taiwan to win any sort of conflict against China. Taiwan can only strike a very small area of China, even with a massive arsenal. China can erase Taiwan from the map with a relatively small arsenal.

Taiwan would be insane to even consider such a proposition. There would be no possible favorable outcome.

Re:Why is this reported?

[bkr1_2k]

Chapter 2 of the Japanese Constitution specifically states it will renounce war and never maintain a military force. There is no "implicit contract" between the US and Japan that we will keep Korea and Taiwan friendly in exchange for bases on Okinawa. While some older citizens of Korea and Taiwan still have a deep-seated hatred for Japan, most of the youth (and by youth I mean anyone in the late baby-boomer generation or later who don't remember Japanese occupation) don't really care.

Yes, Japan does have an "air defense force" that is basically a military, but it has a very limited fleet (~350 aircraft) and no long range combat aircraft.

As for Taiwan being "Cuba" to Japan, I think you're drastically overstating its importance to Japan. It's nearly 1000 miles away and while it may have significant impact on them if China and Taiwan go to war (or unify) it's not such a major issue in any sense other than economic.

Re:Why is this reported?

[dbIII]

There are factions. There are selfish old idiots that saw the Cold War as the good old days where they could make a lot of money from the taxpayer in secret and would like a new one with China. There are uncontrolled spooks that get up to mischief and set foreign policy by making enemies whether the government of the day wants them or not. There also are all the usual factions you would expect. It should be pointed out that China is currently financing the US war effort and many want the loans to keep on coming.

Re:Why is this reported?

[Hal_Porter]

I presume the PRC would attack if they thought Taiwan was close to nuclearizing. There's a time window where a country is committed to having nukes but hasn't deployed them or has deployed so few that they could be destroyed. Cuba essentially never past through this window in the Cuban Missile Crisis, because the US threated to attack them. The WMD justification for attacking Iraq was based on the idea that Iraq was in this window. Actually most Middle Eastern states have been stuck in the window for decades since they are probably committed to nukes but have run the program remarkably badly and have a very low industrial base.

North Korea is an interesting case. They have large amounts of WWII era artillery aimed at Seoul and could use it if America attacked them. So they have essentially got a deterrent against American attack even without nukes, since as you say the Americans probably can't accept large numbers of South Koreans being killed. As a nasty third world dictatorship they also spent a ridiculous time in the window, many decades at least.

Japan is an interesting case. They have vast amounts of plutonium but are under pressure from just about everyone not to build weapons. They could of course, some Japanese politician was quoted as saying "we have enough for thousands of warheads. If we ever got started no one could match us". But the political establishment there has decided that they are better off staying non nuclear, at least while the current strategic situation in Asia persists - i.e. that the US essentially offers them security guarantees in return for not saying or doing anything that might start a downward spiral into a regional war. I suppose you could say that Taiwan is in a similar situation - US military protection essentially makes the status quo very safe.

In window terms, they have to state categorically that they have no intention of entering the window, even though Japan could pass through it very quickly, possibly a matter of days or even hours.

Re:Why is this reported?

[malsdavis]

...and if the people who build extremely important parts of those "weapons capable of killing millions" can't even send those parts to the correct part of the world, it is a worrying display of incompetence.

Re:Why is this reported?

[hassanchop]

...and if the people who build extremely important parts of those "weapons capable of killing millions" can't even send those parts to the correct part of the world, it is a worrying display of incompetence.

No, not even a little. Rocket motors are an extremely important part of those weapons, and it wouldn't be a big deal if some got mishandled.

Servo motors are an extremely important part of those weapons, and it wouldn't be a big deal if they got mishandled.

This is not a big deal either.

Lastly, the people who build them are not the same as the people who ship them. You don't even have the blame in the right place for this nothing, insignificant story.

Obligatory Family Guy...

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

Probably what happened is that one of the components was built in Taiwan, and someone saw the "Made in Taiwan" label and thought that "in" meant "for" and... nevermind... it's just easier to call them stupid.

They should have used the CIA

[TheLink]

Makes things more interesting...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/jan/05/energy.g2

On paper, Merlin was supposed to stunt the development of Tehran's nuclear programme by sending Iran's weapons experts down the wrong technical path. The CIA believed that once the Iranians had the blueprints and studied them, they would believe the designs were usable and so would start to build an atom bomb based on the flawed designs.

The Russian studied the blueprints the CIA had given him. Within minutes of being handed the designs, he had identified a flaw. "This isn't right," he told the CIA officers gathered around the hotel room. "There is something wrong." His comments prompted stony looks, but no straight answers from the CIA men. No one in the meeting seemed surprised by the Russian's assertion that the blueprints didn't look quite right, but no one wanted to enlighten him further on the matter, either.

In fact, the CIA case officer who was the Russian's personal handler had been stunned by his statement. During a break, he took the senior CIA officer aside. "He wasn't supposed to know that," the CIA case officer told his superior. "He wasn't supposed to find a flaw."

"Don't worry," the senior CIA officer calmly replied. "It doesn't matter."

Correction

[eebra82]

Nuclear Nose Cones Mistakenly Shipped to Taiwan - (People's Republic of) China Rejoice There, fixed it.

How long did it take to get them back?

[downix]

I mean, if I had 4 fuses suddenly show up, I might be tempted to "look em over" a bit...

Re:How long did it take to get them back?

[robipilot]

Received in June of 2006: Thank you for emailing the military logistics support desk. Your claim number is #0818274324892343. A customer service representative will be looking into your inquiry and will contact you for more information. There is no need for you to do anything in the meantime. If you would like a refund, please visit our website.

Expected news considering that

[zappepcs]

The US appears to have been dealing in nuclear information and weapons for quite some time now. A few lost shipments of this and that are to be expected when you are shipping with fly-by-night-drugs-R-us airlines.

Seriously, I'm amazed that we don't find more shipping accidents. A CIA plane crash lands with a buttload of cocaine on it, nuclear fuses get shipped to a foreign country like lost luggage on an airliner? Rumors and stories everywhere of secretly selling nuclear secrets to now declared enemies of the USA. Where does it stop? Ooops, Sorry Los Angeles. We mistakenly sent that suitcase bomb to Iran. Brown was supposed to handle that, but Columbian based DruglordCo came in at a cheaper price.

In other news, the US government looks foolish for trying to stop Iran's non-weapons nuclear program with war if need be, while misplacing EVERY FUCKING THING Iran needs to build a bomb, through some shipping miscommunication...

Fuck, I give up. Either the Whitehouse and government is full of evil geniuses or they are incompetent as to be less useful than tits on a boar hog as my grandfather used to say. How can they pull off the media circus they did to get us into war with Iraq but clumsily admit "oh, yes, we made a mistake with some nuclear weapons stuff, sorry about that" ?!?!?!?!?!?

not tampered

[anticlimate]

the components (...) had not been tampered with.

I may have watched too much spy movies, but am sure that using X-rays/infrared/radar/ultrasound/etc. you can gain insight into a structure without touching or disassembling it.
Which doesn't necessarily mean that anything like that happened.

Re:not tampered

[janrinok]

The OP is correct. They haven't been tampered with. They might have been inspected, X-rayed, studied, replicated, imaged or whatever, but they haven't been tampered with.....

It's sad

[netglen]

It's truly sad how far the Chinese government will try to cover up the Tibet revolt by whining about this minor incident. Shame on them.

Isn't Taiwan the good China?

