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posted by janrinok on Tuesday February 20 2018, @06:29AM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday February 20 2018, @10:08AM (2 children)

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Tuesday February 20 2018, @10:08AM (#640572) Homepage Journal

    They give us a little card. The biscuit, it's not a biscuit. It's like a fortune cookie, it has a shell that we break. And inside the shell are the VERY SPECIAL numbers, they call them the Gold Codes or Launch Codes. I love gold, the New York snobs & elites always make fun of me because I love gold. So I asked, did you name them Gold Codes to make fun of me? They say it's not to make fun of me.

    They say it's very hard to do launches without the Gold Codes, they say don't lose that biscuit. But a guy from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one of the Generals, says Bill Clinton lost his biscuit. Lost his Gold Codes. That wasn't smart. Because it would have been hard to do a launch. He didn't do a launch, probably he didn't need to. But if he wanted to, it would be a problem, because he lost the Codes. Trust me, I'm taking good care of the biscuit. Of the Gold Codes. I'm doing a great job of not losing those. Because we might need to do a launch ANY MINUTE. 🚀🍄

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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday February 20 2018, @12:28PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday February 20 2018, @12:28PM (#640601) Journal

    They give Hillary a glass of wine. The pacifier, it's not a pacifier. It keeps her from yelling at her staff. Her staff love it.

    :)

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Tuesday February 20 2018, @12:44PM

    by anubi (2828) on Tuesday February 20 2018, @12:44PM (#640603) Journal

    Yes, you may have to launch at any minute. That's one of the things someone has to make a decision on. Its hard to hold a group accountable for starting a major, major war. This is gonna be between us, the Russians, and the Chinese. NK looks to me like a sore spot that is gonna be a trigger.

    My postings are my concerns that a "well-timed" EMP pulse, deliberately set to go off when the football was in the place someone else had pre-planned, disables it.

    Have backups. Lots of backups.

    I have spent way too much time in the industry... finding and fixing very low-level malfunctions that toppled the whole system. For want of a nail, the shoe was lost, kinda thing. Often, just ONE PN junction failure brought the whole shebang down.

    I've worked in this technology long enough to understand how fragile it is getting.

    And how higher-ups poo-poo stuff that does not fit the corporate release. Gotta look good on paper. Get the hands shaken and the contracts inked in. Bonuses now. Then you *might* get your stuff. But chances are the men with the leadership skills will run off the men with the technical skills. Leadership types do not like to herd cats. Easiest to lay 'em off and restaff with herdable ones. Ones that know where their paycheck is coming from and pay attention to corporate lines rather than laws of physics. They are readily available. Men that will tell you whatever you want to hear. And look good doing it.

    ( If I think the government has flakey stuff, look at the truck forums to hear people who have bought brand new trucks having problems with trivial emissions related stuff shutting their truck down or worse. Brand new trucks, too. I was really disappointed reading what the buyers of those latest Dodge "Sprinter" diesel vans were reporting on the forums. Craigslist is full of 'em - who made the discovery after signing the papers. All the recourse they have is reporting on the truck forums how much problems they had and how much money they had to spend to maintain their fleet. Doing the research on that is why I bought and am restoring an old mechanical van. Its not the fear of the EMP that scares me, though... rather its some "rightsholder" asserting his authority and surfacing just when I need to use the thing. You know, like that "under the cover of night" kinda "upgrade" Microsoft pulled on a lot of us to get us into Win 10. You guys have given software authors a helluva lot of capacity to cause lots of problems, but at the same time upheld the "hold harmless" stuff - because its software - and no-one knows for sure anymore. We are even having to go back to paper ballots because no-one can trust these "rights-enabled" machines. Who knows what evil lurks in the code, they aren't telling, and we can't see for ourselves anymore. Might as well force us to agree to legally binding contracts that we are not allowed to read - as reading and understanding what it does violates the "right" of the contract writer. We are not supposed to understand what we are agreeing to. Just run it. It won't run till you agree. ).

    Our inability to trust our stuff, and having finicky stuff, is the main driver to why I am trying like the dickens to bring to the world a design for using distributed arrays of very simple processors. So we can understand our stuff without some "rightsholder" mandating proprietary blobs of code no-one knows what it really does. I have done this enough that if there is anyone in the world that can do it, I am probably one of the few. We sorely need a public system that's simple and unencumbered, just like we have a public language. Its my belief that those fine Italians who conceived the Arduino and so graciously placed their founding designs into the public domain are solidly onto the situation. They have given birth to the fundamental building block I believe many things will come from. Simple computing.

    Sometimes your dog pooped and you just need a shovel... you really do not need the bulldozer.

    Or maybe you just want your bottling plant to run, without some kid halfway around the world screwing up one of the machines just to see the news report of the resulting mess as all the bottles collide, while the processor that was supposed to be watching the bottles calculates bitcoins.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]