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Comment by thought_alarm | Hacker News Reader

America has become ridiculous.

The headline is absurd. The article is absurd. Everything about this is absurd.

How so? The absurd thing is that it is news - it should just be common sense that computers are not secure. It shouldn't take a statement by the future US president to convey that message.

Have you ever looked at a computer owned by one of your relatives (someone who is not a computer expert)?

I've not seen any numbers, but I don't think it's far fetched to say that the US probably has ridiculously large budgets for cyber security, military research in computing, cryptography etc. We're not talking about uncle Jim-Bob's computer here.

Having the person that will lead all of that say he'd rather send couriers with hand written notes is horrifying for me. As a computer scientist I feel that this is yet another attack on science and reason. I wonder how you don't feel the same?

Having the person that will lead all of that say he'd rather send couriers with hand written notes is horrifying for me

Consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

    Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line troops and World-War-II-style 
    light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications

Using these tactics - in an exercise only of course - the "enemy" defeated the US military easily.

If you believe all that spending makes computer secure, you are fooling yourself. It is an incredibly complex environment - much more complex than the code for sending rockets into space, for example. And rockets still explode.

Besides, I don't think Trump will be using couriers all the time. Also, these days, email is not the only way to send digital messages.

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