[fucket]

Isn't Taiwan the good China? At least that's the impression I've pieced together from the back of sugar packets and Tom Clancy novels.

Re:Isn't Taiwan the good China?

[Bryansix]

Yes, basically. China is actually all pissed off about this and wants to know what went wrong and an in-depth investigation with the finding sent to them. I say screw em'. China ships all kinds of weapons illegally all over the world and makes all kinds of money off of it. They aren't even making mistakes; they DO IT ON PURPOSE. They are really scared that if Taiwan had Nukes then they might have to behave. They shouldn't feel any less safe if Taiwan had nuke because we already do and China is on the short list what with all their stupid actions and the fact that they have such a large population and fighting them in a ground war would be impossible.

Re:Isn't Taiwan the good China?

[Himring]

It's the china where the congress guys have big fist fights, but nobody ever uses kung fu. Odd....

Yeah, big today, gone tomorrow

[WindBourne]

The simple fact is that China is trying hard to put a major spotlight on this to pull it off of themselves and Tibet. In a normal time, China would be pretty quiet about this. It should be obvious that this is nothing more than a mistake. Otherwise, why would we bring it up?

Funny how many ppl believe it

[WindBourne]

I have written about this before. I worked at a job before where we designed special hardware/software for sale to several different 3 letter agencies. It was interesting work. But at one time, we went out to find funding. One of them was a Taiwanese guy from Loveland CO. He had recently sold a Chinese restaurant there. He wanted to fund us, but wanted full access to the hardware. In particular, he wanted the ability to take this to Mainland china. He said that he could sell it for a bundle (and he would have gotten millions more for it there, than we were able to sell it here). Even we told him that this was prevented from leaving the country, he still wanted to own if the company collapsed. When pointed out that the code hardware would have to go back to a different company, he was upset with it. All in all, this man saw no difference between mainland vs. taiwan. In fact, I would say that he viewed it more as China vs. America. And this man had grown up in Taiwan.

Re:Funny how many ppl believe it

[Anonymous Coward]

I think those in Taiwan who just care about money, love China. While the general populace has more mixed feelings.

Re:Funny how many ppl believe it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Taiwanese, and, ironically, also from Loveland, CO. I don't own a restaurant, though. I'm of the first generation of the family and born and raised here. Very unfortunately, I'm not as familiar with my own heritage as I'd like to be, but I did grow up around my parents (obviously) who both came from Taiwan, and I've grown up around a hundred or so other Taiwanese and Chinese types in the area. This post struck me as very strange. Now, personally, as your average random guy, I think Taiwan is a whole lot better than China politically. You don't see them setting up Great Firewalls and requiring licenses for reincarnation. Still, it's probably a bad idea to call any country the good version of another, which is probably insulting to both when you lump them into one big category as if they're all the same and then rate them all on some random standard.

Anyway, the thing that confused me about the post is this apparent lack of distinction. My mom especially was always very big on Taiwanese independence. I've known Taiwanese people who refuse to even speak Chinese unless it's absolutely necessary (which was awkward for me since I only know Chinese - never could figure out the gazillion more tones required for Taiwanese). Many people I met had strong opinions about the matter, and there seemed to be a distinct political tension thing going on. While some didn't seem to particularly care, most viewed Taiwan and mainland China as very different. Interestingly, people from the mainland viewed the two as the same.

It's possible the guy you met just happened to be one of the people who didn't care. Or maybe he was a relatively recent addition to Taiwan and most of his family was in mainland China. Maybe he cared more about money than politics. Or maybe he just had a different opinion on the issue. After all, it's not like all Taiwanese people are exactly the same. It's probably not fair to extrapolate the Taiwanese view of the distinction between China and Taiwan from a sample of one random guy.

Re:Funny how many ppl believe it

[WindBourne]

First, I do not extrapolate a view country based on a person. In fact, you can not. Many ppl from overseas would assume that W represents America. Yet, I think that you would have to agree that his views are VERY far from the average American. The same is doubtless true of every other nations (more so in a country like China, or anywhere there is a dictatorship or a totalitarian system). I do not dislike Chinese ppl. I do not trust Chinese gov, though (of course, having worked in various capacities with our gov, I really do not trust ours either).

Second, I do know that this guy grew up in Taiwan and his family was driven there via mainland (of course, that could all be BS). But I do know that as we talked, I had the strong sense that he viewed Mainland China in the same context that I (or any normal America) would view America. I tend to believe that he was interested in the money, but I suspect that he would taken NOTHING for it, if required. Are there ppl in Taiwan who prefer or are even working to merge with Mainland? Absolutely. They are no different than Americans here WRT Iraq, Afghanistan, or even or budget.

Re:Funny how many ppl believe it

[WindBourne]

BTW, sorry, if you believed that I was knocking Taiwain. I was not saying that it was "bad china". I simply do not assume things about a country.

Also, if you live in Loveland, then I am sure that you have been to the Chinese restaurant off of 34 down the road from old A&W, west side of town? He sold that about a decade ago.

Re:Funny how many ppl believe it

[Anonymous Coward]

hah wow,
sounds like the Golden Dragon guy then.

absurdity in this universe tends to a severe maximum thats for sure.

Re:Funny how many ppl believe it

[The-Bus]

Or, he's a person who has no problem selling out his country for millions.

Re:Funny how many ppl believe it

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Yes, there are always have been, always are and always will be people on Taiwan who are perhaps a little too trusting of China. The vast majority of Taiwanese people just want to be left alone. That is all. They don't particularly like China telling them what to do. They would not in any way do anything that would help China get the upper hand against themselves or the USA because they know that the only thing right now preventing China from turning Taiwan into Tibet Take 2 is the threat that the US military will intervene if they invade. Even during the bad days of the Communist Chinese government when Mao and his cronies still ran things, you had some defectors from Taiwan who foolishly believed that "Communist = good", "Capitalist = bad". I don't doubt that the man you knew was the way he was, but I don't think he is typical of most Taiwanese.

Re:Funny how many ppl believe it

[Hal_Porter]

I found this poll

http://www.mac.gov.tw/english/index1-e.htm

Generally, about 70 to 80 percent (69 to 87 percent) of the public support maintaining the status quo in a broader sense, consistent with the trends of previous surveys. At the same time, only a very small minority (less than 10 to 15 percent) support "independence as soon as possible" or "unification as soon as possible."
16.5% "maintaining the status quo with independence later." The largest bloc,
34.9%, advocated "maintaining the status and deciding on independence or unification later," and another 17.9% supported "maintaining the status quo indefinitely." Does that seem about right? It's a somewhat touchy subject so I don't like to ask people IRL. I don't know enough of them to get the answer anyway.

Re:Funny how many ppl believe it

[WindBourne]

meh, I guess if the republicans can sell our nuclear bomb know-how to turkey and Pakistan, AND not be tried for the treason, then I am not surprised that he was trying it. With a different company and group of ppl, he actually might have succeeded.

Re:Funny how many ppl believe it

[readin]

I was planning to tell you to ask the guy where his parents were born, and that I already knew the answer. But then I read this post and of course I had been right, his parents were from China. Amoung people born in Taiwan, I've found that those who call think of people from Taiwan as Taiwanese have family born in Taiwan, while whose who consider from Taiwan as Chinese have ancestors born in China. Recently I met a guy who confused me for a moment. Though born in Taiwan and raised in America, he said people from Taiwan were Chinese. I immediately asked where his parents were born and he said "Taiwan". I was shocked! I started to say how surprised I was and then I realized I was dealing with a new generation, the kid was only in his twenties. So I asked him were his grandparents were born: China, he sheepishly admitted. Of course!

