Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

US nuclear comms is, without exaggeration, one of the highest risks to every life on the entire planet. I'd be surprised if it was just the Chinese.

It is unfortunate but the situation with Huawei is a matter of great FUD. On the one hand, they probably are dodgy as any organisation & in league with the People's Liberation Army. The major risk they pose is doing precisely what the the US is doing with their spy network and the risks of that are well understood.

But on the other hand, while this may be a real story, but it is just one thread of a bigger story where the Asia keeps challenging the US's high-tech edge. CNN + the FBI is not a combination known for fair, honest and reasonable journalism and this could well just be stirring up muck, trying to discredit a superior Chinese solution.

I'm way more worried about Russian nukes than American ones. They can't keep truck tires maintained, who knows what sorry state their nuclear infrastructure is in?

The Chinese government has overt control over any Chinese corporation of consequence. This alone should be enough to disqualify Chinese telecom equipment from critical areas in my opinion. I'd expect the CCP to take similar precautions where feasible.

What’s the problem? I always thought most of these systems will fail closed not just randomly explode if not maintained.

It's true that modern nukes do not go off accidentally. But solid fueled rocket propellant in ICBMs can be pretty touchy and they have a shelf life.

Or the failure could be on the command and control side like what happened in 1983 [1]. Soviet early warning systems malfunctioned and reported multiple ICBM launches. The officer in charge basically decided to ignore it and single handedly prevented the end of human civilisation. This was at the height of the Cold War before the Russian army was drained of competence. I can't imagine those systems are working as well as they did back then.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_al...

They keep challenging the high-tech edge because they bypass billions of dollars of research development.

If a newcomer is able to bypass those costs it will kneecap the cycle of innovation which requires certain profit margin‘s to afford armies of PhD‘s. Otherwise game theory says the system goes ‘poof’.

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