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from the its-my-ball-and-I'm-taking-it-home dept.
Axios: Kelly, Secret Service agent scuffled with Chinese officials over nuclear 'football'
White House chief of staff John Kelly and a Secret Service agent scuffled with Chinese security officials over the U.S. nuclear "football" during a trip to China in November, Axios reported Sunday.
[...] The interaction reportedly took place during President Trump's trip to Beijing's Great Hall of the People. The aide carrying the briefcase was blocked from entering the hall, and another official quickly told Kelly, five sources told Axios.
Kelly then came over and told the officials to continue walking in, after which a Chinese security official grabbed at Kelly, and the chief of staff pushed him off, according to Axios. A Secret Service agent then tackled the Chinese security official, the publication reported.
U.S. officials were asked to not discuss the interaction, according to Axios. Chinese officials were never in possession of the bag containing the launch codes, and a top Chinese security official apologized to the Trump team afterward.
The nuclear football (also known as the atomic football, the President's emergency satchel, the Presidential Emergency Satchel, the button, the black box, or just the football) is a briefcase, the contents of which are to be used by the President of the United States to authorize a nuclear attack while away from fixed command centers, such as the White House Situation Room. It functions as a mobile hub in the strategic defense system of the United States. It is held by an aide-de-camp.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jimtheowl on Tuesday February 20 2018, @08:01AM (6 children)
I would certainly trust old schools engineers to understand these issues better than new age speculations. I would also expect that if this "football" actually looses connectivity to whatever proxy it has, there would be 'alarms' raised and the 'scuffled' would be taken to a whole new level.
I may not have much respect for the current administration, but I do have regard towards the people serving their country regardless. I believe they take their job seriously and would know how to deal with the aforementioned scenarios.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday February 20 2018, @08:34AM (5 children)
When I saw this, it just struck me as something to not count on to work should TSHTF.
If someone was determined to undermine the thing, I am pretty sure a good explosive capacitor-discharge spark gap, especially if focused, would render it inoperable. Maybe the same should it be hit with a plain old kitchen microwave magnetron placed at the focal point of a TVRO dish.
This kind of disruptive stuff is all over the place. Not how to build, but how to screw stuff up. I like to read it because it makes me think of what I can count on, and failure modes should anyone deliberately want to disable it. At one time, it was my business to know this kind of stuff, and to design in as much resistance as I could... ( forget making it "proof"... like making an unshatterable coffee mug... when the bad guy knows about high-velocity rounds. ).
In that case, I have to go for redundant design... not in the same place either.
However, I no longer work in that field. I was laid off. I don't think my employers much approved of where I was getting my information. It was not coming from professors. It was mostly coming from +HCU, +ORC, and +Fravia, with 2600 thrown in for good measure. To build stuff is great, but to me, it was also critical to know how others were pulling the rug out from under it.
What good is a fancy thing if someone else can take it down with a trivial piece of technology? Think I would trust a cellphone that can be brought down by an EMI-noisy thing like an old-school shaver? Use it, yes, but absolutely depend on it in adverse circumstances? No.
Now, I am trying to design a family of Arduino-compatibles... mostly it is interfaces to real-world. You know... line voltages, currents, motors, power controls... the stuff one needs before something actually becomes useful in the field.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Tuesday February 20 2018, @08:58AM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man%27s_switch [wikipedia.org]
You know... line voltages, currents, motors, power controls... t
I hear your. It is the only fun bit that remains in the IT field. That is what I spend my weekends on.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:43AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:50AM (1 child)
Any useful thing has a weak spot. There is probably some natural or mathematical law of conservation which dictates it. Weakness can be moved around or converted from one form to another, but it can never be eliminated.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday February 20 2018, @12:20PM
Boy, you aren't kidding there. Like a friggen bean bag. Mash here, vulnerability goes over there.
I would say by far most of the time I spend designing stuff, is not just to make it work, rather its to make it fault tolerant. I can't design it out altogether, but at least I isolate as much as I can so something bad may burn out an interface, but I sure want to keep the central "heart" beating so it can at least diagnose and report the failed interface. Which is my rationale behind many Arduinos linked through isolators.
I never know when someone is going to accidentally feed line power into a millivolt current sense input, thinking its the voltage monitor input. It *will* fry. It will definitely take out the digitizer. Screw up the board ground big-time. But it should not make it past the isolator. The next level up will see the interface no longer responding and diagnose/report the problem.
One thing I won't tolerate is the entire system suddenly going dark. If all hell breaks loose, I want to go to the supervisory unit, dial up its interfaces, and see for myself what the interfaces are reporting - even if they are not reporting at all. I can do manual interrogation and see for myself.
The system is primitive by today's standards, but there is a certain elegance in simplicity. Its not GUI. Its several 20char x 4line LCD's. A pair of quadrature encoders with pushbutton shafts are the main operator interface. It lets me scroll things and select certain things. If I want, I can send outputs to a VGA monitor. Text only. Something like 50 lines of 100 characters. One of the old SVGA modes. Handled by a Parallax Propeller. A guy over in England builds those. That way, I can easily monitor all inputs/outputs so I can personally see if all is in order.
I have many CPUS running simultaneously. Some of them are in risky places. Its up to the galvanically protected ones to keep tabs on their subordinates. None of them are very complex. Most of the CPU's are interchangeable - just have to have the proper code for their station-in-life programmed into them. This is still very preliminary.
I hope to release the whole shebang to open source once I have quality stuff to present. And make myself available for hire should someone want something special. The way I have this architecture designed, I can interface to damned near anything that does not require high-speed servicing. Sense or control. Its a piece of art, and its taking me a helluva long time to get it right. Seems like every time I think its perfect, its not. If someone was paying me to do this, they would have fired me a long time ago. Someone said there comes a time in the life of any project to shoot the engineer and begin production... but the executioner has not shown up yet. I want this to be something I am proud of... not another rapid-design pile of junk made to order for a bean counter, using as few of the cheapest beans I can find.
Every prospective employer I have found so far flat does not want to wait... they want to hit the ground running, with product within the quarter. Geez, I have been working on this thing for about five years now. Paying due diligence to all the detail is *very* time consuming.
Especially if one is trying to design a set of "Lego" so as to be easily adaptable to plug custom designed stuff in - without running out of I/O pins. ( Yes, I have that problem neatly nipped. ). Seems Arduino and Propeller were made for each other.
Once I get going on this and get some working capital, I have met one guy in particular, homeless, and in the riverbed, and know of a couple of others. I would love to get a source of funding so I can hire these guys and get them programming these things, and working up propeller code. I have many interfaces I want to port to Propeller. Especially things like stepper motor control.
But right now, I am retired and am funding it from my social security, which limits me to maybe a board run every two months or so. Working for pay doesn't help me much until I get paid enough to overcome the tax burden earning anything nets me. If I get paid a little bit, all they have done is stir up a tax nightmare for me. Best not take any pay at all, as fishing through tax requirements consume hours - hours I would much rather spend doing my designs.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Tuesday February 20 2018, @12:25PM
"If someone was determined to undermine the thing, I am pretty sure a good explosive capacitor-discharge spark gap, especially if focused, would render it inoperable."
But if that happens, a hammer inside falls and releases poison which kills the cat: SO...until they open the case the pussy is both
grabbed and not grabbeddead and not dead and .....aw, shit...lost my point.--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---