Re:Funny how many ppl believe it

[bkr1_2k]

Likely he wasn't Taiwanese. Every Taiwanese person I've ever met that was born after 1960 or so considered themself Taiwanese, not Chinese, and made a very clear distinction between the two.

There are "Taiwanese" people who are really Chinese but came through Taiwan and are actively spying for the Chinese government whenever and wherever they can. I've met some personally and know a whole bunch of other defense contractors and military members who've met them as well, both in the US and abroad. It's a little weird the first time you recognize it for what it is, but after that you're sort of tuned to it.

Re:Funny how many ppl believe it

[samsamsamj]

Why the surprise? Check wikipedia. 98% of the Taiwan's population is of Han Chinese ethnicity. It's just a matter of when they migrated to Taiwan, in 50 years, 100 years, or 200 years or more.

Also, "A survey in November 2006 ... showed that more than 60% of Taiwan's population consider themselves Taiwanese, compared to only 18% in 1992." So you see how quick people change their minds. But then hundreds of thousands of people from Taiwan now migrate back to the mainland for work. So the tides may change again.

Re:Funny how many ppl believe it

[Anonymous Coward]

After the Chinese government lost the civil war, the Chinese relocated to Taiwan and wanted to fight back in 1949. Under the control of the military government, marshall law and secret military and police agents were used against Taiwanese people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/228_Incident
Under the propaganda, many Taiwanese believed that they are Chinese. Also, many Taiwanese submitted themselves to the rule of the Chinese government (Kuomintang, or KMT). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuomintang

Modern democratic era of Taiwan started from 1990.
The latest poll shows that more than 85% of the people in Taiwan believed that they are Taiwanese instead of Chinese. With the help of the international community, Taiwanese hoped to maintain its independence and potentially change the country's name from ROC to Taiwan. PRC and ROC are confusing. China and Taiwan make more sense.
Under the pressure of China, most of the countries does not support Taiwan and Taiwan cannot join UN, WHO and many international organizations.

The current status is that "Taiwan is not a part of China". Taiwanese has a democratic government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan

Re:Funny how many ppl believe it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the type of person you described: parents born in Taiwan, grandparents all born in China (and fled after the Communist Revolution). I was born and raised in the US, though.

I used to say that I was Taiwanese. The vast majority (98%, according to Wikipedia) of the people of Taiwan are Han Chinese, which is the dominant ethnic group in China. Those that immigrated after WWII/Communist Revolution are "mainlanders", whereas those descended from earlier Chinese immigrants are "Taiwanese." From my opinion, most people in Taiwan despise China for many reasons, including political and cultural ones. The "new generation" you refer to (if I am reading your post correctly) is actually a nationalistic self-identification as "Taiwanese" by the native majority. Some of the loudest calls for independence come from the younger generation in their twenties, who want nothing to do with China.

Now? I usually say I'm "ethnically Chinese" or "Taiwanese", whatever those mean. It's kind of ironic, since I hate China and would be considered an outsider in Taiwan.

Re:Funny how many ppl believe it

[readin]

Yes, 98% have Chinese ancestry, and a sizable portion of those also have aborigine Taiwanese ancestry. It's a bit like the U.S. were most people have European ancestry from who knows when. The distinction I was referring to was the children and grandchildren of Chinese who came over with Chiang Kai-shek in the 1940s with the idea that they would one day return to China, not the descendants of Chinese who came to stay many generations earlier.

Re:Funny how many ppl believe it

[GSGKT]

You can find traitors everywhere. You should not generalize one person's behavior to everyone from Taiwan. Taiwanese/Chinese identity has been a pressing political issue in Taiwan. One problems with KMT's rules in Taiwan was the legacy in education to promote the idea that Taiwan is just a temperary base for an eventual unification of the greater China. This idea has been particullarly appealing with some small subsets of Chinese and their children who fled the Mainland with Chiang. That idea, mixed with some ultra-nationalism non-sense (so that everyone can and should be sacrificed for the greater China), result in the kind of guys you met: Just gown up in Taiwan, unfortunately, is not enough to make these heartless creatures/assholes to love Taiwan.

It's no longer cool to be in the nuclear military

[MichaelCrawford]

A board that investigated the accidental flight of nuclear-armed cruise missiles across the country a few months ago found that our nation's nuclear armaments are now trusted to much lower-ranking officers and civilians than used to be the case. They found that working with nuclear arms was no longer regarded by military personnel as being a good way to advance one's career.

The US has been fighting conventionally ever since the first Gulf War - even after that war ended, there was quite a bit of combat activity to enforce Iraq's no-fly zone. With the current wars, this has resulted in military personnel regarding conventional fighting as the way to get ahead in the military.

Let me find you a link...

• Air Force's Nuclear Focus Has Dimmed

After the Cold War, the once-vaunted Strategic Air Command, which controlled all Air Force nuclear weapons, was dismantled. The military's nuclear missiles were assigned to a division responsible for operations in space, and its nuclear bombers were moved to Air Combat Command, which also includes nonnuclear fighters and reconnaissance aircraft.

...

However, the Welch report is highly critical of the split commands. The report concludes that combining nuclear forces with nonnuclear organizations has led to "markedly reduced levels of leadership whose daily focus is the nuclear enterprise and a general devaluation of the nuclear mission and those who perform the mission."

More?

[antikaos]

If for every discovered mistake there are X undiscovered mistakes, how many other nuclear missile components have we shipped to various countries? What if they realized what they had recieved and said "yeah, we got the "batteries""?

Re:More?

[Hatta]

Are you assuming X > 1? Why? With proper auditing, X could be very small indeed.

Re:More?

[antikaos]

In that this mistake went unnoticed for two years, one should have assumed that there were unnoticed mistakes in the first place, and we should now assume that there are more to be found. Proper auditing already failed.

"Fuze" is probably a small radar

[Animats]

If it's the "fuse" in the "nose cone", it's probably the radar proximity fuze, used to detonate a nuclear weapon at a specific height above ground. This is essential only for ICBMs intended for use against hardened targets, where the detonation has to occur at just the right height to maximize the blast effect against something like a missile silo lid.

If you're delivering your bomb in a Ryder truck, this component is unnecessary.

Re:"Fuze" is probably a small radar

[LWATCDR]

Actually the fuses for used for hardened targets detonate after the warhead hits the target Often underground.
Airbursts are used for soft or area targets like airfields military bases, and I am sorry to say cities.

Re:"Fuze" is probably a small radar

[mdielmann]

If you're delivering your bomb in a Ryder truck, this component is unnecessary. Do you have any idea what kind of energy it would take to put a Ryder truck with a nuclear payload on a ballistic trajectory with, say, China?

No, seriously, do you know? I think that would really mess them up. "Um, it's a Ryder truck. I think it's a special delivery..." BOOM!

Irken monsters

[overkill1024]

conquer my people
take our planet
force us to ship packages
can I call myself a man if I am slave to the Irken machine?
our futures, crushed like so manly little loving packing peanuts
no, no I say; I must rebel
I, will, switch the addresses on these two boxes
Let the revolution be-

Just makes me think

[Tsoat]

of that oxymoron 'Military Intelligence'

You can pick your friends

[davidwr]

There's a saying:

You can pick your nose cone, and
You can pick your friends,
but you can't pick your friend's nose cone.

