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: 2) by jimtheowl on Tuesday February 20 2018, @07:15AM
It would certainly please the new Nero Emperor that his ratings are up.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by beckett on Tuesday February 20 2018, @07:20AM (2 children)
Not sure China would purposefully try separating POTUS-from-football, but otoh the dispassionate, measured tone of the linked article made me think the CCTV of the football guy, Kelly, and the SS will be studied to learn more about US protective SOP and capabilities.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday February 21 2018, @03:05AM
I once attended a talk by a defense contractor who did cyber security for the military
He checked into a motel with his dialup modem while an Air Force officer parachuted into the base
Hilarity ensued, but no one was killed because they disclosed their evil plan to just one guy: the base commander
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday February 21 2018, @03:34AM
I think we'd all be a lot safer with that thing in Chinese hands than Trump's tiny little hands.
Actually just about anyone's hands, some random burger-flipper at McDonalds, anyone but Trump.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @07:33AM (8 children)
Inform the Chinese security officials that the nuclear football is fail-deadly. That is, without regular attention from the president, the US military will assume that a nuclear strike is required. The assumption will be that the president has been taken hostage or even killed. ICBMs and SLBMs will soon hit over a thousand locations in China. Better let the president have his nuclear football real quick!
Bonus points: actually set it up like this, ensuring they can't just call your bluff and win
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @08:28AM
So, you want a new cold war?
China is currently trying to remain neutral in the battle of words between Trump and Kim Jong Un, threatening them with nukes could be what it takes to push them to take sides. And not our side.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @11:11AM (1 child)
What a brilliant idea. Especially convenient for those who want the USA to start a nuclear war with China.
So if someone kills Trump for whatever reason, China gets nuked and maybe a few retaliatory nukes from China will succeed in hitting the USA.
But hey nobody in the USA would want to kill Trump right? He's such a wonderful guy that only the evil Chinese would want to kill him.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday February 20 2018, @03:29PM
I was really hoping that somebody would manage to assassinate both candidates during the election. No such luck.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday February 20 2018, @04:30PM (3 children)
I think the real problem here was an ignorant security "official" (guard) getting grabby without knowing the gravity of the situation. There's no real upside for China to steal the briefcase. They don't want to launch a nuclear strike on the U.S. (at least imminently). There's likely no way that the Secret Service et al. would not find out about the briefcase being taken, and the codes would be changed ASAP, and possibly made more robust later. So it would strain the U.S.-China relationship with no real gains for China.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @07:31PM (1 child)
Ignorant and getting grabby? I'd like to see some evidence that the aide's photo and details was given to the security team beforehand.
Otherwise why should the guard let some random person carry a potential bomb into a hall where two world leaders would be present?
Just because the Chief of Staff tells the guy to keep walking in doesn't mean shit. Was it agreed that the Chief of Staff calls the shots for security for the hall?
Heck Trump could have fired them the day before for all they know.
Just flip the situation around and say it's in the USA and some random Chinese guy tries to carry a briefcase into a hall where the US President and other world leaders are in and some Chinese guy says "keep going" to the other Chinese guy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @07:47PM
Highly doubt any public official at those levels including even Kim Jong un would be looking to blow themselves up like that.
Also, there is more than one football incase of the traveling one going ‘dead’. With its own set of protocols in place to determine if it is to be used as an override.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:57PM
The "nuclear football" has, among other things, The Black Book containing the retaliatory options, a book listing classified site locations, [wikipedia.org]...
There is a definite real upside for China's strategic interests to have access to the briefcase. If you can't see it, you aren't thinking hard enough.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday February 21 2018, @03:07AM
They give orders to missile submarine commanders as to what they should do if they lose contact with London
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @07:38AM (1 child)
I don't why, but I'm getting a fake news reaction already.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @08:31PM
Sources == (original tweet + retweets)?
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday February 20 2018, @07:49AM (10 children)
Sure seems like a point-of-failure, given how easy it is to generate a significant EMP pulse at close range with primitive spark-gap technology.
A football, yes, but could it be deflated? Lotsa switches and dials, but fry-able transceiver? Without connectivity, this thing would be about as useful as those steering wheel toys parents buy for kids to play with in the car. Lots of buttons and controls. Does nothing.
