Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Race to Destruction
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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the Atlantic coast, with only a few minutes flight time to targets, leave
little warning time and force reliance on computers or junior officers.
Paul Bracken, a specialist on command-and-control, notes that “they
threaten decapitation, and the reaction is likely to be the adoption of a
range of extremely dangerous operating policies, such as launch under
attack or a more extensive predelegation of firing authority within the
military.” Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara noted that
“fear of the Pershings could stimulate a policy of launch on warning” or
a policy of “preemption.” Warning systems have a poor record, with
many false warnings because of misinterpreted signals or computer
failure. A congressional committee found 3703 false warnings of Soviet
attacks in an 18-month period ending in June 1980, 151 of them
relatively serious. Bracken contends that “the chance that you’d get an
accidental war out of the blue, in peacetime, because a transistor failed
or a major went mad, has been exaggerated,” given the elaborate system
of human and computer checks. But the main problem, of course, has
to do with periods of international tension: “the chances of a war if
you’ve already gotten into a crisis are a lot higher than is thought,” he
adds, since the system of checks may not function. The dangers are
vastly enhanced under SDI, which would further increase the reliance on
hazardous quick-response systems. 17