Trust Republicans With National Security

[Doc Ruby]

How many other critical nuke parts were shipped to people who didn't report the "mistake"? How many of them have customers in China, N Korea, jihadist gangs?

There used to be all kinds of failsafe procedures to keep critical weapons far, far from our enemies' hands. But that was before 7-13 years of Republicans running the system according to the principle "shrink government small enough to drown it in New Orleans^W^Wa bathtub".

These kinds of "mistakes" are top-notch marketing for a Star Wars "missile defense" boondoggle to pretend to protect us while ratcheting up all the risks.

Feel safer now?

Re:Trust Republicans With National Security

[Anonymous Coward]

How many other [national secrets] were [sold] to people who didn't report the [sale]? How many of them have customers in China, N Korea, jihadist gangs?

There used to be all kinds of failsafe procedures to keep critical [secrets] far, far from our enemies' hands. But that was before [Bubba Clinton] running the system according to the principle "shrink [military] small enough to drown it in [a dress stain]^W^Wa bathtub".

Feel safer now? Fixed.

Re:Trust Republicans With National Security

[Doc Ruby]

Thanks for pointing out all the national secrets that have been given away by Republicans operating and datamining our personal info database, and distributing secret nuke tech to all kinds of unstable governments, including enemies like N Korea.

Feel safer now?

why not put nukes on taiwan?

[circletimessquare]

north korea and iran have discovered the value of deterrence

of course, china might pull a kennedy. that is, kennedy said there would be war if the russians put nukes on cuba, so the russians backed down. and the us should most definitely back down if china threatens war over nukes in taiwan

but after china's recent actions in tibet, i'm not interested in seeing them in taiwan anytime soon

at the very least, this "mistake" of nuclear missile parts sends the grumpy old technocrats in beijing a message, and if i could articulate my own message to the old a**holes, it is this:

1. i respect the people of china, and i respect the will of the people of china
2. you are not elected by the people of china, therefore, you do not represent the will of the people of china
3. therefore, in the name of respecting the people of china, i do not respect the chinese government, because the chinese governmental class represses the chinese (and tibetan) people with impunity. nice class system for a "communist" country there

the value of democracy, above all else, is that it means there is parity between the will of the people and the will of the government. of course this parity is only approximate, it always is, and always can forever more be only approximate, but at least the government resembles the will of the people in a democracy. in a nondemocracy, over time, the will of the people and the will of the government drift away from each other. what was once a valid noble revolution of the people devolves into just another class system that needs to be overthrown. let this be a lesson to all nondemocratic countries in the world. your days are numbered. not because of anything the usa or any other western democracy does. but simply because of the inherent flaw in nondemocratic systems that, over time, your interests tend to resemble less and less of the will of the people you rule, until there is only antagonism between the people and the government left. and that situation never lasts long. learn this simple truth, russia. learn this simple truth, china. you are doomed to repeat your revolutinoary upheavels of a century ago if you do not respect your own people via democracy

democracy in china in our lifetimes!

Re:why not put nukes on taiwan?

[samsamsamj]

Rumor says it that the US does not trust Taiwan. The nuke may end up in the communist's hand.

Seriously, I doubt Taiwan even wants it to begin with. In the 2004 election, Taiwan failed to pass the missile referendum worded as following:

"The People of Taiwan demand that the Taiwan Strait issue be resolved through peaceful means. Should Communist China refuse to withdraw the missiles it has targeted at Taiwan and to openly renounce the use of force against us, would you agree that the Government should acquire more advanced anti-missile weapons to strengthen Taiwan's self-defense capabilities?"

About 55% of the voters refused to cast the vote on this question, which effectively invalidated the referendum. Similar things happened again in 2008.

Tempest meet Teakettle

[infonography]

Considering they were likely made in Taiwan I don't see the big deal.

The inner conspiracy theorist...

[tekiegreg]

The inner conspiracy theorist in me is saying "What accident? The cover was blown!". While definitely remote speculation I wonder how likely this is...

Dear Mr. Pentagon:

[Hyppy]

Dear Mister Pentagon,
Please ship me a Peacekeeper missile. They're really pretty.
Sincerely,
Hyppy

Re:Dear Mr. Pentagon:

[Notquitecajun]

Here ya go. RUSH delivery. Catch it if you...ooops. Sorry. I figured you may as well get a free explosion.

ugh

[AxemRed]

I have been reading this story though various news outlets since yesterday. And I am going to post here the same thing I posted on Fark...

This is a non-issue. Something got mixed up when we were shipping them some batteries, and we shipped them some fuses instead. And they returned them with no problems. This story keeps on cropping up, and it's just sensationalism... especially using the word "nuclear" in the headline in this particular case. For shame.

Re:ugh

[ArcCoyote]

Yes, but leave it to Slashdot to refer to fuses as "Nuclear Nose Cones"

Real-politick and espionage

[alexhmit01]

Well, if the US notifies China (PRC) that it is giving China/Taiwan (ROC) nuclear weapons, China goes to war with US, embargoes Taiwan, etc.

If US gives ROC weapons, and nobodies knows, there is no deterrent, we violate agreements, and generally encourage proliferation.

If US just plants a news story about the parts, then PRC doesn't know, "shipping error" creates plausible deniability. PRC can't make a scene, but can wonder, does the ROC have a nuke now.

PRC doesn't care about being depopulated, but 4-10 nuclear weapons might do a number on those shiny new factories that they are building.

Re:Real-politick and espionage

[darkmeridian]

Everyone knows that China has nukes that can hit Taiwan. Three nukes might hurt China, but one nuke will end Taiwan. With that kind of math, Taiwan would have to be stupid to try to play this MAD.

Re:Real-politick and espionage

[Kelbear]

How is that stupid?

China can already end Taiwan without nukes in a week or less. China has already expressed their intent to take Taiwan. Losses could even be avoided by simply toasting Taiwan from afar. They don't even need to worry about the high cost of securing territory like we are in Iraq.

If Taiwan had a nuke, China would have something to lose. It would survive, but it would feel the difference before/after the war at least.

Re:Real-politick and espionage

[Anonymous Coward]

What, you think a dozen well-placed nukes wouldn't ruin China's day? Sure they could "end" Taiwan. Taiwan could make it very painful to do so, especially with a distant early warning system set on a hairtrigger. Maybe in the near future they'll invest in a few boomer subs for a second-strike capability. We lose contact with the island? Then the mainland gets it.

Hell, if Japan goes nuclear China would be scared shitless.

Re:Real-politick and espionage

[Anonymous Coward]

I can sense a bizarro bay of pigs insident happening between Taiwan and China if the shipment was actually intentional...

Re:Real-politick and espionage

[Anonymous Coward]

China can already end Taiwan without nukes in a week or less.

Not yet. Google "million man swim". That's why the Chicoms are rapidly building up their navy. They are only a few years away from making your statement true.

If Taiwan had a nuke, China would have something to lose. It would survive, but it would feel the difference before/after the war at least.

Right you are.

Hell, if Japan goes nuclear China would be scared shitless. (sibling's post)

That's why the Chicoms were just as upset about North Korea's getting the nuke as anyone else. That means that at least one of the following countries will go nuclear: South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

Re:Real-politick and espionage

[couchslug]

"If US just plants a news story about the parts, then PRC doesn't know, "shipping error" creates plausible deniability. PRC can't make a scene, but can wonder, does the ROC have a nuke now."