I'd certainly think twice before counting on something like this working IF someone was working behind my back to deliberately make it fail. Just as I would not count on almost anything high-tech in such circumstance. Hate to revert to vacuum-tube tech, but seems that is the only technology I know of that will survive an EMP pulse that fractures silicon crystal. It would just cause arcover in a tube. But then, forget about all the complexity we are so used to... this is WW2 technology again. Hardly secure. Highly spoofable.
I guess what I am trying to say is I really would not put much trust in a lot of this stuff working if someone else was out to deliberately cause it to fail.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday February 20 2018, @07:53AM
The redundancy (also the answer to the fail-deadly suggestion above) is called the Vice-President.
(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 ---
(Score: 3, Informative) by insanumingenium on Tuesday February 20 2018, @07:31PM (1 child)
Every description of the contents of the football I have ever seen indicate that it's important contents aren't electronic at all. The "biscuit" with authentication codes, playbooks, a list of safe-houses. The idea is that the president can use those codes to authenticate launch orders and get to safety. That doesn't imply he has to do it electronically. Presumably laying out stones on a beach of a deserted island with the correct authentication codes could trigger nuclear action as quickly as a radio call.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:08AM
Good! It scares the shit out of me to have to trust something I can't fix on the spot should it break.
Or at least have workarounds in order.
I already have enough trouble with my technology. I know full good and well not to use my old-school shaver when the TV is on. It renders it inoperable. Reason: It has a brushed motor with no EMI suppression at all. Same with Mom's kitchen mixer and our TV back in the 50's. I often find the highest tech stuff we have is rendered useless if an old tech device is operating nearby. In my house, I discovered both my cellphone and TV were inoperative if a particular fluorescent light bulb was turned on. It brings to light to me just how "nice" things have to be these days to all get along together. One skunk in the crowd and all hell breaks loose.
I was sure hoping our President was not relying on technology out of a controlled environment. It scares me because all too often, I see management types, devoid of any technical expertise, do the damndest things.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Funny) by mrkaos on Tuesday February 20 2018, @08:58AM (2 children)
Thank goodness it's still in safe hands
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @05:04PM (1 child)
Can you call that treason?
Yeah, I suppose you could.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @05:52PM
Call what treason, the implication that Trump is a hot head and probably shouldn't be in control of the presidency, much less the ability to launch a nuclear attack?
Actually you cannot call that treason, treason requires you to wage war or assist in waging war against the US. Its the one crime outlined in the constitution. Calling the president a dumbkopf doesn't rise to that level champ.
(Score: 5, Touché) by ledow on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:17AM (5 children)
So... when a foreign president is visiting, and some guy tries to walk past security, and is stopped and questioned, and then some other guy you don't know comes along and just says "carry on", and then you try to stop them, it ends up in a scuffle and this is somehow the fault of the Chinese?
Can you imagine if the Chinese delegation had done the same when visiting the US? Someone would have gunned them down rather than let them slip through security unchecked with an unknown package near the visiting and home presidents.
Sure... there was a problem, the guy stopping them wasn't informed properly, or the person waving them through overstepped their authority in a foreign country, but I can't see that the Chinese security agent did anything wrong given his view of the situation.
P.S. If someone just touching the person carrying the stupidly-named briefcase is enough to worry you that they could start a war with it, you really need to look into proper security systems.
(Score: 3, Informative) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday February 20 2018, @10:08AM (2 children)
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. 🚀🍄
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday February 20 2018, @12:28PM
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
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]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday February 20 2018, @05:17PM (1 child)
No, this is a big deal because hundreds of people do nothing but choreograph visits like these precisely to avoid incidents like these. They can quickly get out of control, with that possibility being greater the more tension there is between the parties.
Somebody is getting fired over this, on both sides.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:18AM
People will do really stupid stuff when under orders... aka.. "agentic".
Most people are intelligent enough to make wise decisions, given what data they have access to. But when they are under someone else's authority, they often have no choice but to carry out orders, regardless as to whether or not those orders make any sense.
Its no fun to be under orders - and committed to carrying out things you believe are wrong.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]