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Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

In all considerations of these arguments Incident RQ-170 2011 [1] should remain foremost. It is to military systems engineering what the Tacoma Bridge [2] is to civil engineering and the Therac-25 [3] is to software engineering.

Axiomatically: Any system, no matter how well guarded, can and eventually will be taken by an enemy and used against you.

That's why we;

Don't take a knife to fight if you're not trained to use it.

Don't build offensive cyberweapons your civilian population are not equipt to defend against (looking at you US Cyber Command).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

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My greatest concern today is the militarization of space going on right now[0] (Space Development Agency). The system engineer behind it Michael D. Griffin[1] seems to think the US can "win" all future wars by creating a space-based missile defense. Decisions are automatically made in milliseconds, with no room for human input.

SpaceX's participation[2] is particularly concerning (they just built and launched four "secret" satellites for it last week) and employees are now complaining about it on Glassdoor[3]

Elon talks a lot about AI / Skynet, and it appears there is a serious attempt to construct it.

[0] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11623 [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career [2] https://mobile.twitter.com/planet4589/status/153896005141464... [3] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-SpaceX-RVW...

If we think about the militarization of space, you're 6 decades behind the times. Space has always been militarized!

We've ran spy satellites since the 60s, and missile detection satellites after.. Most leading space-faring nations have also tested satellites that are technically dual use - one man's repair mission is another woman's satellite destruction capability. As well, of course, the Anti-satellite weaponry...The DoD is a big user of SATCOM, and GPS of course, is all about military targeting and coordinates.

Every weather satellite likewise is also an incredibly useful data provider for planning air operation campaigns, and an integral part of battle planning. Mix that with terrestrial and in-situ data sources, both classified, and unclassified, and you have understanding of the potential great levels of detail useful for the military.

The projects now are of a level of militarization comparable only to the (failed) Strategic Defense Initiative in the late 80's. Today the pursuit of artificial intelligent targeting in such a system is what makes it particularly threatening to humanity.

I've observed that Mike (and other supporters of this) are very religious. I suspect they are OK gambling with our collective future. Maybe they believe God will intervene or something. Well some of us don't want to play that game.

I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make, other than that these are famous events in engineering. What does a bridge collapsing bc of a structural defect or a software bug causing higher doses or radiation have to do with systems being taken by enemies and used against you?

They use the Therac-25 story to scare young CS students into considering the broader implications of their work, ie people might die. The others might also fall under 'popular professional cautionary tales.'

Interestingly in talking to a developer who worked in defense, they don’t say if you get your code wrong, people might die - they say the wrong people might die.

The basis of guerrilla warfare is using the stronger opponent's strength against them. Farmers come with scythes and staves and capture a rifle. Farmers come with scythes, staves and a rifle and capture more rifles. With rifles and the element of surprise, artillery is captured.

It goes back to Sun Tzu, and up to the present day. One of its most recent manifestations is the US equipment captured by the Taliban.

The article about the RQ-170 states that the aircraft uses inertial guidance for its flight path so as to avoid GPS spoofing attacks. But then no explanation is given for how that might have failed. Is anything else known about how the attack worked?

I looked far and wide, and there's nothing. However, inertial guidance is subject to drift, so if you spoof the GPS slow enough you can bypass inertial guidance as a protection.

The most interesting part of the RQ-170 story however is how they managed to track it accurately enough for GPS spoofing to begin with - you need a track accurate to a few dozen meters to do that, and it's supposed to be super stealthy even beyond the stealthiest fighter jets making that impossible.

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