A Supply Fart (clerk inputs number from Fed Log into system, maybe crosses to a "suitable substitute" for the original item, item ships because it was not in a "classified" warehouse section or whatever) is really quite plausible considering the staggering amount of shit that flows through the Supply system. Plenty of stuff gets mis-classified, and the system is designed to deal with that. (You get wrong part, tag it and turn it back in, call Supply and inform them of the problem. No biggee.)

Deliberately informing the media about what (supposedly) is a minor mis-shipment strikes me as a ploy to make Beijing wonder...

Re:Real-politick and espionage

[Rich0]

Forget the factories - a certain block of concrete holding back a flood of water the weight of the British Isles comes to mind...

So THAT was what this was all about !!

[unity100]

postman delivered an unexpected package this morning. i told him i wasnt expecting anything, but he said it was shipped priority from united states so it had to be mine. a curious electronic device was in it. i didnt know what to do with it so i integrated it with my toast machine. it works very well tbh. apparently pentagon is in ecommerce business now. thanks pentagon !

Re:I am afraid...

[smooth wombat]

Can anyone tell me what the USA under the Bush administration has successfully accomplished.

Lying to the American public about the reason to invade a foreign country
Outing of an undercover CIA agent whose husband debunked supposed evidence for why the U.S. should invade said foreign country
Declaring the invasion of said foreign country as "Mission Accomplished" without mentioning how long U.S. troops would be occupying said foreign country
Getting a majority of the American public to believe the 4th and 9th Amendments to the Constitution are irrelevant in today's world
Declaring that torturing someone isn't really torture because there is no lasting physical harm and that we won't do it again

I'm sure I left other things out this administration has done but that should tide you over for now.

All Your Nuclear Proliferation

[Anonymous Coward]

Are belong to us.

Radiationally Forever.
George W. Bush

Teh republicans!!! Oh, noes!

[halivar]

Specifics. Which fail-safe procedures were cut during the great "government shrinkage" of the 2000's? Or are you making stuff up because it fits your partisan political narrative? What if I say that things got sloppy because our bureaucracy is so big it can no longer effectively run, as has been for decades?

Re:Teh republicans!!! Oh, noes!

[Doc Ruby]

Here's a specific one, right off the top of my head, within the last half-year: nuke cruise missiles "mistakenly" flown out of their base. And that report comes out of the most secretive government ever in American history. How many more are there "redacted" for "national security" purposes (of covering up this government's failures)?

Or are you just looking for any excuse to blame "big government", when you voted twice for Bush, and who knows how many times for the other Republicans, who for years have proven they'll expand government faster than anyone, even as they hollow it out to make it less safe?

Re:Teh republicans!!! Oh, noes!

[halivar]

I asked what procedural measures were cut. So far you haven't given me anything but finger-pointing and innuendo. BTW, does...

Republicans, who for years have proven they'll expand government faster than anyone, even as they hollow it out to make it less safe?

...mean that you acknowledge the following statement to be false?

But that was before 7-13 years of Republicans running the system according to the principle "shrink government small enough to drown it in New Orleans^W^Wa bathtub".

BTW, I'm not really blaming big government (note that I said "What if I say blah blah blah?"). I offered up my statement as an equally ludicrous causation-by-correlation argument (only slightly less ludicrous, because my correlative factor was real and not made up) to see how you like it.

No, I blame human beings being in charge of the whole process from top-to-bottom. They screw everything up.

Re:Teh republicans!!! Oh, noes!

[Doc Ruby]

No, I "pointed my finger" at a specific breach of nuke security because oversight has been cut at that base. But why confuse you with the facts, when you're committed to believing that "equal opportunity big government" is to blame?

Of course stating Republicans have expanded the government faster than anyone while hollowing it out to make it unsafe is perfectly compatible with stating that Republicans have run the government according to "shrink it to drown it". That's the hollowing out part that I mentioned. But why believe the evidence of your own eyes, like an entire American city left to drown?

There is certainly cause and effect from Republicans insisting that government can't work, then proving it when they get the power. That's not mere "correlation", that's keeping a campaign promise of bad government. Some human beings have screwed things up much worse than others have. Those worse humans aren't merely "coincidentally" Republicans. Unless you're some kind of coincidence theorist.

Re:Teh republicans!!! Oh, noes!

[halivar]

when you're committed to believing that "equal opportunity big government" is to blame?

You do not read; go read again. And where did "equal opportunity" come into this? You need to email my arguments to me ahead of time to make sure I post the right ones; because I missed that one.

like an entire American city left to drown?

Don't forget to mention the baby-eating, too. Every Friday is baby-fry down at the local Ronald Reagen Pentacostal Church of Our Republican Savior. Dammit, why do Republicans hate people so much?

There is certainly cause and effect from Republicans insisting that government can't work, then proving it when they get the power.

No, libertarians believe government can't work. Republicans think government can work when it stops micromanaging. Like you say in an earlier post, though; once they got in power, they became what they campaigned against. Actual policy differences between the two parties are... uh... zilch. There are no conservatives in government. Neo-con's and democrats only differ on foreign policy.

Re:Teh republicans!!! Oh, noes!

[Doc Ruby]

You're the one who suggested that big government, not the ideologues of a specific group in a Party in power, is responsible for government malfunctions. It's a bad example of "correlation", because it ignores that one Party both preaches that government "is the problem, not the solution", and then proves the government is the solution. Republicans don't change when they get the power - it should be obvious that they lie about shrinking the government until they get the power and can no longer hide what they'll do. Which is mostly expand it, except (as I pointed out), to destroy the parts of the government that protect Americans from corporations and even the elements. They seem to like breaking the back of the military that Democrats build for them to abuse when power changes hands. Which they tell everyone they're going to do beforehand, like when they send "Project for a New American Century" letters vowing to invade Iraq on any pretext and create permanent bases there.

But hey, you're going to post pretending that Republicans don't vow to destroy the government. And you're going to pretend that there was no difference between, say, Bush's government with its Iraq War, Climate Change denial, wholesale spying on all Americans, trying to privateer Social Security, unlimited credit to people unfit to hold a job, versus, say, a Gore government which would clearly have brought none of those catastrophes.

Re:Teh republicans!!! Oh, noes!

[halivar]

I said people screwing up were responsible for nuclear fuses being sent to Taiwan. I don't like big government; but my usage of it was for devil's advocate only, and you're reframing my whole argument to center on it. So let me say it again: a gaggle of idiots screwed up, obviously broke a procedure somewhere, and sent parts off by mistake. It could happen in the best of governments, Republican or democrat (or, as it is now, both). Find the people, fire them to make an example, and send everyone to a morning meeting where you talk about how important procedure is. Case closed. This isn't a Republican plot to destroy the world; I promise (cross my heart and hope to die).

Now, about your second paragraph: are you implying that the previous democratic administration (which Gore was a part of) had no federal usurpation of individual rights (ATF debacles, DCS1000, Echelon), or global interventionism (Haiti, Somalia, Yugoslavia [multi-national or no, they were sovereign nations that we invaded; not saying it was wrong, mind you])? I mean, because you said "would have clearly brought none of these catastrophes," when I do not think it is so clear as you think it is. Have you learned nothing from the last 2 years of democratic congressional rule? What happened to all those campaign promises? No matter where you stand, there's nothing new on the other side of the aisle.

Re:Teh republicans!!! Oh, noes!

[Doc Ruby]

Your entire argument has now devolved to a gross oversimplification of every possible difference it references.

