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KGB Software Almost Triggered War In 1983 (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Who here remembers WarGames? As it turns out, the film was a lot closer to reality than we knew. Newly-released documents show that the Soviet Union's KGB developed software to predict sneak attacks from the U.S. and other nations in the early 1980s. During a NATO wargame in November, 1983, that software met all conditions necessary to forecast the beginning of a nuclear war. "Many of these procedures and tactics were things the Soviets had never seen, and the whole exercise came after a series of feints by U.S. and NATO forces to size up Soviet defenses and the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 on September 1, 1983. So as Soviet leaders monitored the exercise and considered the current climate, they put one and one together. Able Archer, according to Soviet leadership at least, must have been a cover for a genuine surprise attack planned by the U.S., then led by a president possibly insane enough to do it." Fortunately, when the military exercise ended, so did Soviet fears that an attack was imminent.
How is this suddenly news? I have watch TV documentaries years ago about this event.
The man who saved the world in 1983.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
And a few years later, Lt. Col. Oliver North would propose how the president could declare martial law in the U.S. if THE PEOPLE opposed the administration's policies. For a news junkie, it was fun era to live in.
>> electing Rambo wannabe
Rambo came out in 1982 - Reagan was elected in 1980.
This was a large, well known training exercise. The Soviets were even allowed to send observers. They just thought that we were using the exercise in 1983 as cover for a real attack.
War games designed to test the enemy's defences with feints are a bad idea. The US and South Korea do them off the coast of North Korea every year, and every year it just escalates tensions again. They must think that the risk is worth it to check NK defences, but it doesn't help diplomatic efforts.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Honestly, sometimes I think it's fairly common that countries periodically have to do things which say "we know you're there, we're not afraid of you, and we can fuck you up".
So, think of China building artificial islands in the South China Sea and then claiming that is territorial waters. Sailing past and waving the flag is part and parcel of reminding them that, no, this is international waters and has been for some time. Would you have them cede the waters to China and just let them annex it?
Sometimes, you need to remind the other guy that you're still there, and reality isn't defined in terms of what they claim. And you usually do that by telling me "oh, by the way, we'll be doing this right here for the next little while".
For some countries, diplomacy requires a little show of force to demonstrate you're not as intimidated as they think you should be of their supreme leader's tiny penis and huge ego.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I was at an event where someone asked Gorbachev about the major economic changes in the early 1990s as the Soviet states re-organized into various coalitions after the USSR dissolved. In his reply, Gorbachev's main point was that it took longer for private industry to ramp up than had been hoped. I don't remember the exact words from the meat of his response; it was an "unimportant" preface clause that caught my attention. He replied:
"After Reagan defeated us Perestroika wasn't moving as quickly as we had anticipated and ..."
"After Reagan defeated us", that's how Gorbachev thinks of the fall of the Soviet Union. I'm no expert on US-Soviet relations in the 1980s, but Gorbachev certainly is. He knows the private discussions of the Politburo that historians can only guess about. And his four-word summary of the Soviet Union's fall is "after Reagan defeated us". Very interesting, I thought.
General Beringer: Dr. Falken, you picked a hell of a day for a visit!
Stephen Falken: Uh-huh... General, what you see on these screens up here is a fantasy; a computer-enhanced hallucination. Those blips are not real missiles, they're phantoms.
McKittrick: Jack, there's nothing to indicate a simulation at all. Everything is working perfectly!
Stephen Falken: But does it make any sense?
General Beringer: Does what make any sense?
Stephen Falken: That!
General Beringer: Look, I don't have time for a conversation right now.
Stephen Falken: General, are you prepared to destroy the enemy?
General Beringer: You betcha!
Stephen Falken: Do you think they know that?
General Beringer: I believe we've made that clear enough.
Stephen Falken: Then don't! Tell the President to ride out the attack.
Colonel Joe Conley: Sir, they need a decision.
Stephen Falken: General, do you really believe that the enemy would attack without provocation, using so many missiles, bombers, and subs so that we would have no choice but to totally annihilate them?
Female Airman First Class: One minute and thirty seconds to impact.
Stephen Falken: General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
...Blame the model.
I read this article, the model was flawed, based on a "we'll attack when we pass some threshhold". Everything else was just to feed the model. They added a lot of things, so the model could only be calculated on a computer. But its a modeling error, the tool was a computer.
And I remember all of Reagan's years, and Carter's too. I remember that after he had been president for 4 years, he won by the biggest landslide in history.
So apparently most of the voters disagreed with your characterizations. That's historical fact, no opinion required.
If I throw my opinion into it, I'd have to say we valued intangibles like human rights, economic opportunity, peace, ... far more than you apparently do today.
That city was St Petersburg, then Petrograd, then Leningrad, now again St Petersburg... I wonder why they didn't pick the more Russian sounding name of Petrograd?
Speaking of which, while St Petersburg is the name of the city, the oblast name remains Leningrad. Also surprising is that while Gorky was named back to Novgorod and Sverdlovsk was named back to Ekateringrad, Ulyanovsk - named after Lenin - remains that, and didn't revert to the previous name of Simbirsk.
Would love to see a Russian leader who embraces the Tsarist heritage but rejects the Soviet legacy. Unlike Putin
What the fuck is wrong with you? Have you considered seeking professional help? Just so you know your attacks on Coren now mean I hold him in much higher regard.