Re: Pearls Before Swine: Uncle Is Not Good With Money

Bobbie Sellers  <blissInSanFrancisco@mouse-potato.com> wrote:

On 1/12/25 09:04, Scott Dorsey wrote:

Dimensional Traveler  <dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:

On 1/12/2025 8:53 AM, Paul S Person wrote:

>
I'm fairly sure the US President is one door and one military officer
away from access to the codes that launch the missiles, however.

>
Codes that authorize launches once the military requests it.

 
Assuming the president remembers where he left the biscuit.  There have
been a couple cases where it disappeared for a week or two until turning
up in the laundry.

>
"Biscuit"??? We used to refer to it as the "Football". Further
minaturization or ?.

The biscuit is the laminated card that contains the gold codes and it is
carried around by the president at all times.  The codes are changed on a
regular basis but back in the Nixon era it wasn't as often as it is today.
It's the size of a business card and fits in the wallet.

The football is the briefcase with the present war plans and the codes for
those plans.  The football is carried around by a military officer who
follows the president around.

Should the president decide to drop the bomb, he needs both the current
gold code from the biscuit AND the code for the specific war plan he wants
to implement.  I think the way it's supposed to work is that he calls the
national military command center with the gold code, gets back a countersign,
then gives the code for the plan.

There are some plans and some codes that are specific ringers so that if the
information is compromised that a bad guy won't know which codes are valid.

The key to this system is that the president can only implement specific
plans which have been made up by the generals.  He can't wake up in the
middle of the night with an upset stomach from bad burritos and decide to
nuke Mexico.  Well, he can decide that, but he won't be able to implement it
so easily.

I have no idea what system the Russians have in place.  For all I know,
Putin could call up some secret number and order Mexico City to be bombed.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."