For one, I'm not reframing your entire argument to center on "big government". You said that this nuke trigger "mistake" was just "big government" at work, asked for an example to show that's wrong. I gave you an example of another nuke "mistake" recently. These nuke management systems are supposed to be run with many layers of failsafes, and have been up until recently. They're now failing, as are all the "failsafes", which are evidently gone. That's a new development, and, just like the rest of the Bush administration, lack of oversight and failsafes result in serious "mistakes" that somehow always fail in a way that benefits Bush and his agenda. Which happens to be built on these myths about "big government" failing, instead of putting blame on bad government run to remove protections and increase profitable threats.

So you might regret suggesting it was "just big government", but in fact you keep insisting that's what's at work anyway. And while you're in no position to guarantee these aren't examples of "a Republican plot to destroy the world" (a hyperbolic straw man I didn't suggest), you're instead just insisting on some kind of coincidence theory that you've got no evidence for.

I'm not implying that Clinton/Gore didn't do wrong, or that they didn't invade countries. But if you're going to say that there's no difference between invading the ex-Yugoslavian countries to stop their horrific violence (which tends to spread to the rest of Europe, though Europe failed to protect its own backyard), and our crazy, catastrophic invasion of Iraq, then there's no talking to you. If you're going to compare the Clinton/Gore ATF and Echelon to the Bush/Cheney NSA/CIA/Pentagon, TIA, FEMA, and the endless list of real catastrophes, compare Gore's Climate Change activism to Bush/Cheney's denial, then there's no talking to you. Because then you have no sense of proportion. You think there's some kind of comparison between "good vs evil" going on here. What there is to compare is competence vs catastrophe. If you can't see the difference, go ahead and find some other candidate who you can rely on to do no harm with all that power and yes, that big government.

Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel compelled to post as AC because I work in one of the branches of the U.S. Military supply. DLA? Ship something to the wrong address? You don't say... I deal with this shit every day. Color me unsurprised. I'm surprised it took even this long for it to be something of this nature...

ROC vs. PRC

[mutube]

china would argue that taiwan is technically part of china. taiwan begs to differ.

Conversely Taiwan would argue that China is part of it.

Re:ROC vs. PRC

[calcapt]

If Chiang Kai-Shek was still alive, your statement would be correct. But he isn't. I don't know of any Taiwanese who would argue China is apart of Taiwan; those people must either be extremely elderly or dying. In truth, ~40% of Taiwanese would argue Taiwan is it's own nation, while the other 60% would be arguing that the Taiwanese should keep their yaps shut so China doesn't invade and ruin their day. (I'm basing the numbers off recent election results)

Re:ROC vs. PRC

[mutube]

To be honest, the whole situation was news to me when I first read about it last year. It seemed (and still does) that such a big political rearrangement could occur and be out of the general consciousness so quickly. Countries come and go, but it's not often that they relocate (even within their borders). It's like the USA government being overthrown, relocating to Hawaii and then continuing to thrive.

The bit at the top of the Wikipedia article that says...

It was one of the victorious powers of World War II[6] and a founding member of the United Nations. ...kinda sums it up. When I learnt about this history it was just "China" no distinction.

Thanks for the (up-to-date, non-wiki) info :)

Re:ROC vs. PRC

[calcapt]

No problem. I guess the whole thing can be rather tricky. The KMT was the governing party of China when WWII ended and the UN was founded, but when the Communists came to power, the KMT really had no control over anything outside of Taiwan. I think 30 years ago this reality became apparent (there was no way China was a part of Taiwan) and the situation evolved to where it is now, where Taiwan is essentially a nation in every way but in name and officially a Chinese province. To your original point, only those original KMT members who followed Chiang from China (and perhaps their descendants) would likely regard China a part of Taiwan.

Anyhow, regardless of whatever formal stances that exist, the reality of matters can be far different; consequently, the truths about things are harder to discover.

Re:I am afraid...

[MaWeiTao]

I guess you envision George Bush kind of like Jesus Christ in those awkward paintings where he's secretly standing behind everyone. Bush is there observing us, regardless of whether we've joined the family for dinner, are sitting on the crapper, or have mistakenly just typed in Taiwan on the shipping invoice.

Is he shedding a tear or cackling with sinister glee?

What about the ones shipped from Taiwan to US?

[heroine]

The Detroit nose cones are trash compared to the nuclear nose cones made in Taiwan for US.

Re:It's no longer cool to be in the nuclear milita

[cybrthng]

Actually we use nuclear technology a lot (spent technology) - it just isn't the kind that goes "kaboom" - its more of a face/tank/armor piercing "splat" sometimes followed by a mild boom compared to detonated plutonium munitions.

Agreements

[Farakin]

I thought we had an agreement back in 01 to send them an Aegis defense system and China started yelling. Perhaps we did send them one labeled: Helicopter Batteries....

Oh great

[Gnaget]

I get in trouble if I try to ship cigarette lighters, but the government can ship nuclear nose cones.

Bureaucratic delay or something more sinister?

[BlackCobra43]

The fuses were shipped in 2006, according to TFA. How come we're JUST NOW getting informed of this?
 
If the US government was made aware of it, why was this matter of national security not revealed and those responsible fired?
 
If the US government wasn't informed until just now, what good is the their inspection certifying no tampering has occured? It's far too easy to completly disassemble and reasssemble something when you have 18 months to do it..

Re:Bureaucratic delay or something more sinister?

[saxonw12]

If they were current limiting fuses (1st definition) I could understand the lack of action. If they were a highly engineered part of the triggering device (2nd definition) then we do have a problem.

n. A safety device that protects an electric circuit from excessive current, consisting of or containing a metal element that melts when current exceeds a specific amperage, thereby opening the circuit.

n. 1. A cord of readily combustible material that is lighted at one end to carry a flame along its length to detonate an explosive at the other end. 2. often fuze A mechanical or electrical mechanism used to detonate an explosive charge or device such as a bomb or grenade: "A mechanical . . . switch is used to initiate the fuzes" (International Defense Review).

from: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fuse

Re:Bureaucratic delay or something more sinister?

[gujo-odori]

TFA is almost as unclear as the stupid /. headline that says missile nose cones were shipped (they were not). TFA says they are electrical fuses, but also describes them as being cone-shaped. Judging by the size - 33 x 19 inches - it sounds like they are a complex type of fuse integral to the detonation process, so I suppose the definition is somewhere between your two.

They probably weren't usable to do anything per se, but it sounds like a highly classified component used in advanced nuclear weapons. Not the kind of thing you want to be accidentally sending to the wrong place. This was clearly a major screwup. If the wrong person had gotten a hold of them and sent the fuses, or detailed drawings and photos, to China, that could have pushed their nuclear weapons program ahead significantly.

Re:Goatse

[Anonymous Coward]

you forgot the bit about Zeus, retard

Can't read a manifest?

[iminplaya]

Taiwan is NOT in Louisiana.

Re:It's no longer cool to be in the nuclear milita

[icepick72]

A board that investigated the accidental flight of nuclear-armed cruise missiles across the country

I saw those missiles fly by too, went right over my state.

Next on Slashdot....

[jlf278]

Millions in California Die...

Summary: ...ve into the ocean today as ocean currents bring warmer waters to west coast beaches.

Because it's the dumbest idea ever, that's why

[Chris Burke]

Oh, China might "pull a Kennedy"? Ya think?

China has threatened to invade every time the Taiwanese so much as utter the word independence, and threatened war with us if we try to materially support Taiwan's independence, and you think it's even remotely possible that us trying to put nukes on Taiwan wouldn't cause them to "pull a Kennedy"? In what universe?

At least you recognize that it would be insane to not back down WHEN they threaten war.

And WHEN we backed down and removed the nukes, Taiwan, having indicated by accepting the nukes that it intended to assert its independence and back it up with force, WOULD be invaded faster than you can say "cultural revolution".

You're not interested in seeing China in Taiwan? Well your idea would guarantee that Taiwan is occupied by the mainland in short order. Or that we'd be at war -- nuclear war -- with China. GREAT fucking idea.

Pity, Formosa needs deterrance against Red Guards

[Iowan41]

Look at Tibet. Formosa/Taiwan/Republic of China needs a deterrent against the imperialist aggression of the hegemonist Red Guards terrorist organization that oppresses the mainland, Tibet, Uighur and Manchuria.

Because nuclear proliferation...

[copponex]

Because nuclear proliferation is the greatest single threat to our species.

If you want to loose some sleep, find the BBC Documentary "Baiting the Bear" from 1996.

Oh yeah,

[JohaunaRei]

I feel so safe in the hands of our government.

Breaking News

[Anonymous Coward]

This just in, the US military "accidentially" ships nuclear warheads to Tibetan rebels.

gift exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

This may not be accidental event. Israel got theirs in a similar way. Taiwan has several nuclear power plants, they may already has other materials already. Those parts can speed up Taiwan's nuclear weapon capability, or it may be in only thing they need. The reason we found this mistake now is because Taiwan just elected a pro-China president. Those "cones" could end up as part of gift exchange. We better get them back quick. It may be in China's research labs in next month.

Taiwan tried to return it

[Anonymous Coward]

Upon discovering they were shipped the wrong part, Taiwan immediately called Pentagon Customer Service about the mistake. However, they were routed to the Indian Tech Support Team, which tried to sell them extended warranty. Eventually Taiwan was able to get through to a North Dakota call center, which asked for a 15% restocking and return shipping fees. Taiwan pointed out they were shipped the _wrong part_, and are not returning anything. However, they admitted that they did open the package and 'played around with' the nuclear assembly a little, but it didn't function without any nuclear material. Eventually the Pentagon agreed to take the parts back, but only gave Taiwan a store credit good for the next six months.

Whoops!

[sirgoran]

Sorry, my bad.

Must use spellcheck AND check the address book on order forms and not write them out from memory

What are you talking about?

[u8i9o0]

orclevegam (940336) writes:

Secondly, we knew of the mistake almost as soon as it happened.

Quoting the article:

Four of the cone-shaped fuses were shipped to Taiwanese officials in fall 2006 instead of the helicopter batteries they had ordered.
Despite quarterly checks of the inventory, defense officials said they never knew the fuses were gone. Only after months of discussions with Taiwan over the missing batteries did the Pentagon finally realize -- late last week -- the gravity of what had happened.

So, in your opinion, 1.5 years is equivalent to "... almost as soon as it happened"?

orclevegam (940336) writes:

It's just that we only recently finished processing the paperwork. The next step is to file the paperwork that gets those fuses sent back over here. ETA is somewhere in 2015.

What are you talking about? Where are you getting your information?

Let's look at the article:

Once the error was discovered, the military quickly recovered the four fuses.

"Quickly recovered" here has an absolute theoretical maximum of 1.5 years, and to you that is equivalent to a future delivery in 7 years?

Re:What are you talking about?

[bkr1_2k]

Some would call it humor. Obviously you wouldn't.

Re:What are you talking about?

[u8i9o0]

Some would call it humor. Obviously you wouldn't.

If a statement uses a smiley emoticon (or similar), it's usually called humor.
If a false statement doesn't use it, it's usually called trolling.

Was the first part of orclevegam's comment also humor? How do you know?

Re:What are you talking about?

[orclevegam]

Better take your sarcasm detector in for an overhaul, it's obviously faulty. The first part was serious, the second was a joke about government efficiency and bureaucratic paperwork.

Re:What are you talking about?

[bkr1_2k]

My post applies to my post as well. Some would call it humor. Obviously you wouldn't. I know nothing about what the post in question was thinking, I just read it as humorous. Obviously you didn't.

wake up! conspiracy is commonplace

[bussdriver]

I was told (by an agent) that most the work FBI involves conspiracy.
All corrupt governments do is collaborate to screw the masses; the very definition of conspiracy!

Doesn't anybody WONDER why idiots get promoted for incompetence? Its a general measure for conspiracy; just watch - nobody will be punished. They used to pick a fall guys (ex: O. North) but since Bush got in, they hardly even bother to cover their tracks anymore. Its not like the media is doing anything. In this case, the Chinese might follow up so they might have a fall guy (who won't make the news.)

How does any ANY RATIONAL person believe the media's parroting of a government story (anymore??) We know they lie for more than just legitimate security reasons and this situation has possible legitimate reasons. Odds of this being innocent are a million to 1.

Business model

[chord.wav]

1 Ship WMD to foreign country
2 Claim that foreign country has WMDs
3 Invade foreign country
4 PROFIT!

Re:Business model

[dido]

And they actually did that for real too! Isn't that exactly what's going on in Iraq?

Re:Business model

[FearForWings]

Perhaps you can tell our leaders how to get to step #4.
So far its been s/PROFIT/LOSS/

Gift Mix-up?

[timjstewart]

So who got the cheese log we meant to send to Taiwan?

Re:Gift Mix-up?

[CommunistHamster]

That was delicious. God bless USAF inefficiencies.

Cutting Edge

[conureman]

IIRC we had some pretty effective fission events in the forties. It took an awful lot of scientists to pull that off and some of the engineering details are probably still hard to come by. How big of a bang would it take to arouse your interest? I think our alleged poor relations* with the Chinese government could be more stressed if they thought we were supplying Taiwan with WMDs.
OTOH if the Taiwanese opened up the containers, (Not in TFA?) then it totally increases the likelihood that their mainland cousins will get to have the designs for analysis. I'm sure security is a lot tighter at the battery storage area of a Taiwanese vs: American military bases, but maybe not as good as the nuclear warhead storage area.

*I think maybe the folks in charge of our Fearless Leaders like to cultivate foreign enemies for commercial gain, but the facts are far above my rating.

Analog Computers

[Jarjarthejedi]

"Why do you think we still have these nose cones, anyway? The US has not come all that far since the 60s in terms of nuclear weapon design. By the 60s we were already detonating fusion bombs, and I guarantee you that the designs and electronics used in the 60s to create hydrogen bombs will still work today."

True, but they have gotten much, much smaller. Ever look at a picture of a modern ICBM vs. Fat Man? There's quite a size difference involved. Using that line of reasoning we haven't come all that far from 3 ton analog computers, and I'll guarentee that the designs and electronics used back them will still work today.

Works != Is good

Re:Analog Computers

[treeves]

Even though it was first deployed in 1970, we still maintain operational Minuteman (III) missiles - it is currently our only land-based ICBM. Your comparison is meaningless. There is no smaller "modern" ICBM.

Re:Analog Computers

[jonnythan]

Those "modern ICBMs" were largely developed in the 60s and 70s.

Bush said so

[Britz]

W once stated that they would defend Taiwan if China attacked.

Some people at the state department said this was a blunder, because this was not supposed to be stated openly, but always assumed and the PRC understood this. But what do I know. Maybe Bush is a brilliant foreign policy strategy maker and said that on purpose to (fill in something here).

Re:[censored] republicans!!! Oh, [censored]!

[epine]

What if I say that things got sloppy because our bureaucracy is so big it can no longer effectively run, as has been for decades?

50% of a truism is the learned helplessness that causes people not to penetrate the "dumb field" that renders the truism immutable.

Over the last three decades we've experienced the most abrupt revolution in communications technology in the history of humanity. The internet, and its crown jewel, the internet search engine, rival the printing press and the written alphabet in its transformative potential on the course of human civilization.

It might even manage to challenge the truism-of-unthinking-debate that government is 99% moronium, completely impervious in its own level of function to the progress of the society it governs. Was it your intent to bestow miraculous powers of immunity on society's least esteemed organ?

Here's a simple way America could have functioned with less government: enact far more restrictive laws concerning telescopic polyderivatives and mark-to-market accounting back in the early 1980s.

We've recently discovered that selling derivatives of derivatives of derivatives carries similar risks as feeding cattle brains to cattle. Of course, as the ageless truism about bloated government would have it, no civil servant earned their paycheck in the rapid bailout of Bear Stearns with special backing by the Fed.

The road to smaller government is to impose an oppressively tight regulatory environment where Enron and the sub-prime melt-down can't happen in the first place. Fewer bulls, fewer bears, and fewer giant economic messes that our small, effective government would be insufficient to clean up.

Software developers, of all people, ought to have a better perspective on scope creep. One mode of increasing government is the ever popular "grandfather regulation", where for example, about 10,000 compounds already in use in the 1960s were exempted from safety standards required to approve new compounds. It would have made for less government if all compounds had been blanketed by the same rules. Does any software person not get this? Expensive for the private sector, who I presume would have been overjoyed to foot this bill, in order to reap the benefits in future of a smaller more effective government.

The division of labour between the public and private sector in modern America seems to run along this fault line: private sector generates massive, unsustainable profits, then the government steps in to "restore confidence", and the cycle repeats.

Here is the kind of useless analysis that perpetuates these myths:

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/3/pathetic_bear_stearns_bailout_who_to_blame

Give us a break. If Bear Stearns goes to zero, there will only be one party to blame: Bear Stearns management.

Duh. It's actually quite easy to set up a competitive situation in game theory where each of the parties has the incentive to outperform (a routine provision in executive compensation packages in the private sector). Anyone who decides to hover nervously-close to the safest exit makes little profit compared to the more aggressive players (aka no performance bonus for Mr Safety Pants).

No one knows the exact moment when the music will stop. When the music does stop, this group as a whole is overextended, and this can only be put right by savaging the carcass of the bank that happened to be slightly more overextended (aka which fails to land on a chair) than the other banks at that precise moment in time.

If the profit model was driven by flipping the hot potato, you can't choose not to touch the hot potato, you just have to hope you can unload it fast each time you take the risk. Of course, someone has to get caught with it if the system as a whole is overextended.

The best part of this: the eulogy that the corpse deserved its fate.

I like mine with cherry syrup

[Afrix]

Ok, who ordered the Giant Snow Cone makers? O_o

China and Taiwan

[Perf]

For years, Chiang Kai-shek and company insisted that China was a province of Taiwan. ;-)

Not a problem, stuff is well known

[Ancient_Hacker]

Looksee here folks, this all was well worked out in 1945. You order some low-inductance capacitors from Sprague. You have that smart guy Alvarez design some thin wire loops at the ends of matched lengths of RG-8/U coax. You design up a trigger that discharges the capacitors through a hydrogen thyratron into the coax. Thing go boom.

If you want to get all 1960's, replace the thyratron with a krytron from a Xerox machine. Even better boom.

one does not need to see some current "nosecones" or "nuclear triggers" to get a heck of a bang. Although the NK's could probably use a little brushing up on the details.

You're an imbecile, an easily led by the nose fool

[Anonymous Coward]

"Seriously, I'm amazed that we don't find more shipping accidents. A CIA plane crash lands with a buttload of cocaine on it, nuclear fuses get shipped to a foreign country like lost luggage on an airliner?"

No, it didn't. If you'd bothered to actually READ what you were looking at, EVERY SINGLE INSTANCE of this story being reported relies on at least two degrees of speculation to attribute those planes to "the CIA".

"Either the Whitehouse and government is full of evil geniuses or they are incompetent as to be less useful than tits on a boar hog as my grandfather used to say."

There's a third option. The shit you think is happening isn't, and you're too fucking dumb to realize it. You're swallowing lies and propaganda just like the neo-cons do, but you aren't even self aware enough to realize it.

Here's a hint for you moron, if a story requires 5 assumptions that have no supporting evidence, gives its sources as "highly placed" and "in the know" but gives no names, or any evidence beyond said "highly placed" source's word, then it's probably a lie.

It has always amazed me that you idiots are so oblivious to how you allow yourselves to be manipulated, especially when you try to act like you have the moral and intellectual high ground.

At least they didn't accidentally ship a PS3

[Grendel_Prime]

... or else they'd have *all* the components necessary to build nuclear weapons!

something witty

p.s. that was my sig

I wonder

[e-scetic]

Were these nose cones bright orange with reflective markers?

Just how can this happen?

[cf18]

Basic helo battery turns into nuclear weapon part? What would happen if they made similar mistakes and shipped dangerous part to Venezuela when they were friendly to the US?

Re:Just how can this happen?

[Ellis D. Tripp]

I'm wondering about the mechanics of exactly how this happened, as well. Do the 2 components have similar part numbers, and someone swapped a digit by mistake? Warehouse guys put parts in the wrong bins? A correct order shipped to the wrong recipient (is there a nuclear missile crew somewhere that got a box of helicopter batteries instead of the replacement nosecones they ordered)?

wow, Interesting

[WindBourne]

First, I have not talked to the guy since we turned him down (2003; wow a while ago). I have lived south of denver for 15 years, so this was the only time that I have spent in Northern Co, since the 80's/early 90's time. In addition, I view this guy as a traitor so I really am not wild about being a friend of his. I am happy that we had not gone into a business agreement with him.

But it is funny. I have not thought about about the regular indigenous ppl of taiwan vs. mainlanders. I just considered it the same (like east coast vs. west coat). Yeah, it makes really sense about the difference in attitudes. Even now, I realize that the AC above (you?) must be from Taiwan native, as opposed to this other guy, whose parents absolutely were mainlanders.

Re:wow, Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I have not thought about about the regular indigenous ppl of taiwan vs. mainlanders. Minor point: You mean the "Taiwanese" (people/ethnic group), not the "indigenous" people. The aborigines are persecuted in every country, like the Native Americans (Indians) in the US, aborigines in Australia, etc.

No big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

No big deal. We 'mistakenly' shipped fissile material to israel in the 70s.

Re:Pity, Formosa needs deterrance against Red Guar

[dbIII]

Newsflash - Mao is dead and almost unmourned. Tibet was invaded over 50 years ago, quite sad for there even now but not relevant in any way to Taiwan today.

got it

[jtgd]

Taiwanese authorities notified U.S. officials of the mistake, but it was not clear when the notification was made.

Shall we assume it was after a complete and thorough analysis and reverse-engineering?

Our nuclear detonators...

[lullabud]

Let me show you them...

NOT

This was on Fark days ago.

[AP31R0N]

Offtopic, but a genuine question: Why does it take so long for news to reach /.? What is the delay?